Re: Leica-Users List Digest V1 #744

["K.Turk" <kturk@fielding.mvsu.edu>]

"Boy are you ever lucky getting to go to all those
>places and somebody pays all the expenses!" " And they pay you to? Wow
are
>you ever lucky!"
>
>And there's no life like it! :)
Ted,

This post described the essence of being a photojournalist great.  Never
have I heard it described in such a way.
Harrison.

When I was a press photographer I didn't call myself "photojournalist".
To me, the term is a bit pretentious, like "journalist" instead of
"reporter".  "Photojournalist" evokes a movie image of an intrepid
character in a trenchcoat driving a jeep through artillery fire, getting
exclusive interviews with generals at the front and viewing battles from a
bombed-out building with a beautiful woman at his side.  
     Well, as a photojournalist for a while I've seen wars and half-wars
in the Middle East and Cyprus.  I've worn a trenchcoat (with a good label)
but I've never driven a jeep through artillery fire.  I have preferred to
dive into the nearest hole instead.  There is something about artillery
fire that impairs my driving judgment.  Also, it has been my experience
that exclusives  with generals are usually booked solid weeks in advance.
Such buildings are drafty and beautiful women tend to move on
beforephotographers reporters arrive.
     Nevertheless the press photographers I have known will  disagree with
me, to say the least.  But together we have haunted jails, courtrooms and
chilly morgues, dashed like maniacs to airports and hustled out of warm
beds to floods and earthquakes.  We have survived famed restaurants in
Luxembourg and been grateful to find a hamburger at three a.m. in Kyrenia,
Cyprus.
     The reporters and photographers, it's said, should not take 
unnecessary risks. They  should take only calculated risks, the kind they
feel are needed to get the job done.  The difference is sometimes obscure
and result is the same.  But I've seen a lot of unnecessary risks taken
and have taken a few myself.  We have sometimes derived an enjoyment
covering wars.  It's crazy, but it is true. But despite all this, here's
my unasked advice for aspiring press photographers: Forget it.  It's not
worth.  I've heard of reporters and photographers who died in the jungles
of Asia, the sands of Middle East.  For what?  For a few column inches in
a newspaper?  For a few seconds on a television screen?  Their names, once
famed, are remembered by few.  Forget it.
     But for me, I'd do it all again.  Hopefully with a raise.

Kirksal Turk