THE CONVERSATIONS |
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NADAV SOROKER
Sunday, April 21, 2024
Edition ONE Gallery
Santa Fe, New Mexico
Pilar Law, Edition ONE Gallery Owner and Curator, welcomes LEICAS & SCOTCH to the gallery for Mark Berndt's conversation with investigative photojournalist Nadav Soroker.
All images © Nadav Soroker | All Rights Reserved Images may not be reproduced without written permission from the photographer.
Sunday, April 21, 2024
Edition ONE Gallery
Santa Fe, New Mexico
Pilar Law, Edition ONE Gallery Owner and Curator, welcomes LEICAS & SCOTCH to the gallery for Mark Berndt's conversation with investigative photojournalist Nadav Soroker.
All images © Nadav Soroker | All Rights Reserved Images may not be reproduced without written permission from the photographer.
MB:
This is Nadav Soroker. And so, like I usually do, I'm going to read you a little bio to start off with, and then we'll get into it.
Nadav Soroker has specialized in local and community news photography and videography since graduating from the University of Missouri with a Photojournalism degree in 2017. He has worked at newspapers across the country, including the Colorado Springs Gazette, Carrollton Times-Georgian, Wyoming Tribune Eagle and Laramie Boomerang. After photographing topics dear to his adopted communities, Nadav moved to New Mexico to be closer to family during the COVID-19 pandemic, where he became the staff photographer at Searchlight New Mexico. There he has focused his camera on stories about wildfire and water rights.
This is Nadav Soroker. And so, like I usually do, I'm going to read you a little bio to start off with, and then we'll get into it.
Nadav Soroker has specialized in local and community news photography and videography since graduating from the University of Missouri with a Photojournalism degree in 2017. He has worked at newspapers across the country, including the Colorado Springs Gazette, Carrollton Times-Georgian, Wyoming Tribune Eagle and Laramie Boomerang. After photographing topics dear to his adopted communities, Nadav moved to New Mexico to be closer to family during the COVID-19 pandemic, where he became the staff photographer at Searchlight New Mexico. There he has focused his camera on stories about wildfire and water rights.
MB:
So, Nadav, the question, always… I think you picked up a camera later in life, right? What brought you to photography?
NS:
A failed educational career in computer science. Once I decided that computer programming had no interest for me, I spent a few years in community college taking every class that crossed my path, and a friend recommended the Introductory to Black and White Photography class as an easy “A”. And now I have degrees and a career and everything. So my introduction to photography was really my friend who needed a person to jump back and forth for a shutter speed assignment.
That was my introduction to photography. I was probably 20 at the time. And then I really wanted to pursue a career in editorial, like high fashion photography. But I was cripplingly shy, could not talk to people, particularly if those people were women, which is a problem when you want to be a fashion photographer. So I signed up for the school newspaper as well and was sure that I would be more scared of telling an editor that I didn't take a photo than I would be of talking to people. So I replaced one fear with a bigger fear. And so I've been chasing that bigger fear for 12, 13 years now.
MB:
And so like fashion or whatever, there's a lot of ways you can go with photography. How did you pick photojournalism.
NS:
Just just signing up for the newspaper. Really that was it. I just fell in love with doing the journalism work, the chance to go out to places and talk to people and make their photo, see their lives, really is what kind of drove me to photojournalism.
Around that same time I was taking other classes in college and I took an English class with a friend of mine. He was the professor. And we read The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath, and she has a passage in there about sitting under a fig tree and seeing all the different lives that you could live, but being unable to pick one, and watching them kind of rot and fall down as you fail to make a choice. And photojournalism in a lot of ways kind of ended up being my way of not having to make a choice because I can just call up, walk up, say hi to just about anyone and say, “Hey, what are you doing? What's going on? Tell me about yourself. Tell me about what you're doing. Let me see your life.”
MB:
And people do?
NS:
Like, all the time. Yeah. I would just call people up and be like, “Hey, can I come hang out with you at your school? Can I hang out at your apple orchard? Can I talk to you about what it's like to be homeless? Can I sit with you while you sift through the burned wreckage of your home?
MB:
Wow.
NS:
In all kinds of situations. People have said, “Yeah.”
PORTFOLIO
So, Nadav, the question, always… I think you picked up a camera later in life, right? What brought you to photography?
NS:
A failed educational career in computer science. Once I decided that computer programming had no interest for me, I spent a few years in community college taking every class that crossed my path, and a friend recommended the Introductory to Black and White Photography class as an easy “A”. And now I have degrees and a career and everything. So my introduction to photography was really my friend who needed a person to jump back and forth for a shutter speed assignment.
That was my introduction to photography. I was probably 20 at the time. And then I really wanted to pursue a career in editorial, like high fashion photography. But I was cripplingly shy, could not talk to people, particularly if those people were women, which is a problem when you want to be a fashion photographer. So I signed up for the school newspaper as well and was sure that I would be more scared of telling an editor that I didn't take a photo than I would be of talking to people. So I replaced one fear with a bigger fear. And so I've been chasing that bigger fear for 12, 13 years now.
