Back in Mozambique

Last week, I finally came back to Mozambique after being abruptly plucked out of the country and my life with my crazy heart situation. It was strange not being allowed to return home and in limbo for a while wondering whether or not I would get medical clearance to come back.

It's taken some time and stress to get back into the swing of daily life again particularly with my little boys going to different schools on different schedule which means I have also begun a life as a taxi driver. But more than anything, I have been consumed with getting my final project exhibition up and going. It's been somewhat stressful.

First, the initial venue that I had planned to show at, the Franco Mozambican Cultural Center, and went to back in February with my proposal gave me the Mozambican eye gouge. They had given me a letter accepting my proposal, but wanted me to do the exhibit in June, the national environmental month. I had to turn it down because they notified me three weeks before. It wasn't enough time to get my project together, printed, framed and do adequate promotion and all the other things that go into a show. They initially were a bit annoyed, but I met with the point person in charge of exhibits just before I was sent away, and she assured me that everything was fine and that I would get a space in late October or early November. She lied.

When I got back, I immediately contacted her but the board there had wanted me to show with another photographer or hold off until March, 2010. I turned it down. I spent the time since then trying to secure another space, the Mozambican Photographer Association gallery which I was succeeded in getting. I had to give them my proposal last week and last night I was given the dates of Saturday November 14 – Monday, November 30. It's a tremendous relief.

What I'm doing now is trying to get in gear for this show which involves a bit of money. I've put a chunk of personal cash aside to cover cost but hopefully can get funding. I'm working on sponsorship and have an incredibly organized friend, Melissa, assisting me. I hate going to people to ask for money. It's humbling. So far, I've been in talks with Anadarko, an American oil company with a big presence in Maputo, mcel, the national cellular company, and am aiming at getting one of the two big hotels on the Marginal. It's a new experience. I've applied for and gotten academic grants and fellowships before, but perhaps, this experience will help me sharpen that skill.

I have a list of things to do: edit; plan my presentation; have prints made; mount and matte; prepare all the written information; plan an opening along with food and drink; make promotional items and do the promotion; and hire an attendant and handyman for physically hanging the work. This morning, I'm meeting with artisans I'm hiring to make a 3-D map of the Maputo's coast.

Oddly enough, I've only gone out photographing once since I've been back.

Overdoing it

I've been putting far too much time dealing with my before and after pictures. I've hiked a trash-strewn hillside dodging human feces, gone to a private luxury home's owner to see the view from their balcony (it was blocked by trees), gone through a chain of command at a private park to photograph from their hillside land and finally sweet talked my way past two doormen to the twentieth floor of a building that has a fair view of the coastal strip of road I'm covering.

I've contacted a long line of people searching for the copyright owners of the historical photograph and now am being put on hold by the bank who owns the rights. I've been researching copyright law and examining "fair use." Nevertheless, one of the photographs that I made today is probably about as good as I'll get to duplicating it because there is simply too many trees and shrubbery including in front of the landmark that I wanted to show. It's not ideal, but I'm happy with what I've gotten. It's times like this when I will probably look back and wonder why the heck I spent so much time and effort on this picture which might not even make an edit.

As for my borders project, my Brazilian nuns have pushed my meeting date with them back several times and did it again this evening. I'm set to meet them again on Thursday. My minefield contacts from HALO Trust have both moved rather abruptly. One has gone to Cambodia and the other to another Mozambican region to set up a new office. So, I'm on hold to meet the replacement who won't be here for two weeks I believe. If it wasn't a minefield, I'd just bypass them and go alone, but that could mean trouble. Next week, however, I'll be going away for a few days to visit with rats who locate landmines in Chokwe, Mozambique.

High TIde Rain

Last night's lecture was a bit like having jumper cables placed on my ears with the sudden intensification of the course. There's a lot of work to do or at least a lot of organization, but I'm looking forward to it. It seems we'll have a lot more getting-to-know-each-other time with this term's projects.

Thinking Out Loud

Boys play with a fishing net in mudflats under the Costa do Sol Bridge.

A man in a wheelchair bicycle looks out on the beach.

A crumbling sea wall.

Mangrove at Costa do Sol.

Casuarina seedling at a municipal nursery program to combat erosion.

My Borders Proposals

Sacrificial chicken: they let me shoot the victim but not the sacrifice.

A stump I photographed before it fell and was still a tree.


Miramar beach after a long holiday weekend.

