This actually happened to me last week.  I was hired last minute by a French photo agency on behalf of the French pharmaceutical company Sanofi.  Sanofi bought the local Chattem Chemical company recently, and they needed some standard pharmatech corporate photos for their annual report.  They found my web site through a google search and liked my work as a photojournalist, and they thought my style would fit well with the sort of images they wanted.  I worked out all the details with my contact at the photo agency as usual, and they sent me a few samples to give me an idea of the images they wanted.  I was to meet with a videography team who were producing some video for Sanofi at a local Walgreens pharmacy and get photos of Chattem’s products on the shelves, being handled by pharmacy workers, purchased (or mock-purchased) by customers, and lots of photos of happy people with the company’s products.  The video team would fill me in on all the details about which products in particular needed to be photographed.  Overall, the shoot was expected to take about 3 hours to go through each product and to get enough photos of people to deliver 30 final images total.  It sounded simple enough.

Upon arriving at Walgreens, I met with the video team and they gave me a quick tour of which products I would need to photograph.  Then the Walgreens rep arrived and told me in no uncertain terms that I was limited to photographing only Chattem’s pharmaceutical products, and was absolutely not allowed to take identifiable photographs of customers or pharmacy workers in the store.  My stomach dropped into my toes.  That was the whole reason I was hired for this job, wasn’t it?

My challenge now was to deliver quality photos of the products that still had a little bit of interest to them, and maybe even some people, without being able to identify them.  After a quick email to the photo agency rep informing him of the situation, I went out to my car to grab a speedlite, softbox, and light stand.  If I was only going to be able to take photos of boxes on shelves, I wanted them to look good.  Any chance I got to see a customer standing in an aisle was quickly taken advantage of by zooming wide and either waiting for them to turn their back, or using a shallow depth of field to blur the background.  You could still see that there were people there, but not who they were.  Faces are identifiable, but what about hands?  I convinced a few volunteers to be my hand models for some shots of people handling boxes or pulling products from shelves.

While I wasn’t able to deliver photographs of happy people holding boxes of meds, I think I made the best of a bad situation by working creatively around the restrictions placed upon me.  That’s really the only thing you can do when the situation changes and your assignment isn’t what you thought it would be.  How have you made the best of unexpected circumstances during a shoot?

Joel Tippens holds a sign during an Occupy Chattanooga protest on Chestnut Street. The protest was staged in front of the Republic Centre, which houses a local branch of Bank of America, in a three-part effort to protest the bank, local representative Chuck Fleischmann, and speaker of the house John Boehner, who was coming to support Fleischmann's fundraiser.

I have always been a very politically opinionated person.  I was a government major for my first year and a half of college, and I come from a family that encouraged me to hold my own political opinions and to be vocal about them.  Those who are friends with me on Facebook are probably used to seeing me post politically charged links to various news articles and cartoons on a weekly basis, and to seeing me actively debating politics.  It is a large part of my interests, and yet, as I cover more and more Occupy rallies here in Chattanooga I begin to wonder if my own political views could have a serious impact on my journalistic integrity.  While I certainly identify with the Occupy protesters and agree with them, how does that affect my coverage of these events?  Would I be as fair with photos of a Tea Party rally, or something even more polarized than these?  Does being a journalist mean that I can’t keep posting my own political opinions on my (private from anyone who isn’t my friend) own Facebook page?

I suppose I have it easier than journalists who write articles.  While you can certainly portray people different ways with photographs, I don’t have to be as concerned about using particular language and phrases for one group or another.  I take pictures of what is happening, and I caption them.  The slippery slope for me now, as a freelancer publishing my own web site, is giving equal attention to different groups.  Does it make me a biased journalist to run three stories about Occupy protests in two weeks, and none about any other political groups?  I get to pick and choose what I report on my own, after all.  I can photograph and write short accompanying bits of text as impartially as I want, but it seems that by simply choosing one over another I am showing some bias.

What of my personal political activism?  Does being a member of the press restrict me from ever taking part in a political rally again?  I certainly can’t participate while I’m covering an assignment.  I have to decline petitions offered to me.  While they chant slogans, I click my shutter and stand impassively.  What about when I take off my camera and media badge?  Does it show some bias towards the story I was covering?  What if it was a story that I was never slated to cover?  If I worked for a newspaper it would be much more cut and dry.  Participating in a political rally, even while off duty, could potentially be considered endorsement.  What about now, though, when I self-publish, and what impact do my Facebook political posts on my personal page have on my journalistic credibility?  What do you think?

I was contacted several months ago by WKU photojournalism professor Tim Broekema about the possibility of using an image from my internship with the Advocate-Messenger of a local girl named Maggie Milby examining a very cool looking caterpillar on a stick.  The photo would be used in a Celebrate Kentucky photo wall at the University of Kentucky’s new hospital wing.  The display itself, at 100 feet long, is pretty spectacular.  All of the images are backlit, and if you haven’t seen it it’s worth checking out if you’re in the neighborhood.  WKU found my photograph from my entries in the KNPA’s 2009 student photo contest and contacted me through that resource.  All-in-all I’m pretty excited about this.  My image should be there for 6 months out of the year, completing its time at the end of this month and beginning again next year.

Maggie Milby examines a Black Swallowtail Caterpillar on a twig that was found in the yard of her home on fifth street in Danville, KY.

Speaking of shameless self-promotion, you should definitely check out ChattaPhoto.  The web site is my (relatively) new baby, and the product of much deliberation since my graduation along with input from individuals like Dave “the Strobist” Hobby, SportsShooter.com users, and others.  I really want to focus on local feature stories with the site.  I want it to become a resource for native Chattanoogans, and one that they check on a regular basis for quality photojournalism that showcases the city and its unique individuals and sights.  You can find more detailed info about just what it is I’m trying to do in the “About” page there, so I won’t go into more here.  Take a look, and tell me what you think.  Regular weekly content is scheduled to begin September 5.

You can view the full essay in a nicer, slide-show format of the Balloon Man essay with captions at the KNPA results web site here.

www.backprint.com/dougstricklandphoto

If you like a photo and it is not posted (typically I post Centre sports and portraits) simply email me at doug@dougstricklandphoto.com and I’ll be more than happy to add it for you.

The final three photos were taken over the summer but I had forgotten about them until now.  They are of a group of local Christian extremists (who have very recently begun coming onto Centre’s campus and harassing students, hoping to get a shot of that soon).  I thought that the series was rather creepy, and yes, he was actually licking his lips as the woman passed.