Nate Chute. Photojournalist.

Currently listening to: Blue Ridge Mountains by Fleet Foxes

Another slightly overdue post, but here are a few images from last week, starting with Kalispell’s first gay pride parade held last weekend. 

Dance Dance

Loose Ball on Double Play Attempt

Trampoline and Pigskin Fun

 Forgive the lack of content in this post, I can assure I will have more images next week, considering my assignment tomorrow. A WWII bomber that doubles as a museum will be in town, and I’ll be heading up in the air in it along with other members of the press and members of the public who would consider it an affordable cost. If you’d like to see other images of mine, I did update my sportsshooter page earlier in the week if you’d like to check it out. Otherwise, look for images from the sky and inside the war plane early next week.

Currently listening to: Irina by thelovesong

During the first week of June, I spent time shooting Gene Boyle’s final week as principal at St. Matthews School. Boyle has been in eduction for over forty years, with a dozen of those at St. Matts (CLICK HERE to view the audio slideshow). Here’s a few of the best images from the week along with my take on how I did and why it’s critical for me (and other photojournalists) to excel in telling stories with multiple images.

To put it plainly, I spent the week shooting and not looking analytically enough at my takes. I need to pick out what images emphasized certain points better and go into the next day looking for something else to support the story’s “thesis” in a more compelling, intimate manner (not to mention with more visual variety). In the case of this story, Boyle’s way of connecting with kids and bringing out their best quality stood out from interviews with parents, teachers, and students. While I have the image of Boyle playing basketball and talking with a student, I needed him in other settings, such as in the classroom or in his office. I also needed to mix up the visual variety more. Pretty much all of these images would constitute a “medium” shot. They only show Boyle from one perspective but needed to show him in multiple ways doing different things as a way of connecting the audience more with the story. Shooting things the same way in the same places makes everything static. 

With the advent of multimedia, I’ve used collections of images with audio working as a guiding narrative rather than looking for stories to spend more time on. When shooting multimedia, I try to make sure I get a good introductory image and a closing image. While that’s important, I forget about getting images that work in between – images that build upon one another to visually communicate a concept. Looking back, the ideal first few images would give the audience of an understanding of who Boyle is, which would be how well he interacts with kids and how much love and respect they have for him. Toward the end of the story, it would of been good to show Boyle doing familiar duties for the last time and end with him saying goodbye to his students. Of course, that’s all in the ideal world. This story was shot during my week as the only staffer at the paper, so I give myself a tad bit of slack. Besides, I can only plan out part of the story, that’s part of what journalism is – playing things by ear but having some type of outline to frame the story and images around. In my mind, further developing and refining this skill in the age of the internet is of great importance to visual journalists.

The web is far more of a visual medium than print newspapers, making quality visual communication even more important. And with everyone taking and sharing individual images, the idea is that anyone can take a good picture. Sadly, to an extent that is true with how cheap “good cameras” are now. However, it takes a photojournalist to understand the story and capture a moment that reflects the story. The availability of using various mediums has allowed for the creation of deeper and more intimate levels of storytelling. For myself, using one medium to tell more of the story and have another part just look or sound cool isn’t enough. Photos should feed off of the audio and vice versa. Each sound bite and image should posses an element of the story that can be built upon by the next portion of audio of visuals. By understanding the process of being in the moment and capturing it along with how the moment translates into the other portions of media contributes to awesome storytelling. Need proof? Check out the links on the side of the page, particularly MediaStorm and the New York Times Photo Blog, “LENS”.

Anyway, I of course hope to refine the idea of using portions of media as building blocks in stories I assemble, whether they are a quick few images from an event or a story I’ve spent a good amount of time on. I do have a few ideas at the moment for long-term photo projects. Once I get started on one of them, I’ll be sure to blog a bit about my progress. Look for another entry next week with some images from the past week. Nothing overly interesting has happened yet but there is a Gay Pride parade in town on Saturday. As for now, I’m off to shoot another baseball game. Adios.

Currently listening to: Jigsaw Falling Into Place by Radiohead

In all honestly, the reasoning behind this post’s title was just that the pun fit easily enough. This past week I was the sole staff photographer at the paper and accumulated 66 hours in 6 days. The moments to breathe or “stop for gas” were few and far between and mostly spent in fast food drive thrus between assignments. 

Legion Baseball

Despite the long hours and short amount of time I had to come up with shots at assignments, the pace of everything proved to be a reminder of how lucky I am to be doing what I am. Meeting new people, getting access at various events, witnessing intimate interactions – I caught myself smiling with these romantic realizations of my job in my car throughout the day. Don’t get me wrong, one week of this much work was enough for a good while – I crashed hard every night. Besides, there is such a thing as too much of a good thing. Having gone through and seen others experience burnout in positions that they were extremely passionate about, I know keeping an appropriate balance between all of the different parts of my life makes good old fashioned sense.

Click Image for link to Graduation Gallery

I did have one very interesting thing happen to me this week that I hope doesn’t repeat itself. I had just finished shooting a feature assignment about a woman who does some beautiful needlework pieces and was about 8 miles out of town. I turned on the scanner as I got closer to the city limits and heard there was a fire. I pulled the scanner closer to pay closer attention to find out the fire was on the same blockas my apartment. Following this, I grew increasingly aware of how much slower the driver in front of me was going compared with the speed limit. On top of that, I was greeted with a red light at each stoplight once I got into the city limits. I thought I had missed the event by then but hadn’t. The house was a full 6 houses away from my apartment and the flame hadn’t really spread very far (as you can see in the image to the right, there weren’t any flames). Regardless of that and like I said earlier, I don’t wish to hear of that ever again on my scanner. 

All Smiles

A large portion of my week was spent at a local school documenting a principal’s last week on the job. Creating images at a school isn’t the easiest thing, with kids jumping in the frame with an exaggerated grin or telling you they want to be in the paper when you’re trying to gather some NAT sound. It would have been nicer to dedicate a bit more time to the project as well in order to get a more intimate look at what the principal’s relationship has been with the school, not to mention the field of education. The paper is holding the story until next weekend so the blog will have to wait to show those images. Look for an entry with images from that project next week.