A Short Bio with Tips for Aspiring Photographers


Taking a break while on assignment in Thailand

"You force yourself to watch and wait. You accept all the discomfort and the disharmony. Being out of your depth is a very uncomfortable thing...You force yourself onto strange streets, among strangers. It may be very hot. It may be painfully cold. It may be sandy and windy and you say, "What am I doing here? What drives me to this hard thing?" Dorothea Lange

I never intended to include a bio on this site. It was intended to share my work with the world, nothing more. My reason for including a bio is the hundreds of emails I receive from aspiring photographers wanting advice on how to go about... well, being a photographer. Also, I receive offers to speak at universities and colleges (please note, though your offers are most gracious, I respectively decline in advance). So, with that said, on to the bio:

Besides my luck-of-the-draw, which I will explain later, I have learned from the best photojournalists/photographers in the field: Adams, Evans, Lange. They taught me the true meaning of photography. Of course, they all died before I became interested in the magic of the camera. Having an eye for composition and the desire to delve into the consciousness of the subject, it took little time for me to become an accomplished photographer.

I also learned from magazines like Life and a little box that glowed blue images into my living room.

Let me step back in time to the 50’s and 60’s. I was drawn to the stark black and white images in magazines. With only three channels to chose from on TV, children actually watched the news in those days-and with their parents. When color invaded my black and white world, it was fascinating, but never as magical as black and white. Images of people, places, things, and events, such as the Suez Crisis, Rosa Parks, Bloody Sunday in Selma, Alabama, the Bay of Pigs Invasion, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the death of Kennedy, Marilyn Monroe, and James Dean; draft protests, the droughts in Africa, the Kitchen Debate between Nixon and Khrushchev, and the Vietnam War were more than captivating to me. I knew I wanted to freeze moments like that in time. I didn't know how I was going to do it; only knew that I was moved, and that I wanted to move others. Young people don't understand all the hard work that powerful people go through to screw things up, but at an early age, I somehow saw thw writing on the wall.

Still an innocent and romantic at heart, I thought if I could take photos of the suffering in the world I could somehow change the world. Someone, somewhere would look at one of my photos and, feeling sadness, would actually do something good for the earth, and possibly for someone else. Years would pass before I got the opportunity to pick up a real camera.

My story is kind of a photographer's fairy-tale, but I think that if one believes in their dreams, forces will move to make those dreams come true. The odds of a Georgia girl, fascinated with photography since childhood, ending up working side-by-side with one of the most prestigious photojournalist in New England on a project totally unrelated to photography (at least on my end) are about the same as winning the lottery.

One day I was in Georgia; the next day I was in Virginia on a job. Then, out of the blue, something came up and I was whisked away to a brownstone house within walking distance to Harvard Square. I can only tell you that my job required that I had a photographer with me. The job lasted two weeks. When it was over I realized that the person who was working with me was one of the finest photojournalist in New England. The job had lasted a little longer than he had expected, and he was behind in his other work. He asked me to stay and help him. When I entered his darkroom, I was in Disneyland.

I will cut this short and just say I stayed two more weeks, carrying gear, mixing chemicals, and sorting slides. My teacher quickly recognized my eye for composition and my desire to learn photography. But I had obligations and returned to Georgia. I was back in Boston two weeks later and begin commuting every two weeks for a year.

Being an apprentice for such a demanding person was like being in boot camp. It was hard work, but I loved every minute of it. I wasn't even handed a camera on assignment until one month after I began my work. I then bought my own gear and, when back in Georgia, landed a job with a daily paper where I was allowed to work two weeks out of the month. I continued my bi-montly trips to Boston where I worked side-by-side with my teacher on assignments for prominent magazines, newspapers, and corporations; assignments that photographers only dream of. I was also making contacts and laying foundations that would eventually put me face-to-face with the subjects I wanted to photograph.

I had a good teacher, but I had to learn a lot on my own. My teacher was years beyond newspaper work so I had to pick up all I could from my photo editor. Because there were no text manuals in my photography schooling, I learned by watching, listening, and trial and error. I bought the best books by the finest photographers and studied their photographs and methods. I spent hours looking at photographs in newspapers and magazines. Other than in newspapers, black and white was becoming more scarce. In the back of my mind, of course, were all those images from the 50’s and 60’s.

I bought more gear (Nikon, of course) and purchased a used enlarger and easel and made a makeshift darkroom. I had learned how to be a master printer from my teacher and I prided myself in my black and white printing.