MB:
And so like fashion or whatever, there's a lot of ways you can go with photography. How did you pick photojournalism.
NS:
Just just signing up for the newspaper. Really that was it. I just fell in love with doing the journalism work, the chance to go out to places and talk to people and make their photo, see their lives, really is what kind of drove me to photojournalism.
Around that same time I was taking other classes in college and I took an English class with a friend of mine. He was the professor. And we read The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath, and she has a passage in there about sitting under a fig tree and seeing all the different lives that you could live, but being unable to pick one, and watching them kind of rot and fall down as you fail to make a choice. And photojournalism in a lot of ways kind of ended up being my way of not having to make a choice because I can just call up, walk up, say hi to just about anyone and say, “Hey, what are you doing? What's going on? Tell me about yourself. Tell me about what you're doing. Let me see your life.”
MB:
And people do?
NS:
Like, all the time. Yeah. I would just call people up and be like, “Hey, can I come hang out with you at your school? Can I hang out at your apple orchard? Can I talk to you about what it's like to be homeless? Can I sit with you while you sift through the burned wreckage of your home?
MB:
Wow.
NS:
In all kinds of situations. People have said, “Yeah.”
PORTFOLIO
MB:
We're looking at your general portfolio. This is work from the newspapers that you worked for before Searchlight, right?
NS:
Yes.
MB:
Okay. So, a lot of us have commercial photography backgrounds and stuff like that. What's a day in the life of photojournalists? I mean, when you were working for these papers, you worked for a bunch of different papers.
NS:
Yeah. So when I worked for a newspaper, the Day in the Life started with me getting up, drinking an ungodly amount of coffee and hoping that nothing had blown up yet. Then I would just check through all of the different emails of assignments and photo requests from various reporters and editors, different things that we had to get to and start knocking them down one by one. Just make a list. You got to get to this football game. I've got to get to this city council meeting. I've got to get to that parade memorial, whatever the case may be, and then keep an eye out for any breaking news that would happen along the way - car crashes, burned buildings, murders, whatever …
MB:
You could do, like a half a dozen stories in a day or locations that you needed to cover?
NS:
Really easily. Yeah. I mean, like, I think a busy one of the busiest days, I think I hit nine places in a day. So long days, rough days. It varied. I mean, there was days where you only did one thing.
MB:
Right. Like - a slow news day.
NS:
Sometimes a slow news day, but sometimes it would just be like one particularly big news assignment. I mean, when I was in Colorado Springs, if you got assigned to photograph a Broncos game, you only photographed a Broncos game. That was a 12 hour day, You do a bunch of different sub assignments within there. You would photograph tailgating beforehand, you would get street features of different people. You would go out on the mezzanines and balconies and make photos of fans, and you'd photograph the the game itself, photograph, you know, if they did anything fun at halftime. So you could photograph a whole bunch of things during…
MB:
That constituted the coverage of that game.
NS:
Exactly.
MB:
You worked for several different newspapers. I know that, like, the Topeka Capital-Journal was, for a long time, one of the key places that you really got your photojournalism chops. Did each of these places have a different editor, a different group of people, a different kind of atmosphere or character to them that you built on that was kind of like graduate school?
NS:
Yeah. I'd say all of them had different kind of character to them. Uh, so my first stop was Colorado Springs Gazette, where I did back-to-back internships. Um, they say ‘internship’. Really you were just a temporary staff photographer.
There was not a whole lot of, like, review and learning. It was just kind of, Here's your gear, the door is over there. Though they tried to make sure that I got experience again photographing Broncos Rockies, various kinds of high profile events.
MB:
Working under somebody or with somebody as a sort of a mentor leading you, or you were just kind of like out on your own?
NS:
Both. Broncos - I was there with another staff photographer, so he kind of helped show me, like, this is where we park, this is what we have to do to get in, right? Like, this was the administrative side of this. But then we kind of split up for the actual event itself. He would photograph this, I would photograph that. I'd be on one side. He'd be at the other, I'd take a sideline, he'd take the end zone and things like that.
Rockies I photographed completely solo. So they just sent me in. I'm still a little bitter at them. It was opening day 2018, I think, and it was the second coldest Rockies home opener of their franchise's career. I think it was 25 degrees or something when they threw the first pitch. So I can see why they sent me alone. But it was kind of just being a staff geographer at a larger metro paper.
My next stop was Carrollton, Georgia, which was the exact opposite. There were fewer staff members on that paper than there were photographers in Colorado Springs. So I was the only photographer. Our IT guy had a camera and would occasionally take pictures if we really needed him to, but just a kind of complete 180 having to do everything by myself.
And then Wyoming, where I worked at the Tribune-Eagle and the Boomerang concurrently, there were sister papers across the hill from each other. There I got to do mostly video and other multimedia work, and we got to kind of pair off. There was two photographers, myself and Michael Kumo at the time, and so we got to kind of like collaborate a lot more. We would go back and forth on each other's work and kind of edit as peers.
