I took my camera with me rock climbing this weekend and set it up on autopilot. When I got home I had a 166 photos, so I decided to work them into a short video. Enjoy.
I also put it on my Vimeo account, which I have used far less because early on it had some playback issues. I’m hoping those are now over. Let me know if you prefer one over the other.
Shagg Crag, in 60 seconds from Erik Eisele on Vimeo.
Ed is not like Newt, or Rudy, or RP or Gary Johnson. Ed is waaayyy more mellow, although he too has political aspirations. He’s a local guy who believes he’s been screwed by the town of Bartlett. I’ve talked to him a bunch, and he is convinced his rights are being trampled on despite a number of court judgements arguing otherwise.
Now he’s running for Bartlett selectman in 2012, despite that race being more than six months away. I got a chance to talk to him today and shoot a portrait, but I was distracted by something in the background: his campaign sign. Seven months early, but he’s hard at it.
And did you notice how he refers to himself? “Hobo Ed.” Imagine if “Hobo Mitt” were to storm the campaign trail!
“Journalism is not a profession. It’s a craft.”
I read The Bang Bang Club last year. Before that I didn’t know much about Greg Marinovich, or his close friend Joao Silva. Days after I finished the book, Silva’s legs got blown off by a landmine in Afghanistan. This interview is from April, when Tim Hetherington and Chris Hondros were killed in Libya, when Terry Gross had him on Fresh Air. Excellent look at war photography and journalism.
I stumbled on this piece the other night, about what it’s like to think you are going to die while reporting. I had a similar (albiet infinitely less) situation when I was in Iraq, where I felt like I was a sitting duck just waiting to get killed.
I know when I was finished with that ride I wanted nothing more than to be home. I didn’t have the choice to leave at that time, but you have to wonder why after a real brush with death (not just perceived, as mine was) people keep going back.
I can’t thank them enough, though, for being willing to, because it is those stories that tell us about what is going on in Libya, Syria, Afghanistan, Pakistan and elsewhere. It feels like you are alone, but you are there for everyone else, so they can no what is happening and lend some kind of support.
In Syria, for instance, where reports are soldiers are turning on soldiers but there is no independent verification, it feels like there is a war in a vacuum. Who will win? Who will lose? When will it be over? How will the world know? That’s the scariest thing to me. It may even be worse than feeling like a sitting duck.
The point of this post is not to show a slew of pictures I’ve taken lately, but to remind me to jump back behind the glass.
So much of my work recently has been chasing down leads about the disappearance and death of a 20-year-old woman, and then flipping through court files on the men accused of robbing and killing her. What I haven’t been doing has been taking photos.
The new media model is not the kind where someone gets to do only one thing and do it well. Specialization is OK, but in the fractured journalism today it’s good to have experience in print, in electronic reporting, and in online journalism. The fact that I can record and edit audio adds depth to my reporting. When the news about Krista Dittmeyer was breaking I was often accompanied by Jaime Gemmeti, the Sun’s photographer. He is fantastic, consistently giving us a visually strong front page to place stories around.
But durring the Dittmeyer extravaganza, while he was shooting stills I was recording video. We came back from the press conferences with video of the entire thing, which wound up getting more than 4,000 hits on Facebook. The same thing the day of the accused murderer’s arraignment: when the senior assistant attorney general made a statement we were ready. He got a great shot from a distance that captured the pack of reporters as well as the AG, and I caught the whole statement on video.
But the downfall of a fulltime photographer is I haven’t been picking up the camera enough. Jaime is great. He is a one-man photo department. His photos inspire people to pick up the paper. I certainly don’t want him to go anywhere, but I need to tap into that inspiration to pick up my camera more.
It’s funny, because I’ve been picking up the camera for more than 15 years. I know how to use it, but in a busy news day sometimes it just falls by the wayside. The story is more important to me, granted — I’d rather miss the photo than misquote someone. But there is something about the art of photography that is enthralling.
It’s actually the same thing that draws me to radio, and it’s very different than my experience with print. When I write a story I feel like I’m braiding together a rope. You can’t ever let go of any single strand for two long, otherwise you’ll lose its place. Instead each strand has to be intertwined with the others. There are ways to massage together imperfections, but overall it’s pretty formulaic.
Audio work and photography are different. They still both retain a bit of mystique, a bit of the art. They are more pliable, more what the practitioner makes of them.
It’s funny, because I don’t consider myself an artist, even when I’m working in those mediums. Print, radio, photo, they’re all just different ways to tell a story. I’ve said before I don’t consider myself a writer, I consider myself a reporter. If the audience gets my reporting through the written word that’s fine, but my ultimate goal was to inform them, and writing was simply the means.
