WRAL has a slew of pictures (some of them duplicates, unfortunately) of storm damage (see above scene on Rock Ridge School Road in Wilson County) and funnel cloud sightings from eastern Wake County to Rocky Mount. It was a scary incident.
The storms gave Wilson's new morning paper a chance to show off, but, judging from the wilsontimes.com's Web site this morning, everyone was too busy bragging about the new design to remember to update the news. When I checked the Web site for tornado news this morning, I found only one local news story that had not been in the Tuesday print edition, and it had been posted on the Web site late Tuesday. A morning paper whose Web site is not updated? That's an innovation! Even though the time stamp says the page was updated this morning (8:03 a.m.), I don't see any evidence of it. Even the "tornado watch until midnight tonight" "breaking news" was still posted this morning. The photo gallery at wilsontimes.com would have been nice if the pictures had included captions (WRAL's pictures did). Without identifications, the pictures aren't worth much.
Design (or redesign) is just the packaging. You still need news to be a newspaper — or a newspaper Web site.
Covering catastrophes as a photographer or reporter always presents a challenge - just getting access to the damaged area is one of the main obstacles. Once there a reporter or photographer has to decide if a victim of a disaster is in any cognate condition to talk about what happened or to be “featured” on the front page and shown to millions on a website - that’s news.
ReplyDeleteSeeing the bigger picture leads to the finer details of this type of scene. Some may want to be friendly enough to lend condolences to a victim if close enough to be in their saddened face with a camera, recorder or pen. Some reporters or photographers may not do this, but living in a local town or community long enough mostly everyone sees or meets each other at some point - so saying or showing a few words of understanding is the neighborly thing to do at times. Some schools of reporting say do not get involved at all and is true for some cases - but this time it becomes different.
Stepping with a camera over debris, glass, roofs, sinks and other household items strewn across several yards, I began to see people I know or recognize - their expressions are determined and awestruck, they’re wearing whatever they have on at the time a tornado arrived at their door - opening their roofs, tossing their cars and throwing everything they own into a field hundreds of feet away. Happy to be alive they begin the process of rebuilding and reorganizing their lives and belongings - the bigger picture here is how neighbors, volunteers and friends begin to lend a healing word and more importantly lend a helping hand.
As a photojournalist, I usually will try to get a few general scene photos, then start to focus on the details of a happening like this - trying to get personal, with discretion - to show what has happened as if the viewer might get to know the unfortunate in some small way - to present this news event as personal fact coupled with the realty of emotions, brought to the surface because of a real danger like a tornado. Details that describe the bigger picture; family photos and business papers scattered across a floor, the air ductwork that kept a home comfortable is in the next yard , the personal items that were once placed on a shelf, the material things that keeps culture familiar with their surroundings is now placed in a box and moved to safe keeping - with the help of neighbors, family, volunteers and a photographer.
To view photos of what is mentioned here (yes, with captions) see this link [ Wilson County Tornado ]
Great photos, Gray. I'm glad to see you're still shooting, and I'm impressed by the thoughtfulness you expressed in your comments, as well as the time you obviously put into this "assignment." I often visit your blog at http://graywhitley.blogspot.com. Keep up the good work.
ReplyDelete....very nice post Gray!
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