Words On Pictures

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