Get a Picture or Save a Life? - The Professional Vs The Humanitarian

Its been sometime now with photography and most of my endeavors have been with the wildlife. It has been so far never a case where the human "life" was under the scanner. So today when a friend of mine sent me a video footage of a show on NDTV, it rang a lot of bells in my head. The program was about a "demonizing" photojournalists.

"If being there you could capture the photograph or shoot the video...... you could very well save the guy" was the argument given by many of the members of the audience. The incidence that I am referring to, is bleeding to death of the Tamil Nadu Sub Inspector Vitrival on the duty (http://www.ndtv.com/news/india/three_arrested_for_tamil_nadu_cops_death_on_duty.php).

The video footage shows the SI begging for help while the TN government officials just loitering around. The extended video also had some ot

her police officers who don't seem to be bothered with the incident. Also in the video footage, we see that the victim asking for help from the cameraman too, while the cameraman doesn't leave his coverage to help the dying man.

Having listened to this part of the story, we start to form a bias against each of these players in the incident. However, the victim of public outrage were the poor photojournalists. So much so, that there was a full hour show (http://www.ndtv.com/news/videos/video_player.php?id=1194070) on NDTV on this Sunday to discuss the ethics or the code of conduct that was to be followed by these photojournalists.

But the request for the hour would be to listen to certain premises for the sake of argument before we form an opinion.

On the right we see the Pulitzer award wining photograph taken by one of my most favourite photographers of all time, Kevin Carter. We all know this picture very well. What we intend to know is the fate of the girl if the most popular version of Carter just clicking the snap and not helping the girl is true.

Several versions of the story are available for research. One of them says that Kevin waited for 20 mins so that the vulture should fly away. Finally he shot the photograph and shooed away the bird. He was however condemned of not helping the child up to the relief camp.

Other version of the story is given by Carter's fellow photojournalist Joao Silva to a Japanese reporter. According to him, the photograph was taken in such an angle that both, the vulture and the child, would come into the frame. The child was actually left there by the parent, who was busy collecting the food from the relief plane that had landed there. The vulture flew off in sometime.

The most interesting part of this premise is the suicide note left behind by Carter. Some of the lines read

"I am depressed ... without phone ... money for rent ... money for child support ... money for debts ... money!!! ... I am haunted by the vivid memories of killings and corpses and anger and pain ... of starving or wounded children, of trigger-happy madmen, often police, of killer executioners...I have gone to join Ken if I am that lucky."

The next is also a very famous picture from the Vietnam war.

The picture shows the a man being shot at point blank range by Vietnamese General Ngoc Loan. The photographer Eddie Adams won a Pulitzer for this one.

Coming back to the situation in hand, the question we need to ask is

• Could the photojournalist, in any of the above situations, be in a position to Save the victim?
• Is there Sensitivity left in these Photojournalists??
• Or are these photographs or video footages merely for Commercial purposes???
• Who is to be Blamed ????
• Or are we Demonizing the photojournalists for no reason at all?????

Whatever be the opinion, we should always remember that every situation at hand is dynamic and every human being complex. The photojournalist has to balance a lot of situations before taking any action.

The post ends here and we are open to discussions.....

Aastalavista....

The Super Squirrel...

Location: Kankaria Lake, Ahmadabad.

Date: 15th August, 2008

Another one at the same location. Same day. Well just

for your info, Ahmadabad still retains of a lot of the nature's really beautiful treasures. This squirrel made me realise what I was missing all these years in Mumbai. The city of Ahmadabad has this rich foliage all over the city and so it is the home to a rich diversity of animals and birds.

Well returning to this event that happened, I was having some peanuts. The "crane" shoot had quite excited me and I wanted to do some similar magic again. What happened next was that i completely forgot about the peanut packet. Only when the packet started to rustle again did I notice what was happening.

This little buddy of mine had actually got inside the packet to feast itself, while I was leaning on the wall to check if I could get some more of the "bird watching" snaps. I turned to get him onto the frame. But FYI, these are very sharp creatures when hearing is concerned. By the time I could get him onto the frame he was already on the run.

But the real mischief came to limelight when it stopped and gave me a look of sheer mockery.

I got the perfect snap and i guess this time with the nut in the hand. The final shot was came with this "Supper" Squirrel jumping over the wall before vanishing. I wished I could jump from such heights. But anyways.....

Thats all for now....and thanks for the appreciation for my earlier posts.

Aastalavista.....

Wandering about and clickin some snaps...

Location: Kankaria Lake, Ahmadabad

Date: 15th August, 2008

Starting off with this pic...this is one of my favorites. The pic was taken at Kankaria lake, Ahmadabad. Sometimes just wandering in the weirdest of locations we come across some of the most beautiful moments of our lives. FYI, Kankaria lake area is one of the hottest locations in the evenings for all the odd couples; and here I was roaming around on a government holiday morning alone. Alone....not really.... I had my cam for my company. But then such are the times when you get into introspection and self actualization. Specially when you have no one around you to keep nagging you can actually look at the wonders of the nature. Okie...Okie... Coming back to the point. "Splosh" was what I heard for the first time.

And then it went again..... Splosh .....Splosh and this time in quick succession. Curiosity killed the cat, they say; but this time luck seemed to be on my side. Finally I located the source of that peculiar sound. It was a lovely crane with beautiful and slender neck, with a God-speed. The crane was on the hunt of some small prey. The sheer beauty of the bird captivated me for a whole of five minutes. And then it struck me. I had never been into professional photography so was not in that habit of keeping my camera ready for such situations. But as I said, it was sheer plain luck. I got my cam out without much of a noise and clicked. The first click and it went just quite right.

My interest in wildlife has been now quite for sometime. Long before I had my basic down-to-earth Nikon D40, I used to wander and keep clicking with my N73, the nokia phone. But today the list of the accessories for my Nikon has grown. And so has the photographs. Needless to say but if you do find them interesting lemme know of some of your own such exciting moments.

Till then aastalavista.....