Monday, September 12, 2011
A Foghorn assignment leads to awkwardness...
For my first assignment as Foghorn staff photographer, I was told to photograph the 9/11 Memorial Mass at St. Ignatius on Sunday night. Simple, right? I show up with my badge and camera to begin shooting but realize quickly it could be a much more difficult feat than i had expected. The objective my editor gave me was to capture personal reaction to the mass, but with no flash allowed, getting up close and personal with those attending seemed downright inappropriate. I was forced to shoot blurry, impersonal, shots of the speakers and choral group. Doesn't really make for stunning, reactionary photographs, but what choice did I have? Photographing subjects up close under deep emotional stress seemed rude, so I got a nice shot of St Ignatius and called it a night. It didn't occur to me until now that photojournalists have the same, and different, ethical obligations that news reporters do. Respect is key.
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Hmmmm. Several thoughts:
ReplyDelete1) The "ethics" of good equipment. Did you have a camera/lens combo that would allow you to shoot in low light?
2) If your equipment was adequate, you could have shot unobtrusively, which would have created "respect" for those in attendance because they wouldn't have known what you were doing, which (as long as you had permission to be in the church)would be ethical in my opinion.
3) Of course, once you had the photos, you would have had to decide what to do with them: That would have been the ethical flashpoint.
4)But what would/did Brant Ward say? My wife says he is saying that you should always?/when convenient? get names of those shot in public. Hard for me to see how you'd do that in the circumstances you describe. And we are back to the larger question: Brant's opinion of all the ethical/legal implications in this situation.
Great dilemma
I keep trying to think about what I would do in this situation- part of me wants to say that it's the job of the job of the journalist/photographer to get in there and take photos even if it imposes a little, and the other part of me feels exactly what you said- that its uncomfortable and impolite; but I guess that's why it's such an ethical dilemma!
ReplyDeleteIf you look at the picture from the newspaper that we talked about in class (the grieving widow), it's sort of a similar situation where you have people who are really upset but you need to get a picture and so what do you do? I know that Brant Ward said that the grieving widow picture was okay ethically because it was what people expected and wanted to see in an article about a husband who passed away, and it seems like for a story about a 9/11 mass, the same rule would hold true. People would expect to see upset faces and people grieving.
I guess the burden then falls on the photographer her(or him)self to decide if they personally feel comfortable- I don't think I would personally feel comfortable doing it either!
Not going to lie, I've been thinking about this dilemma you face after our photojournalism class this week. I'm not sure how I'd approach the situation. Aside from the discomfort, I think it would be ethical to take the photos that your editor wanted. Would I do? Probably not. But, in terms of ethics, I agree with Tracy and Brant Ward's conclusion. This is what people expect (and sometimes want) to see. Although the photo we saw in class wasn't the ideal photo that I would put in the paper, I think a somehow, "tasteful" photo of a grieving person would be completely ethical.
ReplyDeleteProps to you for taking on this challenge, that is a tough one!