Metrodog

Welcome to the galleries of my breaking news experiences. While working for the Orange County Register, from 1990-2014, I worked with the most amazing photographers of my career. Initially, we all rotated shifts, so that we could cover all aspects of photojournalism and share the burden of constant deadlines. One particular shift was called the “Metrodog” shift. It was the only shift usually cleared of assignments so the staff photographer could be free to chase breaking news. “Metro” was the name of our local news section. “Dog” stood for chase and fetch.

As our staff matured and we became parents, the rotating shifts interfered with family life for many. The only weekday morning shift was the Metrodog shift and I seemed to enjoy it’s freedom. Between breaking news events, I could pursue personal photo projects and search for feature photos to fill our daily community roundup page. I seemed to revel in it more than most of my colleagues. At one point, I asked that I might do it for the entire year, rather than the normal two-week rotation. My request was refused, but persistence granted me a three-month experiment, to prove my worth. It was an amazingly successful three months and I was given the shift permanently. I became the “Metrodog”.

For the final nine years of my career, I rose early in the morning, turned on my police scanners, booted my car-mounted laptop, and communicated with my news team on a bluetooth phone headset. I would chase news at every hint of drama. Most pursuits were a fruitless rush to the scene, but being consistently on the chase, arriving early, paid rich visual rewards.

Looking back now, I might have wished to stay a general assignment photographer, instead of concentrating so much on the saddest news. However, the shift provided me with a consistency of family life that had previously eluded me. I was free evenings and weekends to attend ball games, band performances, and fellowship with my church family. Occasionally I’d take a break for special projects like the Olympic games or an essay on the coming of spring.

Some colleagues didn’t seem to value breaking news as I did and felt my efforts would be spent better elsewhere. I could see the validity of their criticisms, but I also felt a deep responsibility to the lost art of breaking news. Many editors and fellow journalists felt we’d evolved past the reporting of sad and tragic events, and should concentrate on the positive and community building side of journalism. Although I agree with that premise, leaving breaking news out of the balance of daily coverage seemed foolish. Every photojournalist on staff was tasked to cover breaking news, when called upon, but I, in particular, developed working relationships with first responders that afforded me far superior access. Eventually the need for fresh, breaking news, on our paper’s website solidified my role. I called for back up on the daunting task of providing instant news throughout the day. A handful of colleagues stepped up and worked tirelessly as dedicated newshounds, helping me cover our large county.

Working the news all the time was a two-edged sword. The stress of news wore on me but the thrill of the chase invigorated me. I missed out on some of the most enjoyable aspects of photojournalism, sports and human interest stories, but I’d already experienced decades of that. In my final year, as I transitioned to becoming a licensed therapist, it was necessary that I work a swing shift on Fridays to accommodate my education and therapy supervision. That brief period where I worked one day of the week, taking on general assignments and not having the responsibilities of breaking news, was refreshing. I might have reinvented my career again to be more balanced at that point, but the slow death of daily newspapers caught up to me before that could become a reality.

I, however, have no regrets. This section of my website is dedicated to the men and women, the first responders, that I reported on and their daily challenges. There are galleries of single events and a few examples of long term assignments here. I have had many nicknames in my life but Metrodog is one I proudly identify with.

Metrodog

Firefighters

Early in my career, as a rookie photographer for the Gannett Rochester Newspapers (Rochester, NY), I responded to a warehouse fire in the industrial section of town. A large brick structure was engulfed in flames, the temperatures well below zero, water sources frozen solid. That’s when I saw the utter frustration on the face of the firefighter in the first image of this gallery. He had called for water and none was coming!

That image was awarded the top prize for the International Association of Fire Fighters annual photo contest in 1982. Not only was it thrilling to win an award in those early days, it was equally exciting to be close to the action, feeling the heat, breathing the smoke, enjoying the spray of the firehose. 

To be honest, I never lost the wonder most little boys have for the heroics of firefighting and rescue. I have a “bromance” with firefighters. To this day I have the highest respect for their discipline, their selfless behavior, and their dedication to the welfare of others. I am sad to know how much they suffer, mentally and emotionally, when their live-saving skills don’t prevail against death. I couldn’t possibly begrudge the generous salaries and benefits most earn, knowing how wearing it is on their lives to stay in the fight.

For decades I felt I might have chosen the wrong career. The men and women of firefighting and rescue seemed to be such amazing humans. Their work seemed to have such positive results.  They were universally admired by the community and seldom experienced the scorn their brothers and sisters in law enforcement faced. However, eventually, as I worked on assignments where I was with fire companies for days and weeks at a time, I saw the tedium, exhaustion, emotional struggles, and impact on family life. It is not something I would have been cut out for. 

These days firefighters respond far more often to car crashes and medical emergencies than burning building or forests. In 35 years of my photojournalism career, I covered thousands of car crashes, which still traumatize me. I have only included a few examples of those experiences, but hopefully, in them, you can see the compassion and care that these men and women provided. 

This is a big gallery. I am unapologetic for being over the top here. These images are more a celebration of courage and dedication, rather than a portfolio of the best images of my career. I hope you can sense the intensity of the moments and have empathy for the lives put on the line every working day.

Metrodog

Law Enforcement

My relationship with law enforcement, as a photojournalist, was always complicated. Although I admired the selfless and unenviable task they had to protect the public and enforce the law, I was often not welcome to their news scenes. Long before personal microphones and patrol car cameras recorded their every move, officers of the law were often very guarded against the scrutiny of the media. For me and them, it was always a learning process, a development of trust, and, in some cases, friendship.

