Words On Pictures

Behind the Scenes at the 2009 Outside Lands Music Festival

 

I have always been a huge live music fan. As a high school student growing up in Chicago, there wasn't a summer weekend when I wasn't seeing a band in the city. Still to this day, I am consistantly watching my radar of when the next good band comes to town in anticipation of seeing them. So when our Daily Republic Tailwind editor Nick DeCicco approached me about trying to get press passes to this year's Outside Lands Music Festival, I was all about it. Getting them wasn't a guarantee, but it was worth a shot.

About two weeks before the show, we got the word that we had been approved and we started making our plans for the three day show. I have shot a couple big concerts before but nothing of this magnitude. So when I arrived after navigating the BART system, it took me a while to take it all in. The festival consisted of five music stages scattered throughout Golden Gate Park in downtown San Francisco. I wanted to show a variety of the acts that would be performing so Nick and I roughly planned out which acts we wanted to see and have me photograph. The festival organizers were very helpful towards the press, extending complementry food and beer but very firm in their rules when it came to shooting the musicians. Every band was accessible to shoot during their performance but the photographers would only have access to the front photo pit (infront of the audience front row seating) for the first three songs of a set. This was awesome and at the same time could be frustrating. Because of the very short amount of time, I had to join the scrum of photographers shooting frantically and try to get as many usable images as possible. Your constantly shooting, moving around, dodging other shooters and fighting for a good shooting angle. It was chaos but a hell of a lot of fun to be apart of. There is something to be said of experiencing a concert inches from the band members performing on stage. The festival was a gathering for celebration and it provided an endless supply of enthusiastic people and good photo opportunities. It was an experience I won't soon forget. -Mike

Check out more photos at our new media gallery at http://www.photo.dailyrepublic.net/?p=386

Matt Garcia One Year Later

Monday marks the one year anniversary of Matt Garcia's death. Obviously, his death has had a huge impact on the community. People have taken their grief and channeled it into working to change Fairfield and continue the work that Garcia started on the city council. This energy and activity has made the aftermath of his death an ongoing story in Faifield this past year.

We tried to summarize the way his death has affected the community and those close to him in a short video on the media gallery. The presentation also includes remembrances, a timeline, our previous video on Garcia's life and links to stories and other websites remembering the fallen councilman.

A big thank you to Chris Jordan, who produced the video and the multimedia presentation. As always, he did an amazing job. Please take a moment to browse the presentation and, as always, share your thoughts with us here or on the media gallery.

Brad

Tale of Two Buildings

Here is a picture I made last week of a guy working on the roof of the old county library in downtown Fairfield. The old library is one of the few old/historic public buildings in Fairfield and its Spanish-Colonial style is unique in the city. It was the source of some tension a few years ago when the county commissioners were approving the plans of the new county government center, looming in the background of this picture. Some people wanted to tear the library down, others wanted to save it and in the end the new building went up alongside the old. I covered the county commissioner meeting when that vote was cast and there were some happy preservationists in Fairfield that day. Now they are fixing up the old library and turning it into a conference center and that's what the roof work is part of.

The massive county government center provides the graphics and context for this picture but I also feel like a picture of the old building without the new building would be incomplete. For me, it's like the newer glass and steel structure once held the fate of the little Spanish-Colonial style library in its hands and decided to let it live. The future of the smaller building will always be tied to the larger one in my mind.

Brad

When Headlines Attack

Sometimes a headline can take the subject of your photograph, pick them up by the belt, and chuck them straight under the bus. This is a very frustrating situation for a newspaper photographer because you often have little control over the situation or just don't see it coming. It mostly happens while covering sensitive subjects like crime, weight, sex, etc. where the threshold for embarrassment is low. 

This headline/picture combination in the San Francisco Chronicle caught my attention this morning for that reason. The headline, "Cops keep lid on gang violence", makes it appear that the unhappy looking fellow with the officer is a gang member. Once you read the cutline, you see that he is just unhappy that the police are ticketing his friend. The poor guy isn't even being arrested and now his picture and the unfortunate headline are on the front page, above the fold, proudly displayed on newspaper racks across a nine-county area. Ouch.