But it’s a means I’m pretty accustomed to. Not that I’m fast at it, mind you, just that I’ve learned how to weave. I’m still improving my audio weaving, although Iraq helped it get a lot better. Photo, however, is less weaving, is less formulaic, and requires a bit more from me. That challenge is something I relish. After a bit too long watching someone else focus the Nikkor, it’s time for me to get back behind the glass.
This story by New York Times executive editor Bill Keller is a great explanation of exactly what it is that makes me want to go back to places like Iraq. It isn’t about hanging it out there and putting my life on the line, it’s about realizing that there are stories out there so terrible no one wants to hear them. Those are exactly the stories that ought to be told.
Particularly with photographs, journalism from war zones can redirect the future. Our lives, here in the United States, are pretty easy. Life here is good, even in the worst of times. It’s easy to forget that rape is used as an offensive strategy in the Congo, or that Mexicans are dying every day in a war fueled by Americans’ drug habits. Reporters have the job to go where others won’t, to find out what isn’t obvious and make it known. Sometimes those places are courtrooms, sometimes it is the battlefront. The reminders, however, have to happen, because otherwise it’s too easy to forget.
The article did a good job getting that across. I’m no daredevil; I’ve remarkably conservative, actually. But those stories need to be told, and I’m not going to leave it up to chance that they do.
Late last year it was Joao Silva getting his legs blown off in Afghanistan, and now it’s Tim Hetherington and Chris Hondros, two photographers killed in Libya covering the civil war.
Hetherington’s death has received most of the press because he was the director of Restrepo, the award-nominated documentary about a year in the Korengal Valley of Afghanistan. I just posted my thoughts on the movie, and here it is days later he’s dead.
I went to Hondros’ website and clicked through to some of the links showing his images. It’s amazing to catch a glimpse into war so like and unlike what I saw.
People have to go where bad things happen, or else they happen in silence. It is terrifying what can happen to you as a reporter in these places, but not nearly as terrifying as what is happening there already.
I’m not a religious person, but I will take a moment of silence to remember these two men. They weren’t able to stop war by covering it, but they refused to let death go unnoticed. They deserve our thanks.
Mitt Romney was in the Mount Washington Valley tonight, criticizing President Barack Obama and laying the groundwork for a 2012 presidential bid. The New York Times, among other media outlets, was there to report. I was bumping into photographers, television reporters and other print journalists who were all there trying to capture the moment.
It’s a bit surreal to watch the horserace begin this early. I have not lived through a New Hampshire primary, so I haven’t seen this before. It won’t be as lively as 2008, when there were two parties nominating candidates, but there will likely be rhetoric to spare.
The more reporting I do the less I understand partisanship. I have political views, but they aren’t convictions. I don’t believe them to be true. I feel one way, but I don’t think it’s the only valid model. I studied political science in college, but as I get into it now I realize reporting on this race or any like it is not the journalism that excites me. It isn’t shining a light into places where no one else is going, and while there is room for insightful reporting I don’t think I’m the one to do it. It’s certainly interesting to be in a room with a past and future presidential candidate, a U.S. House representative and a U.S. senator, but that isn’t the coverage for me. I don’t like races, particularly ones that go on for years. I guess that’s good to figure out now.
I got a chance to sit down and share coffee with a Kuwaiti family today in the desert just off base. It’s hard to imagine getting the urge to invite the people riding up in gun trucks into your house, but that’s exactly what the Kuwaitis did. We sat and drank and ate cookies. It was another spectacular experience on a trip full of them.
I’m going up north tomorrow to talk to New Hampshire soldiers who run long haul convoys into Iraq, and then the next day I catch my plane out of here. I’ve had a fantastic time, and I’ve been nothing but impressed with the people I’ve met. From specialist to colonel, everyone has been friendly and helpful. I know part of that is the fact that I’m media, but soldiers were always willing to go out of their way for me. The Army has bureaucracy that baffles me, but the people who make it up have passion.
Next time I do this I’ll know a little better when to ask for permission and when to announce my intentions. I got to meet up with the New Hampshire unit in Kuwait because I decided to stop waiting for the Army to connect me with them. (That’s exactly the opposite of what they direct you to do, but after months of waiting for them to connect me I gave up.)
And today, just like everyday on this trip, I got to do, see, hear or learn something amazing. I need more trips like this. You can never get too much Kuwaiti coffee.
Update: A few pictures to go along with:
After a few days here at Camp Shocker, I’m catching a convoy and headed to Kuwait. There I’ll meet up with the 197th Fires Brigade, the National Guard unit out of New Hampshire. It’ll be another chance for me to connect with a bunch of New Hampshire soldiers.
But as a final farewell to this little corner of Iraq, I got up early today and shot some photos. They almost make me want to stay…
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