The first image in this gallery has a typical back story. I arrived in a residential Santa Ana neighborhood for a report of a barricaded suspect in a suburban tract home. As I arrived, a police officer stopped my progress walking up to the scene and told me to go no farther. I commented that there was no yellow tape to mark the police perimeter. So the officer promptly returned from his patrol car with yellow tape and purposely stretched it directly in front of my face. I then commented that, down the street, neighbors stood and gawked, directly across the street from the house where a man held his son at gunpoint. He reasserted that I could go no farther. I smiled politely, returned to my car and retrieved the biggest telephoto lens he’d ever seen. I stood vigilant for hours waiting for the SWAT team to make their move on the house as phone negotiations broke down. Just seconds before the officers moved in, with flash grenades, and performed a safe extrication of the child, the officer monitoring the perimeter approached me to apologize for his gruff behavior. While responding with thanks, I almost missed the moment. The following day I received compliments and requests for prints from the brass at Santa Ana Police Headquarters. 

Over the course of three and half decades, I learned empathy for one of the hardest professions. I learned when to keep my mouth shut, even when my constitutional rights as a member of the free press were being illegally restricted. I learned how to find my image even when the rookie officer at a roadblock had been told, emphatically, by his superior officer, to let no one near. I learned that asserting my rights as a photojournalist had to be well timed and stated with respect. I was threatened with arrest several times when my words fell on unbending wills. But I never met a circumstance that warranted a trip to jail to prove a point. I don’t begrudge those that did make those choices, but it never rose to that level for me. 

Eventually, as the years passed, law enforcement saw that I was not out to misrepresent the difficulty of their job, to malign them or misrepresent the objective truth. I began to gain respect and unprecedented access. As there are in any profession, there were a few bad eggs among them, but on the whole I found members of law enforcement to be kind and compassionate men and women. They necessarily had to protect themselves with emotional compartmentalism and a diligence of caution. Unlike firefighters, I never wished I was a “cop”. That was obviously a job for very special, very brave, and very self-secure personalities. In general, I am in awe of the men and women in blue (or green, brown, and black) who I met along the way. God bless them all!

Metrodog

Hurricane Katrina

In 2005, while working my normal news gathering shift, I was called and asked to embed myself with the California Task 5 FEMA team responding to the devastating aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. I was given three hours to decide, pack, and get on a bus headed to New Orleans, where the category 5 hurricane caused more than 1,800 deaths along the U.S. Gulf Coast and $161 Billion dollars in damages.

I recall a memorable and frustrating trip, very reflective of the chaotic government response to one of the country’s worst natural disasters. Southern California’s team of elite fire and rescue personnel, trained for response with the Federal Emergency Management Agency, had to take buses and drive their rescue vehicles to the New Orleans area. There was a shortage of transport airplanes in the United States, as the country was at war in Iraq at the time.

Coming from such a great distance, the team was delayed in Dallas as FEMA basecamp filled up with teams from closer states. Eventually, after most of the rescue operations had wound down, Task Force 5 started the unenviable task of house to house searches. For a solid week, they pushed through flood areas and broke down water swollen doors to find no one to rescue.

On my last day with the team, just before noon, the medical team from the California Task Force 5 Search and Rescue team responded with its medical team to a man found in his home fourteen days after Hurricane Katrina ravaged his neighborhood. They treated Edward Hollingsworth, on the scene, for severe dehydration and transported him to the hospital. Members of the National Guard, 2-185 artillery, based in San Diego, CA spotted the man through his front window and assumed he was dead before opening the home. Hollingsworth, died within days, but not before his family was able to come to his hospital bedside and say goodbye.

The lead image of this gallery, of Hollingsworth being lifted from the sidewalk in front of his home, ran on the front page of many of the world’s newspapers. The “Pieta” like image of Hollingsworth limp body became a rallying point for the Bush administration’s critics, angry at the poor response to the disaster. The image was submitted by my editors as my sixth and final Pulitzer Prize nomination. I did not win that prize but was honored by wins in the Photos of the Year (POY) contest and the National Headliners Award.

The Abortion Debate, 1985

In 1985, I proposed our newspaper, the Long Beach Press-Telegram, spend some time covering the debate of the day, abortion rights versus abortion opposition. Feminists were leading pro-choice rallies, pastors were sheltering pregnant teens, family planning clinics were the scenes of protests and bombings, and politics swirled around the issues. I worked with two reporters, covering the subject for about 4-5 months, before our paper published a series of articles.

We interviewed and photographed leaders of both pro-choce and pro-life movements, visited the protest lines and a school for pregnant teens. I photographed scientific specimens of human fetuses at USC Medical Center. It was, as far as I had seen, the first newspaper series published on the subject, in the United States. We drew hate mail from both sides of the issue, which, to me, meant we did our job, objectively, sparking impassioned debate with facts.

Metrodog

Cerritos Plane Crash, 1986

On August 31, a midair collision between an AeroMexico DC-9 and a small twin-engine plane collided above the neighborhoods of Cerritos, California. The crash created a swath of destruction through suburban homes. The crash of Aeromexico Flight 498 killed 82 people: 64 jetliner passengers, 15 people on the ground and three in the small plane that collided with the jet as it approached Los Angeles International Airport. In terms of victims on the ground, it was the nation’s worst air accident.

At the time of the crash, I lived in Anaheim and worked in Long Beach. Cerritos was an area where we did light reporting and sold few newspapers but this was epic regional news. I was home at the time the collision, working on a major remodel of my home. Just before racing off to the scene, I’d removed the back sliding door to our home. It remained a gaping hole for over a week. I spent that week visiting the scene and the victims funerals for our continuing coverage.

Currently I only have a handful of images to share, but as I delve into my negative files in the future, I will expand the gallery.