A new sea wall at Triunfo Beach.

I'm back in focus and got out to photograph for the first time in a while. I had my three year old in tow, and it felt good.

I've been hashing over what I'd be doing for my borders project for some time. Some of you have had to listen to me go in circles trying to narrow it down. I have sifted through my ideas and have come to two that I'm going to concentrate on. I have axed out all together the literal idea of going to a physical international border and working there. I wanted to be able to have access to something that I could work on close-by and two-hour or longer travel daily was not attractive. I will still do some of those stories but not for our group project.

In trying to push the borders idea a bit, I am going to concentrate on land mines in Mozambique. The concept of being constrained by a border or barrier created by man that could kill or severely injure one grasped my attention. In this country, there has been successful de-mining in the north of the country, but there is still work that must be done in the south including areas surrounding Maputo. Before the holidays, I had been communicating with folks from the HALO Trust in Mozambique and finally met with them. I made them part of my brainstorm and came to an agreement.

They will take me out to various de-mining sites in the Maputo region. Apparently they are not terribly excited. A pair of Mozambican employees will take me to meet a farming family who is typical in areas with known mines. They apparently use only a portion of their land because of real fears of mines in outer portions. They warn me that it will be tough because these people are usually quite angry with groups such as HALO even though they are trying to help them because the problem still exists. I also am hoping to make some portraits of victims of land mines. HALO has connected me with an NGO who might be able to help me.

Hopefully this works out, but they put up enough doubt with scenarios of past photographic flops that I am still leaning on plan two which is taking the advice of Paul who suggested I stick with my current project on the Marginal and the decaying coastline applying the idea of the border between land and sea. I am, as my posted photos demonstrate, still hot on this project. I've written up notes for myself of what else I need to accomplish with it and would like to do which includes doing sound of various groups I've photographed, recording interviews and making more several more photographs. The pictures I've been doing are the Australian casuarina trees that were planted to thwart the tides.

My ultimate plan is to have a show. I am going to put together an edit and proposal for a site here where I'd like to exhibit. Aside from my own pictures, I am going to ask an artist to make me a map of the Marginal and am still seeking permission to use that historical picture I did a post a while back.

In my inquiry to one of several people who have used the historical photo in question may pay off in an unexpected way. A publishing group that put out a book of historical photographs in Maputo looked at my website and various links and asked if I'd be interested in doing a book for them about Maputo. I'm certainly interested and will keep you updated on where this goes.

Trees and Z's

I'm looking for evidence and impact of beach erosion.

Historical Pictures and Research

Since last week, I've been doing more research about coastal and beach erosion in Africa. A lot is going to have to wait because people are gone and institutions are closed for the holidays. I've made the rounds on foot and through e-mails to get to the bottom of the historical picture that I've become semi-obsessed with. I finally was able to find out the photographer of the picture taken in 1929 showing the old Práia da Maputo where the Marginal is now. It's changed incredibly and that's why I find it important. But most importantly, with the Clube Naval, the yacht club build by the Portuguese in 1913, it puts the area in context with an existing historical landmark.

The photographer's name is José Santos dos Rufino and he is dead. A project by three Portuguese universities through a joint foundation called Memorias de Africa posted Mr. Rufino's volumes of postcard books of photographs of Lorenço Marqués, the colonial Portuguese name that changed to Maputo after the Portuguese left in 1975, online along with similar projects from other former Luso-African colonies. It's incredibly interesting. I've found several old pictures of the Marginal, but this works the best for my purposes. Here is the response that I got from one a member of the group:

Dear Sir

Rufino is dead for long time.

As far as I know there is no problem of using the photo the way you describe.

We just put it on line, because they where already on line in the site of Companhia de Ferro de Moçambique.

But I can not give you authorization to do the same. I have not such power. You do what you want on your own.

Sincerely

Carlos Sangreman

CEsA

I also had a meeting with the management of Clube Naval who have this picture on their website as well as on their wall with other historical pictures but had no idea of who had taken it. They said, it was from an old postcard and gave me permission to use it and are going to make me a copy of theirs'. The casualness about giving me permission of a photo that they don't own rights to was a bit funny, but the main groups using it all share the same attitude. The copyright law in Mozambique and Portugal is the life of the artist plus 70 years which is similar to most of the world. It's clearly not up, but people have sort of taken a public domain attitude with it. I would like to ultimately get my work into a book form and would like to include Mr. Rufino's picture along with an updated photo, so I'll continue with this a bit more (Tt's a sort of caution that came from working at a newspaper-people loved to sue us.)