MB:
And that ups your game when you've got somebody that knows what you're going through to do it, right?
NS:
Yeah. Very much so.
One of the hardest parts of being a photojournalist was the year I spent in Georgia. Just because for 11-and-a-half months I essentially did not talk to another photographer. Um, it was just me, myself and I. I was like, pretty isolated. I was losing touch. I was like, is this a good photo? I don't even know anymore? What am I doing?
MB:
So you moved here to be closer to family? Right? Who's here? Are you from here?
NS:
No. My mom's side of the family lives here. I am the fourth generation to live in New Mexico, but none of us have been born and raised here.
MB:
Like most of us here.
NS:
Yeah. So my great grandparents came, uh, and retired in Carrizozo. So then my grandparents came to work at the university, and then my aunt and uncle came, and then I came. Um, so when I moved out here, it was my uncle, my aunt, and my grandmother. Now it is just my uncle.
MB:
And how'd you land Searchlight? Did you know about them before?
NS:
No. So I moved out here. I actually started my first photo job out here was at Santa Fe Workshops. I was one of their facilitators. I worked there is one of their summer staff members. And while I was there, I was Tony O'Brien's assistant. And, it was right when Don Usner, the previous photographer, was getting ready to retire. And Tony and I had a great relationship, and he had seen my work and knew my thought process and stuff. And he called Don and said, you should meet Nadav. And so I started freelancing for them at that point. And then when Don finally retired, I took over.
MB:
And that was like two years ago.
NS:
Yeah. April 2022.
MB:
Cool. Let's go. I want to jump to this next folder. And so this is your FIRE STORY, which, you said, is kind of a sampler of a longer form story, right?
FIRE STORY
We're looking at your general portfolio. This is work from the newspapers that you worked for before Searchlight, right?
NS:
Yes.
MB:
Okay. So, a lot of us have commercial photography backgrounds and stuff like that. What's a day in the life of photojournalists? I mean, when you were working for these papers, you worked for a bunch of different papers.
NS:
Yeah. So when I worked for a newspaper, the Day in the Life started with me getting up, drinking an ungodly amount of coffee and hoping that nothing had blown up yet. Then I would just check through all of the different emails of assignments and photo requests from various reporters and editors, different things that we had to get to and start knocking them down one by one. Just make a list. You got to get to this football game. I've got to get to this city council meeting. I've got to get to that parade memorial, whatever the case may be, and then keep an eye out for any breaking news that would happen along the way - car crashes, burned buildings, murders, whatever …
MB:
You could do, like a half a dozen stories in a day or locations that you needed to cover?
NS:
Really easily. Yeah. I mean, like, I think a busy one of the busiest days, I think I hit nine places in a day. So long days, rough days. It varied. I mean, there was days where you only did one thing.
MB:
Right. Like - a slow news day.
NS:
Sometimes a slow news day, but sometimes it would just be like one particularly big news assignment. I mean, when I was in Colorado Springs, if you got assigned to photograph a Broncos game, you only photographed a Broncos game. That was a 12 hour day, You do a bunch of different sub assignments within there. You would photograph tailgating beforehand, you would get street features of different people. You would go out on the mezzanines and balconies and make photos of fans, and you'd photograph the the game itself, photograph, you know, if they did anything fun at halftime. So you could photograph a whole bunch of things during…
MB:
That constituted the coverage of that game.
NS:
Exactly.
MB:
You worked for several different newspapers. I know that, like, the Topeka Capital-Journal was, for a long time, one of the key places that you really got your photojournalism chops. Did each of these places have a different editor, a different group of people, a different kind of atmosphere or character to them that you built on that was kind of like graduate school?
NS:
Yeah. I'd say all of them had different kind of character to them. Uh, so my first stop was Colorado Springs Gazette, where I did back-to-back internships. Um, they say ‘internship’. Really you were just a temporary staff photographer.
There was not a whole lot of, like, review and learning. It was just kind of, Here's your gear, the door is over there. Though they tried to make sure that I got experience again photographing Broncos Rockies, various kinds of high profile events.
MB:
Working under somebody or with somebody as a sort of a mentor leading you, or you were just kind of like out on your own?
NS:
Both. Broncos - I was there with another staff photographer, so he kind of helped show me, like, this is where we park, this is what we have to do to get in, right? Like, this was the administrative side of this. But then we kind of split up for the actual event itself. He would photograph this, I would photograph that. I'd be on one side. He'd be at the other, I'd take a sideline, he'd take the end zone and things like that.
Rockies I photographed completely solo. So they just sent me in. I'm still a little bitter at them. It was opening day 2018, I think, and it was the second coldest Rockies home opener of their franchise's career. I think it was 25 degrees or something when they threw the first pitch. So I can see why they sent me alone. But it was kind of just being a staff geographer at a larger metro paper.
