My Day

I had a portfolio of my portraits reviewed by the new photo editor at the bureau today. I wanted his opinion because he also does wedding photography each weekend for $5,000 a pop; he knows his stuff.

He looked at a disc of my work, 7-8 pictures on it, and left me a kind note that said "thanks for sharing, keep up the good work." Well, I love compliments as much as any aspiring photog, which is too much. I wanted some criticism, I wanted to be told what I was doing wrong.

And I got what I wanted on request, how nice.

He told me I need to stop thinking about technique so much and focus on the image, the composition, the person. Before now, I had prided myself in what I thought was excellent expression.

Perhaps this is a setback, perhaps it's a challenge.

Earlier on, I went to a discussion on graphic images in mass media at the American Society of Newspaper Editors conference. The images were, well, graphic. There were dead babies, dead teenagers, dead moms, dead dads... You get the picture yet? (No pun intended)

But the blood and gore didn't even phase me. Several people in the audience were visibly shaken, and I was completely unbothered. Even a few of the panelists were remarking how hard they were hit by the images in question (burned bodies in Iraq).

But there was one image that did affect me with a great deal of force, this picture of a boy crying while a soldier who died in Iraq, his brother I assume, is buried. That hit me harder than the first image that showed a woman crying by dozens of dead babies who drowned in the 2004 tsunami.

I'd rather not speculate why.