Point of view...

Over the last few days, I've been thinking about my view of the world. I think I noticed it because of Stewart Pittman's article in this month's News Photographer magazine where he wondered, with all of the death and pain he's waded through over the years, what kind of karma he's collecting. Whatever prompted it, I've noticed that I have kind of a strange view of the world around me -- most of my points of reference on the world are bad.

Following the fire rescue I mentioned in the previous post, I got an email from old friends who live in Archbold. They had heard my name on TV, checked our website, found my blog and emailed me from there. They wondered about when I moved to Toledo. I gave the date, but also described it as about two weeks before the children were killed in the apartment fire at Norwich Apartments.

As I was driving through town with my wife and kid the other day, I mentioned a couple of places I was familiar with as we passed by. The scene of a shooting, a drug house, a place that was raided for prostitution, a fatal crash scene...

When I talk to friends of mine from the business and they're updating me on things, it involves things like, "Remember that kid who shot and killed his dad on that farm just outside town?"

Just this morning, my producer asked if I needed a map to Woodley Street. I said no, it's where that last murder/suicide was.


Read the about me section of this blog. It's basically a list of the worst events in recent Toledo history.

So much of what I remember of people and places has some sort of bad element to it. It has bothered me at different times that it doesn't bother me more. A friend once told me that it's because I have a place to put the emotions that should go with some of the things I've seen in my career and the fact that it bothers me that it doesn't bother me is enough.

In his article, Pittman wonders what kind of karma he's collected over the years. We're observers to these events, so I really don't think we could be collecting bad karma any more than the people we see standing on a corner watching a traffic accident. But I do think that we're collecting an odd persepctive on life and the world.

Being there...

When I first got into photojournalism, one of the first adages I learned was, "F-8 and be there." The F-8 is an average lens setting, and the being there part is obvious: The photojournalist is the only one in the news profession who absolutely, positively has to be at the location of the event to do his job.

The corollary to this is what my dad and grandfather told me over the years, "I'd rather be lucky than good." Luck plays a huge part in the being there end of our profession, and luck was there when I was shooting exclusive fire rescue video on Wednesday.

Just to make this blog a little longer for the folks who have been giving me a hard time about that, I'm going to go back to Tuesday and start from there...

My normal shift on Wednesdays is 9:30am to 6:30pm, but on Tuesday our Assistant News Director asked me to change and work nightbeat to cover a vacation.

So, Wednesday afternoon, Zack Ottenstein and I were on our way around town to collect information on an alleged rapist. Our trip went from the jail to the detective bureau downtown to the courthouse and finished at the Northwest Police Station near Sylvania and Douglas, where the Special Victims Unit is.

With a mug shot and a news release in hand, we were headed back to the station. We were at the corner of Douglas and Central when I heard the police and fire dispatch units for an occupied structure fire. Shooting a fire seemed very much preferable to going back to the station and being handed a stack of editing chores, so I said we should go.

Zack knew where the street was, and we were only a few blocks away. As we headed there, I heard the radio traffic that there may be kids trapped inside.

We pulled onto the street just as the fire trucks were coming to a halt. Not seeing any smoke or fire, I parked just past a hydrant at the middle of the street, figuring that we didn't want to get caught inside the hoses if the FD decided they needed that hydrant.

I pulled my gear and headed toward the house. About three houses away, I could hear the firefighters hitting the door with an axe, but it was the sight that really got me moving. I saw a woman with a baby at a second floor window and a ladder going up. Figuring this would go quickly, I dropped my tripod in the front yard of a house, shouldered the camera and started running.

I came past a tree that partially obscured my view of the scene and started rolling. I watched in black and white (we don't have color viewfinders) as a baby was passed down the ladder, and then a small child. Then the firefighters broke out the window with an axe and brought out a bigger child and finally their mother.

Thankfully, everyone was all right and the fire turned out to be fairly minor, started by a candle in the dining room.

We interviewed the battallion chief at the scene, and later, we interviewed the firefighter who was at the top of the ladder. Both said that it was a very easy rescue. They were pretty matter-of-fact about it, but it seemed pretty impressive to me.

In the interview, the firefighter talked about all the problems and obstacles that could have kept them from making that rescue: fire coming from the windows, being unable to get into the building quickly, having to negotiate around parked cars, trees, and hoses with the ladder, and that none of those obstacles were there for them. At the scene of the fire, one of the other photogs was talking to me about the obstacles (the distance he had to travel, the traffic, etc.) that kept him from getting there when the rescue was happening.

On this day, the fire department didn't have any obstacles, and neither did we. So, an "easy rescue" became exclusive video.

In breaking news, so much of the time, being there is at least 2/3 of the battle and as my dad and grandfather have always said, "I'd rather be lucky than good."

Bad day

Recently I had been talking about the fact that I've just had nothing to say in my blog. This was not the way I wanted to come up with something to write about...


Today was a bad day. Before I came into work I had to have our cat Guinness put down. Before anyone asks, yes, he's named after the beer. So is our cat Killian as well as Pauli. The most recent addition, a stray named Spots... well, Mallorie named named him. Guiness had been sick for over a week and had quit eating and drinking. We thought we had pulled him out, but he quit eating and drinking again, his weight had dropped from 17 to just over 8 and we just knew it was time, as did Dr. Ferguson.

So, why write about this in a blog that's basically about journalism? Quite simply, it was photojournalism that brought the big guy into our lives.

As journalists we're supposed to be "detatched observers," but how can you not be affected by all you see, who you meet and where you go? Sometimes it's easier to be detached, I was pretty detached at the fatal crash on SR2 yesterday, but everything we do, everywhere we go, and everything we see has some effect on us. Sometimes just more than others.

It was fall of 1994 and I was shooting stills freelance. On this particular week, I was doing shots in a shelter in Farmington, NM for Cat Fancy magazine. In the middle of the cat cages, there was this big, fuzzy, friendly guy. He had kittens all around him and as people would come through looking at the cats, they would jump toward the kittens. He loved attention and would reach out with a paw through the bars to the people, but they were too busy with the kittens. I took a liking to him and would play with him and pet him in between pictures. On my last day of shooting, the director of the shelter walked by and put a big red X on the card on his cage door. The red X meant his time was up. By this point, I was too involved and couldn't let that happen. And so, my then girlfriend, now wife, and I brought home a second cat. He and his sister (Killian) moved with us when we left New Mexico so I could take a staff job in Indiana. He kept an eye on our new baby when we added her to the family. A few years later, he escaped and was missing for four weeks. I even had a thank you for all the people who gave us tips about his whereabouts put on the editorial page of the paper where I was working. While he was missing another stray claimed us. He played with her for the next couple of years after he came home. A year or so after moving to Toledo, he was diagnosed with diabetes, leaving us giving him a daily insulin shot and keeping him on a special diet. Over the years, he slowed down some, but he was still pretty vital until about a week and a half ago when he came down with some kind of infection.

Finally, 13 years later, after a week and a half of fighting, medication and vet visits, the big red X caught up with us.

The coverage that we do always affects us and sometimes gives us a friend. Funny thing... the story I was shooting for was cancelled and the pictures were never published.