Rangefinder Magazine
June 2006

Photography is Fun. Writing is Work... by Larry Singer
The Adventures of a Small-town Newspaperman

Top Left. Three-year-old Selena reacts to being in the presence of Santa Claus. Top Right. David Black and Grant Winchester are framed in coils of electric wiring after helping restore power to Gulf Coast hurricane victims. Bottom. A house being moved to a new location rolls slowly down a South Carolina highway. This photograph won first place in the Humor category in the 2005 state-wide journalism contest sponsored by the South Carolina Press Association.

At the risk of making this sound like a 12-step meeting, I stand before you now and humbly admit to being both a newspaper photojournalist and reporter.

This means that in the opinion of many editors and chief photographers at large newspapers, in whose highly compartmentalized world an individual is expected to be either a shooter or a scribe, I am a puzzling anomaly.

To further complicate matters, due to the kindness of a number of judges, I have won awards for both my writing and photography. If I had my choice, I would, as I have done in the past, go to work every day and do nothing but take pictures that tell stories. The reason is simply that, for me, photography has always been fun, while writing is work.

An actor in the play Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde gets into makeup.

I grew up in Youngstown, Ohio, the only child of a father who was a wedding and portrait photographer and a mother with an incredible artistic ability. I would study the “Miscellany” page of Life and visualize similar humorous images I would capture for the back page of that magazine.

At Travis Air Force Base, I was a medic who spent a lot of off-duty time at the photo lab of the hobby shop learning to get film onto stainless steel Nikor reels in total darkness, and how to avoid getting stubborn fix stains on my shirts. My dream was to either work with Larry Burroughs and Alfred Eisenstaedt or, because I was captivated by the alluring charm of attractive flight attendants, toil daily as staff photographer for a major airline.

Writing Right

After the Air Force, I moved to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and enrolled at Broward Community College. Because I already had a fairly decent rudimentary knowledge of how to work a camera, I spent two years taking journalism classes. Although I learned to write in an inverted pyramid style and how to jam who, what, when, where, why and how into the first paragraph of a story, I never stopped considering myself a photographer who was acquiring a secondary skill. After graduating, I attended Florida Atlantic University and mastered the basics of art photography from a benevolent tyrant named Sydney Tal- Mason.

A kitten reacts to the subject of a painting at an art show opening.

While at FAU, I began working part time as a photographer for the Boca Raton News, and it was at that newspaper where I had an epiphany that would forever influence my photographic career.

One day, while passing an empty conference room, I saw on a table a 16x20- inch fiberboard case. When I surreptitiously opened it and peered inside, I saw the portfolio of Ron Smith, who had just won the Newspaper Photographer of the Year Award. I was stunned. Every image was compelling and perfect. I realized I was looking at the work a photographic deity, and I was both inspired and humbled.

Henceforth, when it came to photography, I wanted to be like Mike. The first time my writing and photography joined forces was in a publication specializing in stories about tiny trains. On a trip to the Cypress Gardens in Winter Haven, Florida, I discovered the world’s largest model railroad and figured there had to be someone who would pay me to write and illustrate a story on this sprawling spectacle. I knew nothing about model railroads but figured the people who ran this attraction did, so off I went with a tape recorder and camera. The caretakers of the railroad were more than happy to sit down and tell me everything I needed, and a year later my story and pictures ran as the cover article in Model Railroader magazine.

Brandy Hopkins comforts her mother, Ritty Cannon, after their mobile home was destroyed by a fire. Singer guess-focused his camera, tilted it upward, and captured one frame, which made page 1.

It was at the Valley Banner newspaper in Elkton, Virginia, where, as both reporter and photographer, I started writing to my pictures. I would always try to use the data in my images in the lead paragraph of my story to create a seamless package. I also learned to shoot first and then gather the information for the article because while the story would always be there, photographs tend to appear and then vanish.

The biggest, although not the only, challenge I have with writing is that I am a two-fingered typist, like the journalist played by Clark Gable in the 1958 movie Teacher’s Pet. The fact that I never made it past the first round in any spelling bee has, throughout my career, made the spell checker my closest ally.

Over the next three years, I won 12 writing and photography awards from the Virginia Press Association, the National Press Photographers Association and the Virginia Press Photographers Association.

A sign in front of a fireworks store that had just been destroyed by a devastating fire

Will Shoot for Food In 2005, after nearly a decade of working as a freelancer, I sent off an email, titled “will shoot for food,” to the editor of the Daily Journal in Seneca, South Carolina. She was looking for a reporter/photographer to round out her five-person staff, and she hired me.