My next stop was Carrollton, Georgia, which was the exact opposite. There were fewer staff members on that paper than there were photographers in Colorado Springs. So I was the only photographer. Our IT guy had a camera and would occasionally take pictures if we really needed him to, but just a kind of complete 180 having to do everything by myself.
And then Wyoming, where I worked at the Tribune-Eagle and the Boomerang concurrently, there were sister papers across the hill from each other. There I got to do mostly video and other multimedia work, and we got to kind of pair off. There was two photographers, myself and Michael Kumo at the time, and so we got to kind of like collaborate a lot more. We would go back and forth on each other's work and kind of edit as peers.
MB:
And that ups your game when you've got somebody that knows what you're going through to do it, right?
NS:
Yeah. Very much so.
One of the hardest parts of being a photojournalist was the year I spent in Georgia. Just because for 11-and-a-half months I essentially did not talk to another photographer. Um, it was just me, myself and I. I was like, pretty isolated. I was losing touch. I was like, is this a good photo? I don't even know anymore? What am I doing?
MB:
So you moved here to be closer to family? Right? Who's here? Are you from here?
NS:
No. My mom's side of the family lives here. I am the fourth generation to live in New Mexico, but none of us have been born and raised here.
MB:
Like most of us here.
NS:
Yeah. So my great grandparents came, uh, and retired in Carrizozo. So then my grandparents came to work at the university, and then my aunt and uncle came, and then I came. Um, so when I moved out here, it was my uncle, my aunt, and my grandmother. Now it is just my uncle.
MB:
And how'd you land Searchlight? Did you know about them before?
NS:
No. So I moved out here. I actually started my first photo job out here was at Santa Fe Workshops. I was one of their facilitators. I worked there is one of their summer staff members. And while I was there, I was Tony O'Brien's assistant. And, it was right when Don Usner, the previous photographer, was getting ready to retire. And Tony and I had a great relationship, and he had seen my work and knew my thought process and stuff. And he called Don and said, you should meet Nadav. And so I started freelancing for them at that point. And then when Don finally retired, I took over.
MB:
And that was like two years ago.
NS:
Yeah. April 2022.
MB:
Cool. Let's go. I want to jump to this next folder. And so this is your FIRE STORY, which, you said, is kind of a sampler of a longer form story, right?
FIRE STORY
NS:
Yes, This is a, uh - “theme”might be appropriate. There is a story there that I'm just not done with yet. So there are many stories in here that have been published, but this is all different work from around New Mexico relating to wildfire. Some of it active fires, some of it fire preparation, some of it post-fire.
MB:
And it's kind of personal interest for you?
NS:
Yeah. So, I grew up in northern California, heart of kind of wildfire country - and didn't have a whole lot of experience with that actually growing up. The really like big kind of California fire story started shortly after I left for college. Things like, you know, the Park Fire and things like that. But that being said, you know, I still would follow it and I know the place that they're talking about. And when fire burned through Sonoma and Santa Rosa, my father, who works in construction, wasn't there anymore, but he had been doing a lot of work on this particular ridgeline when I was growing up. And so pretty much every house he built from the time I was three ’til high school is gone.
So there's a personal tie there. My mom also works in construction. She’s an architect and she just has to deal with calls every single year of: “I lost my house. I need to rebuild. Can you help me?” So, you know, talking to her, hearing the kind of toll it emotionally takes on her of having to tell these people, “I can't help you. You don't have the proper insurance or you are underinsured. You're insured for what your house was worth 30 years ago. This is California and it's three times that now.” You can't even build a shack for the value some of these people have their stuff insured for. So there is that. And then at various places I've lived - every place I have lived - I have in some ways been involved with fire.
When I was in Missouri, I photographed the local fire academy and the firefighters there. When I was in Georgia, I photographed prescribed burns.
When I was in Colorado it was a particularly rough summer and Fort Carson decided that no matter how many times it was a red flag day, they still had to do live fire exercises. And so I photographed probably three or four times they set the grassland on fire.
When I was in Wyoming, I again photographed a fire academy and was really close with a lot of the firefighters there. And then obviously moved here and started at Searchlight, right? So I started on April 1st. The McBride Fire in Ruidoso, which is this photo right here, which burned from the center of Ruidoso, straight up a canyon, happened, I think, April 14, I believe. So, like literally just weeks into my time here.
And then, obviously, Hermit's Peak/Calf Canyon happened, which is this photo.
So, yeah, it's just kind of been a very current theme throughout my work, something that I'm very passionate about. And then with that same background, both my parents being in construction and architecture and the built environment, I've become very interested in how we design our environments, design our relationship with the environment to kind of create some sort of sustainable equilibrium because obviously, like the answer is not ‘do not build in forests’, right? But we also can’t burn every forest down.