On the other front regarding this photo, I've been trying to find a location to repeat the picture. It's impossible so far because the hillside in which it was shot is now either developed or filled with trees and shrubbery. I've gone on sort of nerve-wracking little hikes through some areas on the hillside where homeless people and bandits live dodging garbage and human waste. It was quickly apparent that I could not get the photo I wanted. My other solution was getting in the air–I'm afraid of heights and hate flying.

A Portuguese photographer friend of mine has a buddy who is part of an air club that has access to a plane for $100 USD. He's going to see if he can help arrange for me to go up.

Vila dos Pescadores

I've spent the last couple of days since my tutorial with Ed Kashi at the Vila dos Pescadores, fishing village, photographing on the Marginal. He stressed that I show more of the impact of the beach erosion. It's a bit of a challenge to show it through pictures rather than explain it with words. My solution thus far has been to show various aspects of the erosion as interestingly as I can. For instance, in the time I've been working on this project I have a few detail before and after pictures showing the literally crumbling road then the patched up road with a newly constructed sea wall. I've also photographed several trees with their roots exposed which, to me, is quite graphic, eerie but yet aesthetically pleasing. Most are "casuarina trees" which were planted by the Portuguese to stop beach erosion. I've done some construction shots with tractors on the beach building sea walls, but they're not my best, and Homer made a point that has stuck with me about keeping the best photography for the project rather than some of these types of pictures which he–in his very frank sort of Homer way–are boring.

Nevertheless, Ed made a great point and it's certainly one that I've been aware of and trying to solve. The best way I can think of so far is to show a before and after picture using a historical photograph (I have a bad copy of my favorite so far) of a beach that no longer exists along with a photo today of the same area. I think it is sort of stark and to the point, but I don't know if it's bad form to lean on another photographer's old picture to make that point. Plus, I don't know who the photographer was and the legalities of using it which I should know. Its an old magazine article copy hanging up displayed with other old postcard and historical pictures at a club on the Marginal and none of the management can give me the answer either. I actually like their copy because a note scribbled on it says "Ponta destruida," or destroyed point.

As far as shooting the fishing village, it's technically part of the Marginal, but I had been concentrating on the point of development and the paved road to town which people consider "the Marginal" which starts at the Costa do Sol Bridge separating the dirt road that leads to the village. However, the expert who has been my source learning about Maputo's beach erosion problem often uses it as an example of a destroyed point on the city's coast. The government has done as much patching as they can putting rocks and seawalls to save the road from crumbling away, but the beach sounds like its doomed. I did more of what I've been doing–showing the people and life there–as well as incorporated a new sea wall and the rocks mentioned above in pictures.

Back when I was starting, I had a critique from the photo editor of the El Paso Times, Rudy Gutierrez, who was really harsh yet honest. The biggest point he made was that my captions were really long and descriptive, and it was evident that I was a writer. He said that my photos should speak for themselves without captions and that I should be able to simply show pictures instead of explaining everything in such detail. The toughest critiques have always stuck with me and thickened my skin, but its funny how something from so long ago is still like Jiminy Cricket chirping in my ear.

Meia Maratona

A competitor in the wheelchair race in the half-marathon moves down Avenida Marginal. The wheelchair race was 10 kilometers.

Keep Keepin' On: Projects, Equipment and Multimedia

Here's what I've been up to photographically that is. I've actually been busy on some assignments which is always nice but blurred my focus a bit.

I'm trying to put a cherry on top of my Marginal/Maputo Beach Erosion project but am consumed with Paul's–I think observant advice–of trying to get a few more details, overalls and getting closer to my subjects. I have a list of a few things that I'd like to get, but I'd like to move on. One thing that I would like to do is visit Beira, a coastal city in Mozambique that I've been told has a much worse beach erosion problem than Maputo. I'd just like to spend a day or two photographing some of the damage which I think might enhance this project a bit to give some perspective and scale. I

Another project that I've started is doing portraits and interviews with albinos in Maputo. The reason that drew me to it was a BBC story that I heard a while back about killings of albinos in Tanzania by people who sold their parts to witch doctors who believed they had magical powers to bring wealth. There is a serious stigma around them and several aid organizations (unfortunately not in Mozambique) who help people with the skin condition. I've only just started and am trying to sharpen the idea a bit. I am buying a softbox, another light stand and a few other doodads to enhance my portrait power. (Also, because the folks at Polaris subtly suggested that better lighting equipment was needed.)

