I don’t take a lot of pictures of people. Even with their permission I sometimes still feel uncomfortble. What do I really know about them? What followup connection will we ever have? Maybe it’s because I’m not sure that I have any other purpose than wanting to capture an interesting face in an interesting setting that I don’t ask people to pose for me very often.
Photography is too easy. It’s not like painting or sculpture or composing or writing. How much of you is actually in a picture you take? Yes, you frame a shot and tweek your settings but the creative process is not what’s dominant. The technology is.
I took this picture nearly six years ago in Manhattan. The woman was selling stuff out of a cart on a street corner. I asked if I could photgraph her and she agreed. Since then when I look at her I realize I may have taken her picture but she was more powerful than the camera and its lens. She saw right through me.
Six years ago Jo and I drove from Los Angles to Maine. We took our time (three weeks) and avoided Interstates wherever possible. We went through The Badlands of South Dakota one afternoon and I got this shot. With the right light The Badlands are quite beautiful. In fact forget the light. The beauty of The Badlands is always there if you’re open to seeing it.
But this story isn’t about The Badlands. It’s about Death Valley and New York City and maybe about a disconnect that has existed for a long time that has only gotten worse. Not a political division but one between how some people relate to nature with rigid preconceptions, an example perhaps of what today we’d call the chasm of separation between those who see the world in a significant way from high rises and through the New York Times and those who have never read it and see the world mostly by what’s on Rush Limbaugh’s mind and from Fox News or just simply what’s in front of their faces.
Years ago while working as a producer for ABC News I pitched a story about Death Valley. It had been a very rainy winter in California and I had read an article that things were blooming in Death Valley like they hadn’t in a hundred years. I hadn’t heard back from New York about my pitch and decided on my days off that Jo and I would go see the flowers for ourselves.
We were heading out the door (I’m not exagerrating.) when I got a call telling me that World News Toinight with Peter Jennings wanted the story and if I wanted to do it, it was all mine. Even better than getting a free trip we were going to do anyway was that now I could make a few phone calls and line up a naturalist at the National Park to show us around and actually learn something about what we were seeing.
So a few hours later, correspondent and camera crew in tow, we got our tour and our pictures. Our guide was knowledgeable and the sightings magnificent. Oh, and an interesting thing happened when at one point we were prevented from entering a loction and told by heavily armed law enforcement that a drug bust was taking place there.
That night I discovered we had been lied to. That in fact there wasn’t any drug bust but that First Lady Laura Bush and some of her friends were also getting a private tour of the bloom that day.
And one other aside. I got to eat rattlesnake that night but would not have if my wife hadn’t goaded me into powering our way into the dining room at the Furnace Creek Inn. I had called and been told the restaurant was fully booked.
Jo: “Did you tell them you were here doing a story for ABC News and Peter Jennings?”
Me: “No.”
Jo: “Call them back and do it.”
I did and suddenly any time we desired was available. The rattlesnake was actually pretty good.
A few days later we put the story together back in the Los Angeles Bureau on the day it would be broadcast and I made a mistake. Many times when we were doing segments for what we called the “day of air” we’d send them into New York at the last minute and I mean the last minute. But on this day things had come together easily and we were done editing the video to the reporter’s narration an hour before our deadline.
My mistake wasn’t to have gotten done too early. No, my mistake was not waiting to send the story to New York until that deadline was actually staring me in the face. Here’s why. The more time the World News Tonight producers had in New York to look at the finished piece, the more likely I would be told to change things. And sure enough within a few minutes after it had come down off the satellite into the ABC News broadcast headquarters in New York my phone rang.
It was the executive producer of World New Tonight himself and what he said left me stunned.
“Your story is too pretty. Everybody thinks Death Valley is ugly and you need to show that. Put some ugly shots in there and have your correspondent write a new ending that allows you to use an ugly shot there. I want to see how Death Valley really looks!”
At this point in my career I wasn’t as compliant as I had been years before and I asked him a question that I know pissed him off.
“Have you ever been there? Death Valley even at its driest is quite beautiful,” I said.
“That’s not what our viewers think. Change it!”
I discovered my reporter had already gone home and wouldn’t make it back in time to change his wording at the close of the story to the executive producer’s liking but I dutifully inserted the “ugliest” shots we had which I’m certain weren’t ugly enough.
But here’s the real kicker to all this and I hope you’ll watch and listen to the actual story that was broadcast by going to the link I’ve supplied below. To this day I think that the introduction that Peter Jennings read was an ironic rebuke to the executive producer and his comments to me. Maybe Jennings overheard the phone call I got? I’ll never know.
pawnedaccordion 