MB:
So going from working for newspapers where you have multiple assignments in the course of the day, you're covering breaking news and stuff like that, to something, let's say a themed kind of thing like this, something that you're passionate about and invested in, and it takes place over time. I'm wondering if you're considering, as a photographer… I think as a news photographer, you must have an assignment to be there in the moment and get the moment that explains what's going on to everybody else. In work like this where you're telling a story over time, it's more it's more photo essay maybe than you'd normally get from a newspaper assignment. But are you thinking more in terms of artful photography? I mean, like, do you get to choose time of day? Do you get to choose lens angles and stuff like that are more art oriented, maybe a little bit than strictly trying to catch the moment and not miss that.
NS:
A little maybe? Certainly for some things like landscapes, where if I'm setting up a specific portrait of someone, I do have a little bit more control over time of day, things like that. For example, this image of the logging truck, I went to photograph an event, a tour that this lumber yard out in Grants, NM was hosting for a native youth group who were interested in forestry and rejuvenative lumber practices. So this is actually one of the areas that that lumber company had treated and is a much healthier Ponderosa forest with much more area not as densely packed, not as unhealthy.
MB:
So they were doing good things?
NS:
Yeah, they were doing good things. That is actually a place where they were. So this is out in the Cibola Forest, west of Albuquerque. And about 100 years ago, the entire area, which was clear cut for lumber.
And this is an unhealthy Ponderosa forest - you can see how tightly packed they are. That's how it grows back. It's all even. You don't have different generational trees in there. So what they were doing is they were going in along a prescription from the Forest Service and taking out trees.
MB:
That makes it healthier all the way around.
NS:
Yes, much healthier. It lets them kind of pick generational gaps. So you should have like three or four generations of Ponderosa in a healthy Ponderosa forest instead of all one generation. And so that was a very specific event. I had to be there when they were going to do. I do follow along with them.
Other things I get, for example, this image I just had to go find unhealthy forest, so I got as much time as I wanted to do.
So there's a balance. I mean, even when I was a photojournalist at the newspaper, like the goal was still to create artful photos.
MB:
Okay. I mean, I think of people like Doug Mills that The New York Times, you know, James Nachtwey, who's covering war. It's war happening. But everything that he does is, like, Sebastiao Salgado. Everything has an artfulness to it. Challenging, I would think, to be able to do that. You don't have the opportunity to do that.
NS:
No. And I mean like, I think I would say that maybe for Doug Mills you get a much more unvarnished view then for a lot of like Nachtwey or Salgado's work where you only see kind of the best that has been made into a book.
MB:
Right.
NS:
Like if I went back and made a book of all of my newspaper work, I'm not going to include the city council. That's horrible fluorescent lighting. I don't care how good of a photographer you are, you’re not doing art.
NS:
So, I mean, there is some of that. I mean, I've, like, made beautiful work on normal newspaper assignments. Sometimes you just get blessed with perfect light. The timing is just right. They have, you know, a nice, beautiful background in their room that you get to work with. So I would say to an extent I get a bit more time with work at Searchlight with longer form projects like this where I get to go back. That's really the biggest key.
I get to go multiple times. So I can take photos, go home, see what works and what didn't work, and make another shot at it and say, okay, well now I'm going to try it like this because I think there's an opportunity there. I'm going to go back.
MB:
Well, kind of the first time becomes your scout, basically, to see what you’ve actually got to deal with, right? Because a lot of it is walking in cold and having to make something.
NS:
The other part is also the more I can go back, the better access I get, the more kind of like emotional openness I get with the people I'm working with. So that also helps. The more you can go back, the more they can see that you're not just cruising for an opportunity.
MB:
Going to you're not going to publish something poorly or something like that. That they can trust you.
NS:
Yeah. Or that you're not just going to forget about them. You know, just parachuting in to make the photo and leave and never talk to them again.
MB:
So, so like the forest story, these guys, we're doing good things for the forest, for the future of the forests. But Searchlight is investigative journalism. So there have to be people that you go see that really don't want to see you coming, right?
NS:
Oh, yeah. Lots of the time. Yeah, I mean, not so with the forest fire story. I didn't have that happen too much. A lot of the people were pretty private, especially in some of the more rural areas of northern New Mexico, where I spent a lot of time, like in the smaller towns outside of Mora, above Las Vegas. You know, they just kind of wanted to keep to themselves. So they weren't always super open to everything, but they weren’t, like, hostile to us. Same with the people who are doing thinning efforts. Even the Forest Service and the state forestry are pretty open to us.
MB:
But you go after bad guys? Right?
NS:
Yeah. In other times we do, yeah. So a recent story at Searchlight, I was barely able to make photos for. It was just so obscure in what we needed. But it was about the anniversary of the the Police Consent Decree in Albuquerque. It was a lot of historic photos of events that happened before my time. We think we have a good relationship with the Albuquerque Journal and can borrow from the archives a lot. And then we're trying to get photos of the independent monitor, the guy whose job it is to look over to the Department of Justice and Albuquerque Police Department in this process of kind of reforming the department. And he gets paid, like, a million plus a year to do so. And it turns out he lives in North Carolina.