On the equipment front, I'm going on a buying spree, sort of. I'm planning on buying a Canon 60D, but will hold out a bit until after the first of the year (I might just let the 50D drop in price a bit more and a couple of those instead). Also, I'm a bit inspired by Brett and have a few prime lenses that I'll buy as well. However, I'm going to buy a Canon G10 this week. I was looking to buy a G9 this summer while I was in the states but stepped back when I heard that the G10 was coming. In Perpignan, they weren't yet released but word of them was abuzz. I played a lot with G9s that various drinking mates had. They were very popular there. Anyway, I'm excited about it.

When I was in Lisbon, I had a little Minox point and shoot that I loved until it died. I always had it with me. It was small (sort of like a Canon Elph) and I liked being able to be less intrusive when I was out and about. Unfortunately, the file sizes weren't that big, so I have a number of really nice photos that I can't, for instance, put up for stock. The G10 has much bigger files than the 20D SLR I shoot with now, plus you can shoot on RAW. It's bigger than my old Minox, but definitely cooler. You can put a strap on them too.

I was about to buy a load of software, but Maria sent me an e-mail that made me hesitate. I have to grill her a bit. Nevertheless, at the top of my list is Soundslides. I also plan on getting a digital mp3 recorder of some sort and perhaps a microphone. I've had a number of heavy discussions about multimedia and am going in the direction that I'll feel comfortable with. Despite what might seem like resistance, I actually have a background in convergence and multimedia. Brian Storm, Dirk Halstead and the like are no strangers to me.

When I started at the Sarasota Herald-Tribune as a photographer in 1997, everbody there was spent a week in video training in our television station. All the still staff learned how to shoot (on beta and high 8), edit, and learn the basics of television photojournalism. It was fun at first, but in time interfered a lot with our still shooting. Eventually it sort of faded to the background. Still, folks like Dirk Halstead and people from around the industry spent some time at the H-T visiting and studying. When I left, we still did it on occassion but photographers who really enjoyed it (there were a couple) could do pretty much whatever they wanted because our 24-hour news channel was always hungry for content. When I met some of my old work mates this summer, they were a bit gloomy because the paper had decreased the size of the video staff and were going to start using the still staff to do more video.

It's never been hard to see the importance of multimedia and as a manager, I saw it from a different perspective. However, as a photographer, I admit I am resistant and not fully on board. I guess since I have done it, I am not so into it. I have always been very into the idea of the power of still images and sound together. The first time I saw Brian Storm speak, he was still at MSNBC and just starting to make a name for himself. He's a still guy at heart and used to talk about-as he still does-the power of still images married to sound. Essentially, it's sort of a version of what we do now but with printed words instead of recorded. He would talk about NPR (National Public Radio in the U.S.) and images together could empower our stories. I'm a huge fan of radio journalism which probably comes from growing up in the car culture of Los Angeles, and in particularly NPR. Shows like This American Life are great at creating powerful imagery.

I also had a friend, David Snider, who had similar type of things to say but sort of went a different direction. So to make it short: Soundslides. I'm sure when I get the stuff, I'll have all new problems to solve like what software to use to edit sound and the basics of radio journalism.

Next up, borders projects: I'm thinking.

Self-Censorship

I shot a mother bathing her two children, a boy and a girl. I shot about forty frames or so, but when I was editing something to put on my blog, I hesitated. 'Will some crazy conservative or religious nut think that I'm Pete Townsend or something?' Although I didn't think about it when shooting and even showed the family my pictures on the back of my camera afterward, I suddenly became nervous that somebody would think I was a weirdo or something. I'm not, but just as the law that was mentioned in one of our MAPJ group e-mails about getting permission to photograph school children, it's another issue to mill over.

Assessment Project

click image to expand

Africa loses from one to two meters of coastline annually due to coastal erosion according to a 2002 UNESCO study. With a rise in sea levels, the problem is complicated by man. Mozambique, named as one of Africa's most threatened coasts, faces trouble as one of the world's poorest countries with problems that the government prioritizes much higher than coastal erosion. Maputo, the country's capital, is booming with new investment and development. Much of the new building is along a 10 kilometer road that runs along the coast from the Port of Maputo to the rural Vila dos Pescadores that lies over the Costa do Sol Bridge marking the end of the Marginal. With the Marginal crumbling due to beach erosion, repairs are being made, but the unique life on Maputo's waterfront road may not be repaired as easily.

