Edgy Mama

Here’s my not-very-inspired but kind of cute business profile for today’s local newsrag (not that I would ever, ever, ever use the Asheville Citizen-Times to clean my windows or anything else. I use the Mountain Xpress for those jobs).

I’m teasing, Steve, teasing! Now that I KNOW you’re reading regularly, I’ve gotta get a lovey jab in!

Anyway, I wouldn’t typically showcase this article on my bloggie, except I want y’all to take a look at the photo credit! ARGH!

See what happens when your editor finds out that you got a new camera for Christmas? He says things like: “Why don’t you try taking your own photos at your next interview?” To which I say things like: “OMG! I haven’t had a photo published in a newspaper in 15 years, and then it was unattributed because it accompanied an ad for the cute charter school where I was Director of External Communications.” Which, incidentally, is my favorite job moniker ever, out of all the random titles I’ve held.

Anyway, I learned a great deal just by taking this one uninspired photograph (okay, this was ed’s choice out of the 20 I took. I figured I’d use the scattershell approach and pray that one shot would be decent. It worked!).

First of all, most people are generally uncomfortable being interviewed, at least initially. Unless they’ve worked in media or been interviewed before, they can start out rather stiff. I’m pretty good at getting people to relax and talk to me (you might find it difficult to believe, but I can be both quiet and a good listener–sometimes).

It takes a few minutes of small talk and quick questions to get interviewees to start giving me what I need for an article. Occasionally, it takes more than a few minutes. Sometimes, though, once people get rolling, I’m surprised at how much they’ll tell me. Some people are bursting to tell their story, and having someone who not only hears every word (well, most of them), but actually writes down a goodly number of them, breaks through the dam, and the verbiage can be torrential. About once a month, someone tells me something that they don’t want published, and I always wonder why. Why tell me, a reporter writing an article about you, something that you don’t want me to write about? I, of course, always respect this request. Always. But it still surprises me. I guess sometimes the torrent just can’t be easily redammed. That’s probably one of the many skills I need to learn–redamming.

So I took several minutes and got this young couple I was interviewing relaxed and telling me their story and I had, as usual, more information than I needed for a 15-column-inch business profile. Then I pulled out the camera. It was like I’d just walked through the door again, a complete stranger with an agenda. The stiffening immediately resumed full-force.

What I learned is this: I don’t have the camera patter. I’m not proficient enough to operate a complicated little machine and do the “relax, it’s okay” talk at the same time. It was a challenge. I was thinking about how not to have my flash reflect in the guy’s glasses and how to avoid the overhead flourescent lights and about FOCUS, and these poor people are looking at me like the proverbial deer you-know-where. I was sweating by the time I finished.

So, that is going to be my primary challenge in doing more photojournalism. Not working the camera or developing an eye, both of which I’m okay at already. It will be developing the patter–making people comfortable so they look natural for the camera. Scary!

Next time, I think I’m going to try saying: “Do your thing and let me follow you around for a while. Pretend I’m not here. Ignore the flashing light and the loud SLR shutter sound.” I’ll let you know how that works.