So I was ready to hop on a plane, but they weren’t ready to pay for that. But he has an office in Albuquerque. And so we went to the office. But office has no signs. It is locked. You can't walk into it. You just have to ring the doorbell and hope someone answers. They're open like 3 hours a day, most weekdays. Sometimes not.
So I went there and it's like a really on unassuming strip mall. We knocked on the door and a guy answered and said, “You can't come in. I'm not telling you my name. Please leave. Well, we're not going to talk to the press.”
So I made photos of him.
We didn't end up publishing that.
I ended up sitting on the side of a road and waited for him to leave work for the day. And they weren't great photos, so we didn't end up end up running them. But yeah, there's times where we're just walking in saying like, you hate us, we're going to take your photo.
MB:
All right. I want to talk a little bit about gear. So, you have these two kits.
NS:
Yes.
WHAT’S IN YOUR BAG?
Yes, This is a, uh - “theme”might be appropriate. There is a story there that I'm just not done with yet. So there are many stories in here that have been published, but this is all different work from around New Mexico relating to wildfire. Some of it active fires, some of it fire preparation, some of it post-fire.
MB:
And it's kind of personal interest for you?
NS:
Yeah. So, I grew up in northern California, heart of kind of wildfire country - and didn't have a whole lot of experience with that actually growing up. The really like big kind of California fire story started shortly after I left for college. Things like, you know, the Park Fire and things like that. But that being said, you know, I still would follow it and I know the place that they're talking about. And when fire burned through Sonoma and Santa Rosa, my father, who works in construction, wasn't there anymore, but he had been doing a lot of work on this particular ridgeline when I was growing up. And so pretty much every house he built from the time I was three ’til high school is gone.
So there's a personal tie there. My mom also works in construction. She’s an architect and she just has to deal with calls every single year of: “I lost my house. I need to rebuild. Can you help me?” So, you know, talking to her, hearing the kind of toll it emotionally takes on her of having to tell these people, “I can't help you. You don't have the proper insurance or you are underinsured. You're insured for what your house was worth 30 years ago. This is California and it's three times that now.” You can't even build a shack for the value some of these people have their stuff insured for. So there is that. And then at various places I've lived - every place I have lived - I have in some ways been involved with fire.
When I was in Missouri, I photographed the local fire academy and the firefighters there. When I was in Georgia, I photographed prescribed burns.
When I was in Colorado it was a particularly rough summer and Fort Carson decided that no matter how many times it was a red flag day, they still had to do live fire exercises. And so I photographed probably three or four times they set the grassland on fire.
When I was in Wyoming, I again photographed a fire academy and was really close with a lot of the firefighters there. And then obviously moved here and started at Searchlight, right? So I started on April 1st. The McBride Fire in Ruidoso, which is this photo right here, which burned from the center of Ruidoso, straight up a canyon, happened, I think, April 14, I believe. So, like literally just weeks into my time here.
And then, obviously, Hermit's Peak/Calf Canyon happened, which is this photo.
So, yeah, it's just kind of been a very current theme throughout my work, something that I'm very passionate about. And then with that same background, both my parents being in construction and architecture and the built environment, I've become very interested in how we design our environments, design our relationship with the environment to kind of create some sort of sustainable equilibrium because obviously, like the answer is not ‘do not build in forests’, right? But we also can’t burn every forest down.
MB:
So going from working for newspapers where you have multiple assignments in the course of the day, you're covering breaking news and stuff like that, to something, let's say a themed kind of thing like this, something that you're passionate about and invested in, and it takes place over time. I'm wondering if you're considering, as a photographer… I think as a news photographer, you must have an assignment to be there in the moment and get the moment that explains what's going on to everybody else. In work like this where you're telling a story over time, it's more it's more photo essay maybe than you'd normally get from a newspaper assignment. But are you thinking more in terms of artful photography? I mean, like, do you get to choose time of day? Do you get to choose lens angles and stuff like that are more art oriented, maybe a little bit than strictly trying to catch the moment and not miss that.
NS:
A little maybe? Certainly for some things like landscapes, where if I'm setting up a specific portrait of someone, I do have a little bit more control over time of day, things like that. For example, this image of the logging truck, I went to photograph an event, a tour that this lumber yard out in Grants, NM was hosting for a native youth group who were interested in forestry and rejuvenative lumber practices. So this is actually one of the areas that that lumber company had treated and is a much healthier Ponderosa forest with much more area not as densely packed, not as unhealthy.
MB:
So they were doing good things?
NS:
Yeah, they were doing good things. That is actually a place where they were. So this is out in the Cibola Forest, west of Albuquerque. And about 100 years ago, the entire area, which was clear cut for lumber.
And this is an unhealthy Ponderosa forest - you can see how tightly packed they are. That's how it grows back. It's all even. You don't have different generational trees in there. So what they were doing is they were going in along a prescription from the Forest Service and taking out trees.
MB:
That makes it healthier all the way around.
NS:
Yes, much healthier. It lets them kind of pick generational gaps. So you should have like three or four generations of Ponderosa in a healthy Ponderosa forest instead of all one generation. And so that was a very specific event. I had to be there when they were going to do. I do follow along with them.
