Jack Gruber

Oh Crop!

Things don’t always show up in the paper like you thought they would.

A story I shot last month which was published recently fit a photo into a different size and shape on the front page. Seeing a very horizontal photo cropped into a vertical never really makes a photographer feel very warm and fuzzy. It happens and I understand the process.

I am not always happy about things like this but I get it.

Even with most of the content cropped out of this horizontal image into a vertical head shot, the most important thing to remember is that the photo got published and the story told.

The funny thing about the above photo, which is my favorite from the entire shoot, is that it really was an after thought and not much more than a parting grab shot as I was leaving.

The story we were trying to illustrate with Jane Horton was how most people are unaware of the meaning of a gold star banner hanging in a window of a military family.

The gold star represents a military family member was killed in action. Jane had lost her husband in Afghanistan.

Trying to show that gold star in any photo had eluded me completely so going after the portrait just after sunset was the only option.

The process was not overly complicated with a couple of SB800′s inside and out of the house but it took some time to get it just right. I was pretty happy with how the posed portrait turned out and was glad that I took the time to make it happen.

I thought this portrait would be the photo to illustrate this story.

I finished packing up all of my gear in the dark after shooting the portrait of Jane and the gold star hanging in the window of her Tulsa home. As I was standing in the driveway saying goodbye, Jane was there talking to USA Today reporter Gregg Zoroya while still holding the American flag which draped her husbands casket illuminated by an outdoor light fixture on her garage. Along with a number of small flags planted along the driveway and the moody sky, a really striking image was right there.

There was still a bit of ambient light left lingering in the sky and with the ISO cranked up on the Nikon D3, I was able to fire off a few parting frames as Jane and Gregg said goodbye in front of her garage.

No strobes, no posing. Just a really nice moment.

In hindsight with the way the story was presented on the front of the paper, the portrait with Jane and the gold star in in the window might have been a better edit and fit the space on the front better.

But when is a photographer ever happy with an edit?

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 5th, 2012 at 3:12 pm and is filed under Blog, Recently Published. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.