I don't know the particulars of how this happened in today's Chronicle, but generally this is how a headline ends up sandbagging your subject: You are given a photo assignment with a general overview of the story, like "This is about how the police are being more proactive in the Mission" etc. etc. It can even go as far as "I'm talking about gang crime, but it's really more of a broad story about police activity in the area." You go out and shoot the pictures, they accurately reflect the story, or a significant part of the story. You edit based on your best pictures and how they tell the story you think is being written. In the meantime, the angle of the story can change during the reporting or something a little more newsworthy, like gang violence, becomes the lead or news hook. Really, nothing is that wrong with this scenario. If the story is ONLY about gang violence you would want to shoot pictures of gang violence. But if a large portion of the story is about community policing, showing that aspect of the story is still accurate and appropriate even if the lead is about something more specific and dramatic.

This is when the page designer/copy editor/headline writer can bridge the gap between the story and the pictures or make your subject look really, really bad. In the case of the Chronicle, there is nothing inaccurate on the page but the headline is about a specific aspect of the story and has nothing to do with the picture at all. Headlines are just as much for the photos as they are for the story and that concept is ignored at the subject's peril.  

Brad

 

Grass Fire

Hi All -

It's been a great thing that fires haven't wreaked much havoc on Solano County this year. When they do happen, they can make for pretty dramatic photos though. This fire that ran right up to, but fortunately not over, the Trilogy Development in Rio Vista was no exception.

Before I was at the DR I was a photographer in Montana. Although Montana has it's share of incredible forest fires, often they are in remote places and access can be difficult for both physical and legal reasons. Usually if a major fire broke out I knew that eventually I would be stopped by either a dead end road or a guy with a walkie talkie. However in California, because fires can so dramatically affect both people and nature, we have a shield law. It basically allows journalists to get as close as we want to fires so that we can deliver the best reporting and photography possible from a situation. This picture would have been next to impossible to make in Montana where I would have been stopped hundreds of yards away from this scene, however in Rio Vista all it requirred was for me to walk a few miles until I got to where the action was. This young firefighter actually asked me if I was supposed to be so close and his boss said, "reporters can pretty much do what they want around here so just focus on your job and let him do his."

I couldn't have said it better myself.

Hope all is well -

Chris
http://photo.dailyrepublic.net

Harvest Time

Harvest is in full swing here in California. Everywhere you can see the explosion of fruit stands along the roads and the numerous farmers markets in the small towns. Having started my own vegetable garden I now know the rewards of patience for letting your crop come into its maturity. What most people don't realize is that behind the scenes of the California law enforcement, another type of harvest is being conducted. The cultivating of marijuana. Eradication is a better word for it. Last week I was able to tag along with the Solano County Sheriff Department for a drug bust on a couple illegal pot gardens in the nearby hills of Pleasant Valley. This is nothing new for them. Every year law enforcement officials bust thousands of these gardens throughout the state. This time would be no different. The same protocol was applied. Find and identify the plants from helicopters in the air, organized your crew of undercover policemen and drug task force officers, and then send in the troops to disperse/arrest the growers on sight while eradicating the crops.

I was on hand to document the eradication of the plants. The law officials had identified about 6000 plant garden and by the time I had arrived, they had sent in their armed police officers to cut down and and haul out the goods. Unfortunately, the press wasn't invited to this part of the event. We would have to wait at the drop point. The wait wasn't that long. Maybe twenty minutes. Then I looked up hearing the buzz of the on coming helicopter bringing in the drugs. It isn't every day you have the county police placing thousands of marijuana plants at your feet. The familiar smell from college was engulfed all around us. As I stood on top of the awaiting dump truck I shot pictures as officers worked to free the plants from their transport nets. It was a surreal feeling to be crawling over literally hundreds of thousands dollars worth of drugs. I kept thinking it was so much fuss over such a simple plant. As I watched the officers pour diesel fuel over the massive pile of marijuana, I grabbed a six foot plant and had Vacaville Reporter photographer Rick Roach take a portrait of me. You never know when another opportunity like this would come again. Something tells me that living here in California, I won't have to wait to long. -M

The Making of a Photo Illustration

 

How's it going Fairfield? I wanted to talk a little bit about a photo illustration that ran on the front this past week's Sunday Sports section. I was assigned early last week to photograph our sports department's picks for the Track Athletes of the Year, Daje Pugh and Dante Thomas of Fairfield High School. I love getting these type of portrait assignments. There are no rules for them and they allow me full control of the final outcome. They allow me to really think of creative ways to show individuals in a different way. Such was the case for photographing Daje and Dante. Both of these athletes had stellar track & field seasons this year. The story was focusing on their success in their hurdling events. I wanted to show them hurdling. Going to the track was too obvious of a place to photograph them. I wanted to put them in a not so common place. I find that coming up with the concept of a portrait photograph is usually half the battle. I found my idea for this image while driving past the water fountain in downtown Fairfield and seeing the kids playing in it. My thought process was that I wanted to show big kid athletes playing but at the same time look tough. I wanted to show them exploding through the water like they did to their opponents this past season. I felt the fountain would be the perfect canvas.