I have to say it was difficult going from a one-week assignment for the Smithsonian Magazine to shooting a parade, the parade being my first assignment with the newspaper. But after I left Boston for good the assignments got better. On my own, I took my cameras to the streets photographing the homeless as well as struggling refugees who had come to America seeking asylum and a new life.

I eventually began stringing for the AP and the Christian Science Monitor. Back at the old newspaper, I began writing feature stories and doing free-lance work for other publications.

It all blossomed from there. I was awarded assignments in Vietnam, Bangladesh, Cambodia and all the refugee camps in Thailand.

Unfortunately, I learned that powerful people still, and will always, screw up the world, and that no photo is going to move anyone to give up even a stick of gum. It was that realization, and a little burnout, that made me pack up my cameras for a long time. The world moved on; manual cameras went out, digitals came in, and only in early 2007, did I start working for a paper again.

I think photojournalism was always in my blood. If not, it crept in somewhere along the line, perhaps through that box that glowed blue images into my living room a million years ago. Once in, though, photojournalism never leaves you. I am looking to go back to some Third World country. To a true photojournalist, being in the middle of chaos is the only way to feel alive. And we are always chasing the Unicorn. It is a mindset others do not understand.

This bio is in a nutshell, of course. I just want to let aspiring photographers know that photojournalism is a rewarding career and you don't need a science degree to enter. Do not expect to live in a mansion with your savings. Indeed, it can be a cruel world and photojournalists are not the best paid professionals.

You need a few simple things to make it in this business: determination, dependability, and a lot of talent; talent that shines. Oh, and you have to be willing to sacrifice.

There is one thing that will keep you moving along in your career - ethics. A lot of photographers lack professional ethics (I said it was a cruel world). Stay true to yourself and your work and be honest in everything you do. Photographers are a dime a dozen. Good photojournalists who have established a good code of conduct and live by their ethics are rare.

Teach yourself if you can. When you get your foot in any door, learn all they are willing to teach you. Study, study, study the works of the masters.

Stay away from studio photography and weddings unless that is what you to do. If that is your dream this is not the web site for you. Studio photography will feed you - period. It will also trap you. Photojournalists do not do weddings or studio work.

Do not bog yourself down with material things if you want to travel the world.

Learn to write a colorful story. The industry is sadly low in talent when it comes to photojournalists/writers. The majority of photojournalists are terrible writers and writers take terrible photos.

Diversify if you can, but never sacrifice your photos. No one can fix them. If you have a good story, and it is well written, an editor can make it sparkle with a few minor adjustments. My editors sometimes joked about my placement, or lack of, commas and other small grammar errors but they loved my stories.

If you are not a people person, forget photojournalism.

Don't be afraid to sell yourself off as a lackey. Look for a good photojournalist and propose to be an understudy. If you are successful, be mindful of their mind set. Follow orders like you were in boot camp, never offer your opinion unless asked. Stay out of their way, speak when spoken to, don't ask questions when on an assignment and, most importantly, pay attention to everything they do.

Digital cameras are a necessity today. Everyone uses them now, but enjoy playing with a manual (Nikon, if you can afford it). Nothing is as pure as taking photos with a good heavy camera and developing them yourself. You will learn a lot. For assignments I used three Nikon FE2s. I was pushed into the digital world by necessity and still shoot with Nikons (I have a D80, D200, and a D300). But to me, digitals just ain’t the same!

Many master photographers still use the old cameras for certain things and as pure enjoyment, and to keep the dying art alive.

Learn Adobe Photo and Illustrator. Adobe is the substitute for the darkroom.

I would like to leave you with two quotes. One is from Henri Cartler Bresson:

"Photographers deal in things which are continually vanishing and when they have vanished there is no contrivance on earth which will make them come back again."

And one of my favorites by Dalton Trumbo from the introduction to Johnny Got His Gun:

"Numbers have dehumanized us. Over breakfast coffee we read of 40,000 American dead in Vietnam. Instead of vomiting, we reach for the toast. Our morning rush through crowded streets is not to cry murder but to hit that trough before somebody else gobbles our share."

I worked for many years to bring suffering to the breakfast tables of the World. It had been my hopes that my works would somehow wake people up. Until we begin to worry more about each other than we do about getting to Starbucks before the crowd arrives, we will never have peace in this world. Even with powerful old men still at the root of everything bad in this world, and with apathy out of control, I still believe that the personal choices we make can change our rapidly dying world. It is not up to the masses; it is up to each individual.