Shortly thereafter, I purchased my first digital camera, a Canon 20D, and an 18–125mm Sigma zoom lens. I can never read my hastily scrawled handwritten notes, so I also acquired a tiny eight-hour digital voice recorder.

Because my keyboard skills remain minimal, I often write at home in the evenings and on weekends. I then email my stories to myself at the paper in order to keep up with the daily news stories, as well as the weekly lifestyle, special- section and business articles I am obligated to produce.

A player from the University of Miami breaks into the open during a football game against Clemson.

At the Journal, my duties include covering fires, drownings, public transportation issues, city council meetings, car crashes, minor disasters like ice storms and citywide power failures, motorcycle rallies, art show openings, and occasionally Clemson University home football games.

Although I try to be especially sensitive to the people who have experienced tragedies, I am always amazed that most of the time they are willing to be interviewed and photographed, even while under extreme stress.

After a devastating trailer fire that destroyed a family’s home, I drove to the scene and found the now-homeless occupants of the smoldering mobile home sifting through the charred remnants of their lives. When I tentatively approached them, their demeanor was, understandably, anything but cordial. But when they learned I was with the local paper, they were more than happy to tell me the details of their ordeal. During the interview, the mother broke down and started sobbing uncontrollably. As her daughter stoically comforted her, I reached down to the camera dangling on my chest, set the focus at four feet, tilted the camera up and shot one frame. After that picture appeared on the front page, the family requested several copies of the photograph and thanked me for being there to listen to their story.

Anna Goodwin finds a cap she had recently knitted for her granddaughter after a trailer fire.

At a countywide confab of public officials, my ability to be both photographer and reporter was severely put to the test when, during the proceedings, Seneca Mayor Dan Alexander was accused by a mayor from a nearby small town of refusing to sell his town water. Within moments after the meeting was adjourned, Alexander, who is six feet four inches tall, stood towering over his diminutive antagonist and, as his blood pressure skyrocketed, demanded both an apology and an explanation for the verbal attack. As I tried to both photograph and tape-record the heated encounter, I realized I needed one hand to grip my camera, one hand to focus and one hand to hold the tape recorder. Desperate, I asked Seneca City Administrator Greg Dietterick if he would hold my tape recorder for me while I shot. Thankfully, he obliged.

After the American Civil Liberties Union threatened a lawsuit to stop city and county officials from praying for guidance to Jesus during their meetings, I found myself the only newspaper photographer in attendance at an informal pro-prayer rally. Before the speeches began, a minister, who is on the county council, began conversing with a member of the ACLU wearing an atheistic slogan on the front and back of his T-shirt.

When an expression on the minister’s face appeared that accurately reflected his disdain for the man’s theological viewpoint and attire, the picture made the front page the next day. At a second religious rally, ostensibly called to pray for the ACLU, while other photojournalists turned their attention elsewhere, I recognized the same gentleman from the ACLU I had photographed earlier and captured an image of him looking incredibly grumpy while a man directly behind him solemnly supplicated.

participant in the Turning the Caber event at Scottish games prepares to toss his log.

Although Seneca is inhabited by only 8300 people, it didn’t take me long to discover that fascinating news and photo opportunities are unlimited.

For instance, while photographing a Veteran’s Day ceremony, I captured the grimace on the face of one of the participants as he strongly reacted to the sound of the 21-gun salute.

To illustrate a story on eating healthy during the holiday season, I watched the personal trainer I interviewed practically floating as she ran effortlessly up a steep hill. Shortly before Christmas, I caught the timeless expression on the face of a little girl in the presence of Santa Claus. After a car crash during which a woman not wearing her seat belt was injured and taken to a nearby hospital, I was able to frame the other vehicle and its unharmed occupant through the bloodstained, cracked window of the crumpled car.

Subsequent to a fireworks store burning to the ground, I hastily grabbed a shot of a sign that said “THANKS, Come Back” in front of the wreckage as the outlet’s publicity- shy manager loudly chastised me. To get a picture of a very large house slowly being moved to a new location, I had to jog a quarter of a mile with a 50–500mm lens weighing as much as a small child banging against my chest.

When I wrote about an invasion of fire ants, I procured the accompanying illustration when I discovered a doll covered with the stinging creatures lying atop a large anthill.

After my pictures of the ants, the house on wheels and the fireworks store won awards from the South Carolina Press Association, I recalled telling the editor and publisher in Seneca who hired me, if they gave me a chance to be a part of their team, they would not regret it.

I hope I was right.

Larry Singer is a writer and photographer for the Daily Journal in Seneca, South Carolina. Some of his award-winning images can be seen on his website: homepage.mac.com/larrysinger.