Coastal town greens the deep blue

I shot this story in April for Edible Portland, a quarterly magazine for Ecotrust in Portland in April. Port Orford, OR is quite an amazing place, as its one of the last true small boat fishing ports left in the West Coast. When you come here to drop your boat in, its quite literal! You won't find a ramp to cozy the trailer down to the water, oh no. A crane drops and lifts that bad boy out with you in it! Pretty interesting, especially when the tide is heading out!

Port Orford has resisted the siren call of the tourism song that has repurposed other coastal towns, chock full of trendy restaurants and kitsch stores. You almost feel like you are visiting a town on a smaller scale to Gloucester, Mass, the fishing community known for its tight knit salty dogs seen in "The Perfect Storm."

The fishing community is doing something pretty amazing. Recognizing the declining numbers of prize fish such as salmon, halibut, and just about everything else, they teamed up with scientists to establish a marine habitat reserve to protect fragile breeding grounds, and preserve a source for small boat fishing to continue, establishing a social, economical and environmental triple bottom line for the community.

My only regret on this shoot is we only had a day allocated to the shoot, and weather drove out the fishing crop we wanted to focus on, black cod, or butterfish as the Canadians like to call them, so we didn't have the boat access we were hoping for. I hung out at sunrise

to get the early birds heading out and talked with some of the local fisherman about what they liked best about fishing in the port.

The beauty of this job is the amazing range of people you get to meet. If you ever get the hankering to try your hand on a fishing boat for a day, I don't think you'll find a better group of people on the west coast to educate and entertain you while you work your butt off!

Helping others avoid the temptation to go the easy path

A few days ago, a peer at a newspaper in New Jersey talked about a photo contest they were planning to sponsor with Website visitors judging the best photo of the month. He went on to say that the prize was being narrowed down to providing a family portrait to one of the voters by one of the staff photographers.

That rankled me quite a bit.

Not that there is anything wrong with doing portraits. I love them. I love the challenge of taking the simple set up and evolving it to fit the person or persons I am photographing and revealing their identity. Its necessary in this business and a daily thing for newspaper photographers. But many newspapers use it as a crutch. Its more often than not the backup photo for a story in which the action has already happened or not enough planning was implemented to get something more compelling. I mean, do you want to see the hero firefighter of the month sweating and working, DOING the thing that made him a hero, or a simple portrait of him leaning against a fire truck? I am all for the former. And with the photojournalists laboring hard to keep their jobs in today's newspaper market that crumbles around them, sometimes fighting to remind their colleagues and newspaper owners that they are journalists every bit as much as they are WITH the added skill to tell a story with a photo, series of photos or even video, is it fair to marginalize them to simply be little more than a studio portrait photographer when the day is done?

I suggested that they try a little harder to benefit their readers, and thought about what I enjoy doing when I am not snapping the shutter, and that's helping other people do a better job snapping THEIR shutters!

I can't count how many times I've been shooting on assignment, and on a lull, had people come up ask me about how to use their point and shoot cameras. I always enjoyed explaining the aperture/shutter speed/ISO relationship (and comparing it with how much squint/blink/and light sensitivity of the eye is related) and watching them "get it" and seeing that spark of enthusiasm light up in them, busily snapping away.

So who would be better than to offer up a one or two hour lesson in understanding your camera or just take better pictures yourself than the highly talented and community saturated photographers of the newspaper?

The photographer warmed immediately to the idea and I sure hope that, if they do the contest, they go with it. Its a great feeling when not producing great images myself, to help others unlock that potential in themselves.