Other things I get, for example, this image I just had to go find unhealthy forest, so I got as much time as I wanted to do.
So there's a balance. I mean, even when I was a photojournalist at the newspaper, like the goal was still to create artful photos.
MB:
Okay. I mean, I think of people like Doug Mills that The New York Times, you know, James Nachtwey, who's covering war. It's war happening. But everything that he does is, like, Sebastiao Salgado. Everything has an artfulness to it. Challenging, I would think, to be able to do that. You don't have the opportunity to do that.
NS:
No. And I mean like, I think I would say that maybe for Doug Mills you get a much more unvarnished view then for a lot of like Nachtwey or Salgado's work where you only see kind of the best that has been made into a book.
MB:
Right.
NS:
Like if I went back and made a book of all of my newspaper work, I'm not going to include the city council. That's horrible fluorescent lighting. I don't care how good of a photographer you are, you’re not doing art.
NS:
So, I mean, there is some of that. I mean, I've, like, made beautiful work on normal newspaper assignments. Sometimes you just get blessed with perfect light. The timing is just right. They have, you know, a nice, beautiful background in their room that you get to work with. So I would say to an extent I get a bit more time with work at Searchlight with longer form projects like this where I get to go back. That's really the biggest key.
I get to go multiple times. So I can take photos, go home, see what works and what didn't work, and make another shot at it and say, okay, well now I'm going to try it like this because I think there's an opportunity there. I'm going to go back.
MB:
Well, kind of the first time becomes your scout, basically, to see what you’ve actually got to deal with, right? Because a lot of it is walking in cold and having to make something.
NS:
The other part is also the more I can go back, the better access I get, the more kind of like emotional openness I get with the people I'm working with. So that also helps. The more you can go back, the more they can see that you're not just cruising for an opportunity.
MB:
Going to you're not going to publish something poorly or something like that. That they can trust you.
NS:
Yeah. Or that you're not just going to forget about them. You know, just parachuting in to make the photo and leave and never talk to them again.
MB:
So, so like the forest story, these guys, we're doing good things for the forest, for the future of the forests. But Searchlight is investigative journalism. So there have to be people that you go see that really don't want to see you coming, right?
NS:
Oh, yeah. Lots of the time. Yeah, I mean, not so with the forest fire story. I didn't have that happen too much. A lot of the people were pretty private, especially in some of the more rural areas of northern New Mexico, where I spent a lot of time, like in the smaller towns outside of Mora, above Las Vegas. You know, they just kind of wanted to keep to themselves. So they weren't always super open to everything, but they weren’t, like, hostile to us. Same with the people who are doing thinning efforts. Even the Forest Service and the state forestry are pretty open to us.
MB:
But you go after bad guys? Right?
NS:
Yeah. In other times we do, yeah. So a recent story at Searchlight, I was barely able to make photos for. It was just so obscure in what we needed. But it was about the anniversary of the the Police Consent Decree in Albuquerque. It was a lot of historic photos of events that happened before my time. We think we have a good relationship with the Albuquerque Journal and can borrow from the archives a lot. And then we're trying to get photos of the independent monitor, the guy whose job it is to look over to the Department of Justice and Albuquerque Police Department in this process of kind of reforming the department. And he gets paid, like, a million plus a year to do so. And it turns out he lives in North Carolina.
So I was ready to hop on a plane, but they weren’t ready to pay for that. But he has an office in Albuquerque. And so we went to the office. But office has no signs. It is locked. You can't walk into it. You just have to ring the doorbell and hope someone answers. They're open like 3 hours a day, most weekdays. Sometimes not.
So I went there and it's like a really on unassuming strip mall. We knocked on the door and a guy answered and said, “You can't come in. I'm not telling you my name. Please leave. Well, we're not going to talk to the press.”
So I made photos of him.
We didn't end up publishing that.
I ended up sitting on the side of a road and waited for him to leave work for the day. And they weren't great photos, so we didn't end up end up running them. But yeah, there's times where we're just walking in saying like, you hate us, we're going to take your photo.
MB:
All right. I want to talk a little bit about gear. So, you have these two kits.
NS:
Yes.
WHAT’S IN YOUR BAG?
MB:
You’ve got your Fuji here today, right?
NS:
Yep. Right up here. Okay.
MB:
So how do you choose which to use? What are you what are you doing with them? What's the strategy?
NS:
The Sony is by far the workhorse. That is the kit I have in some variety used pretty much since I left college. It's an A7r iv. If I went back and bought it again, I'd buy probably an A9. At the time when I got it, I was in Wyoming and I was doing a lot of photos of mountains and stuff and I wanted the high resolution so I can do these beautiful landscapes. And sometimes I still do that and it's really great for that. It’s 64 megapixels. But it has to the high ISO capabilities of a wet blanket. So I would probably pick something else given the opportunity if and when I buy another camera. Though I do like it, I would like to keep it as a backup. And there’s a 70-200 f2.8 and a 16-35 f2.8. Yeah. And that essentially covers 95% of what I do, with the remainder being occasionally getting some kind of prime for a portrait, or like a super telephoto - a 300mm or 400mm.