I called up each of them and told them my idea for the shoot. Both were up for it and we settled on a time to meet. I chose a time in the late afternoon when I knew that the light would be the best. Their were numerous things for this shoot that would be out of my control. Weather and the fountain. I arrived an hour earlier with fellow photographer Chris Jordan to test the light and to figure out how I was going to shoot Daje and Dante. Chris and I did some test shots with my portable light set up and determined which fountain jets I would have them jump through.

Once I had my exposure and lights dialed in, it was time to have Daje and Dante step in. We were at the mercy of the fountain. Each time the fountain shot off, I have Daje and Dante sprint and jump through a pre determined jet of water. This was the tricky part. It is very difficult to get both your subjects looking stellar in the same shot. As a photographer there is little I could do to help remedy this besides encouraging them to keep their eyes open or to direct how and when they should jump. My lighting consisted of two Nikon Speedlight strobes on stands: one at far camera left to counter the evening sunlight and one just to my right to add a little pop to their faces. These were triggered remotely by my pocket wizards. I would only get one flash burst per jump to light up my subjects. Therefore, I had to wait to squeeze the camera shutter at just the right moment. This process took many attempts to do. Despite the cool breeze and the oncoming sunset, Daje and Dante were good sports about their numerous runs through the fountain.

 

 

After the shoot, I returned to the Daily Republic Photo Department and began the final series of steps to make this photo illustration come together. I choose the best two images (see above) and spent a whole day working in Photoshop to carefully blend together these to images. Once my two subjects were together on the same canvas, I added extra jets of water to the background to enhance the overall impact of the image. The spray of the water made it really difficult to blend together. It was tedious work but in the end I was quite pleased with the results.   -Mike Greener

A Fairfield Character

Roy Stripe, an 84 year-old Fairfield resident, is the latest subject for our "Dial-A-Bio" feature, where the reporter calls people randomly in the phone book and has them tell their story. These have been a bit hit or miss for me photography wise, but I really liked photographing Mr. Stripe. His old-timey house and vegetable garden made a great setting for the picture, especially since a lot of the story was about him growing up during the depression in Oklahoma. Having grown up in Missouri myself (though in the 1980s), his simple home with peeling paint and the tomato plants reminded me of the houses in my grandma's Springfield, Mo. neighborhood. Of course, Mr. Stripe made the picture work with his upbeat attitude and the easy, straightforward way he presented himself to the camera.

A technical note: I cropped this square after some discussion with Chris and I like the deliberate, medium format feel it gives to the picture. I've been wanting to take more square formatted pictures but I don't know of any digital cameras that shoot square. If someone was to make a camera like that I would be obliged.

Brad 

The New Media Gallery is Here!

We have launched our new media gallery at the Daily Republic! It's chock-full of new features, is easier to use and looks great. You can now leave comments on all the pictures and videos, look at our Vuvox multimedia collages, search for content in the gallery and join our flickr group. Our goal was to make it more user-friendly and interactive so go check it out and let us know what you think.

Big props to Chris Jordan who took on this task, worked long hours, did a ton of research and made the new media gallery happen.

http://photo.dailyrepublic.net/

Brad

scenes from a recession - job fair

 

Hi All -

So I have been covering various angles of the current recession for over a year now. Sometimes it is on assignment for the paper and other times it is self-assigned. Some of these pictures have been or will be published in the paper, and others will only be seen on computer screens.

I've decided that I'll start publishing some of the photos here. Hopefully I will learn more about the project by slowly sharing it with the readers of this blog. Hopefully the readers will learn something about both the recession and the process of creating a photo essay.

A lot of the photos in this essay will be contextual, multi-layered views of the scenes I find myself in.

I've covered the job fair at the University of Phoenix in Fairfield for the past three years. This year was about twice as crowded as in the past and the median age of the fair attendee probably shot up from around 21 to around 41. It was overwhelming to see so many people, so much frustration and so much hope all in the same place. I wanted to make a picture that gave a little of this feeling to the reader and I wanted it to contain multiple emotions and moments to help convey the feeling of the 2009 job fair.

Hope all is well and good luck to anyone who is currently looking for a job.

Chris