The Marginal is killing itself. The physical road, Avenida Marginal, has priority over beaches, so with sands no longer able to shift naturally, they simply erode. With development, the city and country are trying to take advantage of an opening for economic growth. The city is encroaching on the coastline from one side as the waters of Maputo Bay take its toll on the other.

In Maputo the road is lined with businesses, including restaurants, bars, clubs, stores, a casino and a new gated community near Costa do Sol, but on the other side a unique culture and regional identity is disappearing. The 10 kilometers between the Costa do Sol Bridge, which separates the rough dirt road leading to the Vila dos Pescadores fishing village and the paved road and new development, and the roundabout at Praça do Robert Mugabe show the past, present and future of the Marginal.

From Miramar, the Marginal’s middle point, to Costa do Sol the road is collapsing at many sections, and it is characterized by trees hanging over sand dunes with exposed roots as clear signs of the beach’s decay. One only needs to examine historical pictures of Lorenço Marques, Maputo’s colonial name under the Portuguese, with beaches that once lay where sea walls now stand protecting and separating the bay from the road. An old picture hanging in the office of the historic Clube Naval shows a uniformed rowing team on a long-gone beach in front of the club. The waters now bump against a seawall. The modern coastline in this area of the Marginal only vaguely resembles that of the past and may foreshadow the fate of the eroding beach further down the road.

With priorities that outweigh environmental issues and minimal funds for improving the infrastructure, it seems inevitable that what is left of Maputo’s beaches will soon disappear. Concurrently, pieces of Maputo’s traditional society will also disappear. Fishermen, religious groups that believe the beaches and water are sacred, friends who gather to play soccer on Sundays as well as the beach’s tourist draw are affected.

The Body

I found a body floating in Maputo Bay off the Marginal this morning while on a run.   I made a big effort to bring police to this body in the bay, even though I must admit the thought of going to get my equipment to photograph the floating corpse crossed my mind.  It would have been kind of a sick thing to do.   I did return several times throughout the day to check it out.  I wasn't permitted to photograph-which I expected-but I was interested in seeing how long it would take the police in Maputo to fish out the body–most of the day I found.  One thing that I definitely don't miss about being newspaper photographer is crime scenes.  I hated fighting with authorities for access and always felt a bit ghoulish.  I'm no Weegee.

Throughout most of the day, a pair of police were on the sidewalk above where the body floated.  It was bizarre.   Finally when investigators, friends and family came, I was busy answering questions and still not permitted to take photos.  In the end, after the police examination, I thought it incredibly strange that a reporter (also forbidden to photograph), a family friend and two family members lifted the body into a police flatbed truck as the officials stood by.

The dead man ended up being a security guard from a nearby yacht club who they believed was attacked on the Marginal after finishing his shift last night.  A friend of his who spoke very good English, was very cynical about Mozambican Police and said that there will be no real investigation into the murder, and it would soon be forgotten.  He agreed with a Mozambican friend of mine who told me that life in Mozambique is cheap.

In the end, I squeezed off a few out of focus frames from my car, but even though it fits into my project with urban problems creeping down to other parts of the Marginal, I thought it wasn't worth really pushing it.

Walking on Water

I didn't realize that W. Eugene Smith's Pittsburgh story was never published until seeing the segment about his time with Magnum on The Genius of Photography. I guess it's because I have seen pictures from the project over the years. I fully realize my project is nowhere near the magnitude or quality of his wonderful obsession. The thing that got me was that he made thousands of pictures over several years under the illusion that he was changing the world with his chronicle of the city. I'm still chipping away but will probably keep at this little strip of coastal Maputo. I've been trying to show the encroachment of urban life on the Marginal, concentrating on the beach erosion and seawalls.

