Documentary
Photographers don’t have an assigned beat like reporters. Part of the fun of the job is the different kind of work we could see during the average week. In the last two weeks I’ve photographed everything from The Flaming Lips and Thunder basketball to pole aerobics and the Oklahoma River after the water was drained.
My favorite pictures, though, come from more documentary kinds of assignments. Those are the assignments where we get invited into people’s lives and get to document how they live. They’re not always huge, involved stories, sometimes they only take a day or so, or maybe only a few hours. Sometimes they are lighthearted subjects, and sometimes they’re serious, but what they all have in common is that for awhile, we get to witness how that person is living and use pictures to help tell their story. A couple of my favorite documentary stories over the last three years have included Love Street Ministries, Bear’s Den Boxing and the Hurricane Gustav evacuees.
With documentary pictures there’s a new photographic equation: The access the subject gives you is directly proportional to how good your pictures will be. The people I take pictures of for these stories are comfortable enough with me around to go about their lives, even though I’m taking pictures and sometimes recording audio and video.
Jim Chastain recovers from the effects of chemotherapy treatment at his home in Norman, Okla, Wednesday, January 7, 2009.
Since November of 2008, I’ve been working on a story about Jim Chastain and his family. Jim has terminal cancer and invited reporter Ken Raymond and me to document the next few months of his life.
Maddye Chastain hugs her father, Jim, during his birthday party at Full Circle Bookstore in Oklahoma City on Dec. 10, 2008.
I don’t have to get Kevin Durant to trust that I’ll do a good job before I can get a good picture at a Thunder game. I don’t have to have long, emotional talks with Wayne Coyne before I photograph a concert. But with documentary stories like ‘Life is Real,’ access is everything.
-John Clanton
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You have separated so far from the pack. It’s not even close now. The depth, seriously, is so much deeper now. Thank you for this work. And thank you for this blog.
Now dig deeper. Show us what we have never seen before. You just might be our only hope.