Hard News

For this assignment I had a couple of opportunities to capture a few car crashes on-site. However, in the rush of getting the photos and avoiding the awkward chat about rights with police, most of the exposures were blurry, out of focus, or just plain boring. However, I did capture one photo at the scene of a serious drunk driving incident on Red Hills Parkway. This is the photo I captured.

1/15s f5.6 55mm

To say the least, this was a very lucky exposure. The huddled family watching a scattered emergency response crew gives context almost immediately. I cropped the photo to center more on the family, giving just the edge of frame to the actual story (the EMT and firetruck). I also decreased the saturation just a hair, and increased the contrast to give this photo a heavier psychological appeal. Unfortunately, this is the only "quality" take that I was able to capture in my scramble at the scene, but I still wanted to at least post this photo for the contextual showcase.

Because one photo is most likely not enough for an entire story, I shot one more hard news event that I had the chance to attend. The 'Perks!' coffee shop off of mall drive in Washington city was having an advertisement shot for their business, and I was able to get a few frames of the process. The push for local businesses is definitely waning in St. George, and I thought this particular event would satisfy a hard news craving.

1/50s f5.6 55mm

1/25s f5.6 55mm

1/15s f5 18mm

When shooting the take, I tried my best to incorporate the entire story in one frame. At first I tried utilizing a shallow depth of field, with the business in focus, and the story in the background. This seemed to be a bit more subtle than just showing the camera crew working on their project. After a few successful frames of that idea, I decided on doing a more artsy, "Vince Gilligan-esque" take with a wide frame, effectively capturing the hole-in-the-wall style of the coffee shop as well as the art of film that was present at the time. The first two frames are almost identical, but I couldn't decide between the two. I like the first one a little bit more, because the crew looks as though they're in the process of directing, but the second frame looks more as if they're shooting a day-in-the-life of a coffee maker. I wanted both shots to look more on the warm side, so I boosted the temperature and the saturation by a touch in post. The third frame felt better as a high-contrast black and white simply to illustrate the event more effectively.