Just F8 and Be There, but faster

When I was a young buck chasing fires around Boston with a Nikon-F back in the 1980′s, the more self-obsessed and smarmy “photojournalists” around me would always condescend, pointing out that all it took to do my work was to set your camera to “f8 and be there,” as if being there wasn’t an important part of the news photographer’s skill set.

I went from darkrooms to film scanners to digital cameras over the next 20 years, but nothing really helped as much as actually being there, on the scene, day after day and year after year.

After 17 years, I left my job as Senior Photographer at the Philadelphia Daily News in September, hoping to teach more and to develop new media projects, and also continue some reporting, which brings me to Friday night:

I tucked my girl into bed and went back to my desk to work on one of my many projects, specifically a model to help a friend sell prints online. (I will post more about that soon.)

But first, I peeked at my Tweetdeck and happened to notice – in my Philadelphia search column – that a Twitterer in far-way Crawford County, in the polar opposite corner of Pennsylvania, had posted a note about a fire here in Philly, the kind of fire I had covered for decades.

At 10:52pm, just five minutes after the Philadelphia Fire Department had been dispatched to the scene, I learned from this stranger – hundreds of miles away – about: PHILADELPHIA – 3 STY GOING GOOD – RESCUES BEING MADE

I still keep a scanner near my desk at home, but I have only turned it on once or twice since I retired from the street.

Tonight, I tuned in the fireground frequency just in time to hear of a “trauma code” for a one-year-old with no vital signs being rushed to the hospital. Very sad.

Next, I heard a few clues suggesting there might be more victims, but I kept working on my project, and kind of lost my focus on the little hints one can pick up about serious incidents. Then, I turned off the radio.

Though I didn’t catch it, another update from the same Twitterer came my way an hour later, at 23:49. eastcoast911: The Philly fire is a 3sty Twin 6418 Elmwood, sounds like gonna be a multi fatal fire, pfd staff/admin units enroute

One reason I had been distracted was news of a rare Pennsylvania earthquake, which I first spotted in a Twitscoop Tweet cloud, and also Twittered with some links here:
http://twitter.com/JimMacMillan/status/1080443430
http://twitter.com/JimMacMillan/status/1080456429
http://twitter.com/JimMacMillan/status/1080485089

Next, I picked up a phone call from an unrelated news exec, who was looking for the journalist with whom I cohabitate. She had been assigned to the fire; seven people were dead.

For a number of reasons – none greater than my ongoing inability to turn my back on news – I went along for the ride.

Not surprisingly, I found the last three remaining rock stars of Philadelphia spot news photojournalism on the case there; news photographer Joe Kaczmarek reporting for the AP, Tom Kelly IV shooting still and video, and NBC10′s Pete Kane.

I had brought some of my aging professional gear but – fresh on the heels of my recent popular and successful Twitpic travelogue – I decided to stick with the camera on my iPhone and just post to twitpic.com, using the Twitterfon app.

This is a brutally limiting photographic strategy, but I posted my first picture online within a few minutes of my arrival on scene, and I wasn’t even hurrying. For all of their other expertise, none of the pros can shoot and send on one device.

The craziest moment was when one of my colleagues pointed out that he had better be sure to have an angle I was getting with my iPhone. I think he was kidding.

I did remember and think hard about the hoopla surrounding the infamous funeral-twittering incident, and I did my best to be sensitive, but I was still worried that all this might not go over well, especially next to the smiling headshot in my Twitter profile.

One follower offered to forward my pictures to CNN’s iReport, and a few others re-tweeted my posts.

After I sent another couple of photos, I checked my at-replies and found messages from the editor of philly.com, the news site of the Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News, where I used to work. She had seen my Twitter posts and Twitpics, and was interested in getting them.

I let her know that there were other pros working hard on the scene, but the Internet wants breaking news asap and – in a nutshell – she bought my pictures and posted one right away. (Not having each other’s info at hand, we cut the deal via Facebook mail.)

I was compensated roughly on the scale that freelancers in this town are paid in traditional scenarios: for responding and shooting with pro-level Nikons or Canons, and delivering their photos via laptops with cell modems.

With all sincere sympathy to the victims and survivors of this horrible event, I did feel good about the way all these new media worked, and having felt stalled within the MSM until recently, I felt better making it work from the outside now.

I know I didn’t exactly make history out there, and I remembered that the NY Times and others used a citizen journalist’s camera-phone picture on the front page after the 2005 London bus bombings. Maybe we should be most amazed at how little progress we have made since.

Also, I appreciate that – with my decades of news contacts and experience – I might have a leg up on the rest of the citizen journalism community, but the bottom line remains: The executive editor of the area’s top local news site needed content and was looking online when I delivered it.

Finally, as I was wrapping up at home, I saw some different words trending on Twitscoop, including Gaza, Hamas, Israel, killed, medical, Palestinians, and strikes.

I clicked on one post: http://twitter.com/tkpleslie/status/1080636545

The bad news just keeps coming.

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UPDATE
I was already getting the best traffic this three-week-old blog has seen, but it should really take off now, after news of my experience somehow made it’s way to the esteemed Jeff Jarvis and his popular BuzzMachine:

Got buzz. Thanks Jeff, but will social media journalism ever pay the bills?