In an effort to share some insight into the inner workings of news gathering I would like to tell you how I spent part of my Thursday.One of my five assignments was to make photographs for a story about a family that held a birthday party for their one-year old at a local children's park only to find that the park was in need of repair and this upset them. In particular, the parents remembered a giant Humpty Dumpty from their childhood which was no longer on display. They decided to donate $20,000 to the park and just like magic it is a news story.
I met the family at the park and along with someone from the parks department I asked to see the Humpty Dumpty (from this point on to be referred to as Mr. Dumpty) which was being held captive in what they called "the bone yard". I explained that I wanted to shoot a picture of the family with Mr Dumpty but the guy from the park and the family insisted that Dumpty was in bad shape and that they really diddn't want their picture taken with him while he was in that kind of shape. One of those "We would rather remember him as he was, not as he is" things I guess.
I insisted on at least seeing Mr. Dumpty so I could at least get a mug shot of the poor guy and they led me into the bone yard. I made a few pictures of the giant egg and then out of the corner of my eye I caught a glimpse of something even better. An abandoned tea cup ride with a pair of legs sticking out the top called to me. I began shooting which made the parks guy nervous. "Say, eh, that's not going to be in the paper now is it", he said. "I thought this was about the donation, let's go over to the sign in front of the park and get that group shot."
I told him the picture was for my Christmas card and shot for a couple more minutes before we all were herded out of the bone yard and I shot the family in front of the sign picture that will actually run in the paper.
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