Apr 29 2009
Because today is President Obama's 100th day in office, I thought I'd show a collection of photographs I shot on assignment for the Post-Gazette during his historic campaign in Pennsylvania.
Apr 28 2009
There were three incidents involving SWAT teams today, breaking up an otherwise slow news day. After two assignments early in my shift, I was ready to return to the Post-Gazette and catch up on some desk work. I have the beginnings of a project that badly need to be edited, but today became a bad day for that.
I was about to park at the Post-Gazette when an editor called me to cover a standoff situation in Lincoln-Lemington. As soon as I had the address, I was on the way. To me, it's always been important to arrive at a spot news scene as quickly as possible. You never know when you might catch an amazing photograph. It's also a pretty bad feeling to arrive ten minutes after everything is said and done.
In Lincoln-Lemington I parked near the police barricade, and walked over to scope the scene. The vantage points where I was allowed to stand (unlike how some movies portray media, we're never allowed to enter a crime scene or go any further than the general public) weren't all that great, so I walked around the outskirts of the police presence trying to find something to photograph.
I was still searching when it started to pour. Only in Pittsburgh could the nicest April day devolve into a downpour so quickly. I did my best to protect my exposed camera, holding it under my shirt and constantly wiping off the rainwater. A piece of paper where I had written IDs from an earlier assignment was destroyed in my pocket. My cell phone, presumably because of some minor water intake, stopped being able to answer incoming calls.
After the police entered the house, the SWAT team immediately went to Lawrenceville where another standoff was developing. It was that kind of day. I hurried back to my car to follow them.
Fortunately, another photographer was able to get to the day's third standoff, which was good for me. I needed to dry off.
In Pittsburgh, when it rains, it pours.
Apr 28 2009
The winding roads of Smock are deceptive. Amid the farmland's rolling hills and classic horizon is the Western Pennsylvania National Wild Animal Orphanage. I first visited the orphanage on a freelance assignment several years ago, but never made it back because I moved away shortly thereafter. Upon returning to the Pittsburgh area, it was one of the first places I called while trying to line up long-term projects.
As a photojournalist, most of my work consists of day-to-day assignments. I'll drive all over the county, sometimes the state, in order to spend several hours delving into a subject, and then move on. But in-depth stories allow a subject to become so comfortable with a photographer's presence that the camera becomes invisible. This trust creates an atmosphere where its possible to capture a moment that would otherwise be impossible.
With Karen Osler, the big-cat handler at the orphanage, I didn't want to just spend an hour photographing her world. I felt it would be important to really examine all the aspects of her life. Karen has devoted herself to the well-being of maltreated animals. She spends seven days a week feeding, caring for and playing with the 30 or so big cats at the orphanage.
I've spent the last year taking the occasional trip to photograph and interview Karen. The result is a sort of mini-documentary on her life. The six videos in the project highlight the orphanage's goal of creating a lifelong home for these cats, the dangers of working with wild animals and the efforts the Orphanage takes to feed them and provide veterinary services as well as provide physical and mental stimulation.
To watch my story on Karen, click here.
Apr 24 2009
I remember how calmly my youngest brother said, "Dad, the back yard's on fire." I ran to a window, only to see scrap wood from a recent home remodeling up in flames. Thick black smoke rose into the air from an old tire that was caught in the fray. Before any fear could register, any single thought about the danger to our home, I ran upstairs to grab my father's old Nikkormat camera.
I photographed the entire event: the flames as they moved from the scrap piles into the surrounding trees, the firefighters' quick response (One lived four doors up the street. He casually strolled down to our yard, putting his arms into the sleeves of his jacket as he walked onto our property.) Before the firefighters had left the scene, I, then a high school student, told my father I was going to take the film to the local newspaper, the Indiana Gazette. The next day, I had my first published photograph.
I later learned that my mother had started the fire. She left a bonfire she thought she had extinguished when she went to play the organ at a local church. To this day, she'll jokingly talk about how she was behind the start of my career as a photojournalist. Now, nearly a decade later, I'm a staff photographer for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
Chasing fire is my job.
So it went late in the evening on Sunday, Jan. 25, 2009, the Post-Gazette's newsroom police scanner spewed out calls of a four-alarm structure fire at the North Side Institutional Church of God in Christ. Not long after that, reporter Amy Schaarsmith and I were driving to the scene. From a mile away, I could see the outline of black smoke billowing into the air.
My thoughts, the same as that backyard day so long ago, ran rampant. "Where is the best place to stand? What angle will show everything I need to show?" I saw the group of church parishioners and community members gather at the scene and form a prayer circle as their church burned. After their prayer, the man in the photograph above, North Side resident and church parishioner Tim Jones, stood aside from the group, closed his eyes and chanted his own prayer to God. I dropped to the snow-covered ground, oblivious to the cold, and shot about 30 versions of the photograph, which ran as our front-page image the next day.
My hope is that this blog, Eyes on Fire, will give you, the viewer, reader, thinker, a greater insight into the process behind my take on photojournalism. I want to start a conversation about all the great photography that's happening in Pittsburgh. And, most importantly, I want to thank my mother for burning down the back yard and showing me how I had to live.