Slippin' and Slidin'

An integral part of my Marginal project that I want to refocus on and have tried to make more compelling pictures of are of the beach erosion problem. Essentially the physical road, Avenida Marginal, is going to kill part of the local culture because of the eroding beach and the construction of sea walls. A way of life will fade away when the beaches disappear. When I was a photographer at the Sarasota Herald-Tribune, I worked on a long-term project with a reporter and artist called The Beach Builders that looked at the enormous monetary and environmental costs of rebuilding beaches because of beach erosion. We also explored the human cost since dredging sand that is pumped back onto beaches is one of the most dangerous jobs in the U.S. The story took us to the Carolinas, Alabama and Mississippi aside from our very own Florida coast and it was the type of thing that infuriates you since essentially tons of money, much damage and several lives are given essentially so rich people can keep their homes and luxury condos on the beach at the expense of everyone else: classic.

It's one of the things that struck me when I got her because it's so obvious with crumbling roads and trees with exposed roots lining the beach. Also, the new U.S. embassy is being constructed on Avenida Marginal. That along with the construction of luxury gated communties and neighborhoods, it is a pattern that I'm familiar with and know that ultimately for a cash-strapped country like Mozambique ripe with corruption a skewed priorities, a sea wall is the solution.

The ten kilometers of road that makes up "the Marginal" goes from the bridge that separates the dirt road leading to the Bairro dos Pescadores, or fishing village, from Costa do Sol to the roundabout at Praça do Robert Mugabe. The latter half of the road runs along coast where a sea wall separates land from the bay. I've been examining old photographs of Lorenço Marques (the name that the city was called until 1975 in its colonial Portuguese days), and there was once a beach called Polana beach and a club there called Polana Pavillion. I asked a young woman who works at the Club Naval, which neighbored the old Polana Pavillion, and asked her if it the zone was still known as Polana beach or if the walk was still known as the Polana Esplanade. She looked at me with bewilderment and was too confused to give any answer. I explained what used to be there and that once an actual beach and beach club and pier neighbored her place of employment. She was surprised. Essentially, the area that is now characterized by its sea walls and leads to the port and downtown Maputo is foreshadowing what will most likely be the fate of the more rural parts of the Marginal.

Lazing on a Sunny Afternoon

The family and I went to South Africa this weekend to go grocery shopping (things are significantly cheaper and higher quality there). I missed a boat race that was going on on Saturday at Clube Naval. It's a South African holiday and there were lots of racers from there in Maputo with their rocket-like boats, unfortunately I missed it and was a bit frustrated about it. I hung out for a few hours this morning trying again to make something interesting out of volleyball games that go on.

Cropping in the Camera

I've become more disciplined or at least more aware of my framing when shooting. After my first critique with Paul, I realized that he was looking at all of the frames, the whole raw frame without any mention of cropping, but with just an direct critque on what I shot in each entire frame. Over my career, I've tried to do that with two factors that influenced it: 1.) Paul Morse and 2.) Annie Leibovitz.

I don't know what people think of Annie Liebovitz. I've developed mixed feelings but still she was a big influence because I was a teenage wannabe rock star and my first influences in photography were people like Jim Marshall, Dezo Hoffman and Annie Leibovitz. When I was a kid, somebody bought me a Dezo Hoffman photography book of his work with The Beatles (who I was an absolute fanatic over for years). I bought aquired some old Annie Leibovitz photo books (Shooting Stars, Rolling Stone Book of Portraits, which is an all B&W compiliation book which she edited that is documentary-much more than Rolling Stone's later photographs of extravagant lighting and sets. The other is Mark & Leibovitz, The Photojournalist.) In the second book, there is a portion of a contact sheet on one page of one of Leibovitz's shoots at a prison that was made a big impact on me-even now.

Each of the frames of Leibovitz's prison shoot was different and good. I guess because it was before I became a photographer and it just stuck. Much later when I actually became a photographer, I thought it was great and even referenced this in debates about Annie Leibovitz with Leibovitz-haters.

Paul Morse was a staff photographer at the Pasadena Star-News when I was doing an internship there in college. Paul was sort of the star, young hot shot who was always winning awards. I was just learning photography and really a bit uncomfortable because my experience was more in writing than photography. Paul was super cool and would always give advice and encouragement. One thing that stuck was when he emphasized that he "cropped in the camera," he considered the whole frame in shooting. Although it might seem silly now, it made a strong impact on a green intern who was stumbling along.

Over my years in newspapers, cropping is something that I did regularly and learned how to do it to strengthen photos-mostly hard news and sports. As an editor, I had to do my share of it for all kinds of reasons, but would try to respect or at least find out the intention of the photographer. So in a sense, the course has really helped me take a step back. Also, focusing so much on Cartier-Bresson these days, I'm more aware than ever of the full frame.