Reflections on the Missouri Photo Workshop – Whitney Light (part 2)
Shoot, edit, show
At home, Delores helps her two-year-old son Ryker get dressed. She regrets missing out on most of his life so far because he and his brothers, Trevor, 10, and Kyle, 12, were in foster care while she overcame drug abuse. (Photo – Whitney Light)
In addition to the story search, another feature of the Missouri Photo Workshop (MPW) is a 400-frame count limit for the entire week. A practical necessity in the days of film, it’s been held onto as a useful teaching device. We were advised to think about every frame and why we would need it in the edit.
This rule didn’t ruffle me as much as it did some, though I did “use up” every last shot. I was more nervous about how the shooting would go. It wouldn’t be the first time that a subject backed out of a project. So, I took the frame limit as a signal to proceed with caution.
A mentor once told me that great photos are given, not taken, and I take that to mean something like what was reiterated a few times at MPW: be likeable, or there will be no access to those great, intimate moments. Several evening presentations by faculty members provided plenty of illustration on this point. Some of their projects simply required clear and good relations with their subject. Other times, access came through being friendly to the security guard, or the secretary, or the cop.
My small task was to get as close as I could to Delores and her family. What this meant in part was spending hours watching TV in their living room and passing time on the front porch. I always had my camera out and ready, but most of the time I tried to observe and anticipate, and learn as much as I could in conversation.
Still, it’s easy to ignore or forget to think about storytelling in some kind of planned fashion. To some extent, of course, a story goes where it goes. But it was instructive to have group critique sessions at the end of day, identifying selects and making notes for the next day — get more detail shots, establish the larger context, stop shooting that thing you’ve already got.
Delores visits with her sister, Kari Hughes (left), who often comes by to help the family with cleaning and babysitting. (Photo – Whitney Light)
In many ways, my story wasn’t ideal, since a lot of the action had passed, or would unfold over weeks and months, not days. The family life was pretty stable and repetitive, so how to convey the struggle they’d been through? Another lesson to keep in mind.
When it came time to edit — a pizza-fuelled marathon that continued into the wee hours of Saturday morning — I was relatively pleased with what I’d collected, feeling like I had made progress at capturing family interaction and a variety of emotions. Editing, however, is a completely different skill that I have yet to fully understand. Though we agreed mostly on which pictures, the magic order came from my editors Randy Olson and Preston Gannaway, and I was happy for it. Editors see what you’ve overlooked from being too close.
The final event was an exhibition at a local high school where we mingled with the townsfolk, including many subjects, who’d come to see our look at their town. It’s a founding principle of the workshop that photographers “show truth with a camera,” and that’s not always comfortable. There was the picturesque stuff, and the harder-to-swallow stuff, too. Mostly, I think, it was a hit.
As much focus as there’d been on the technical aspects of pitching, shooting and editing, it was a final reminder that at least fifty percent of the week had been an exercise in photojournalism etiquette and human relations. This is probably a pretty good lesson to take from a workshop about a practice that is fundamentally about being interested in other people.
(The first part of this article is here.)
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Whitney Light is a photographer and writer from Winnipeg, Canada, and is currently based in New York City. She recently completed an M.Sc. at the Columbia School of Journalism with a focus on magazine writing and photojournalism.