So that is pretty much all of my journalism work. It's not always a Sony. It's been a Canon 5Diii. It's been to one, 1Dx, it's been a D5. It’s been all kinds of different things. But that's what it currently is.
MB:
And essentially that sort of range of lenses. That package, right?
NS:
Yeah. I mean, I'm still using a Canon 16-35 zoom that I .had before I got my 5Diii and I use an adapter. So yeah, the thing's almost old enough to drive
And then the Fuji, I use it for occasions when I am not quite so “press”. It's a lot more personal work, a lot more if I'm going to walk around or if I'm kind of scouting out a situation. It's all primes, right? So the equivalent of 35, 50 and 85 roughly, aps-c crop sensor. But functional, it's quiet, it's small, it's a little less obtrusive.
MB:
I was going to say, if you're kind of scouting or trying to scope something out, not dragging around a huge zoom helps.
NS:
Yeah. If I'm trying to meet with someone who isn't sure if they want to be photographed and I know I'm going to have multiple opportunities, I'll bring the X Pro II just because it's not in their face as much. Or if I'm in a situation I don't know if I want a photograph from, and I don't want to carry a bunch of stuff around. It ends up doing a lot more personal work than the Sony does.
So that kind of is the division there.
MB:
I shoot pretty much mostly all primes. How do you feel like going out with your prime kit and knowing that you don't have the zoom options that you would have with the other kit? Is that something to think about before you leave the house?
NS:
Yeah, I mean, I would say generally speaking, if I am leaving the house knowing I need to come home with a photo, I take the Sony. If I'm leaving the house and it's not as big of a deal, or if I'm doing personal work and I just want to enjoy what I'm doing - because I actually enjoy the Fuji much more than I enjoy the Sony. The Sony is a very, incredibly powerful, sterile tool, right? Whereas the Fuji feels more like doing old school photography, playing with my Leica or my AE-1.
MB:
Yeah, and that's kind of the standard photojournalist’s lens kit, right?
NS:
And yes, I'm usually pretty comfortable if I'm taking the Fuji, knowing that maybe I won't have what I need to get a photo that I might want. But also the limitations of the primes does kind of help clarify things sometimes.
MB:
Yeah, I find a lot of people use a zoom lens to crop rather than to choose a focal length. For assignment work you kind of need to have that. But if you can if you can take this approach of personal work and say, today I've got a 35 then those are the pictures I'm going to be taking.
NS:
That's what I got right now. So that's kind of the gear. So the Fuji is pretty much always with me. It stays in my main backpack, whereas the Sony has its own work bag. There have been times, for example, this photo right here that you chose of the fire. ..
MB:
Yeah…
NS:
This was actually taken with my Fuji and not because I wanted to, but because my 5Diii - this was in Georgia - a plastics factory you caught on fire and I happened to be nearby and so I got there before the police did and was able to just hang out inside the police cordon. But in the midst of the smoke and stuff, I went to change lenses on my 5Diii and right as I had the lens opened came down to wrath-of God rain storm and turned the 5Diii into a puddle. And so that's just life. I just looked at it and was like, cool…
So I ran back to my car and swapped out the Fuji, which only had a 23 mm lens - the 35mm equivalent - and I photographed the entire rest of this fire with just that.
There's a decent chunk of my portfolio that has been taken with the Fuji because it just happened to be what I had with me in a breaking news event or something happened. I also liked throwing it around my neck is a third camera for when I was photographing large sporting events so I could have a usually a 70-200mm or 24-105mm on one camera, a 300mm on the other, and then I would keep the 35mm just around for atmosphere. So yeah, it's gotten plenty of use.
MB:
I love the simplicity of these two kits, you know, that you're not thinking all the time about a carrying a bunch of stuff and which thing do I have on here right now. What do I need to change?
NS:
Yeah, if I could change literally anything about it, I would just have two cameras just so I didn't have to change lenses. Because, I love my mirrorless but that thing gets dirty like nobody’s business.
MB:
Oh, yeah. When you’re swapping lenses.
NS:
Yeah. Especially if you're in a fire or things like that.
MB:
And then you do drone stuff. I don't know anything about drones really, except that they’re - up there.
DRONE KIT
You’ve got your Fuji here today, right?
NS:
Yep. Right up here. Okay.
MB:
So how do you choose which to use? What are you what are you doing with them? What's the strategy?
NS:
The Sony is by far the workhorse. That is the kit I have in some variety used pretty much since I left college. It's an A7r iv. If I went back and bought it again, I'd buy probably an A9. At the time when I got it, I was in Wyoming and I was doing a lot of photos of mountains and stuff and I wanted the high resolution so I can do these beautiful landscapes. And sometimes I still do that and it's really great for that. It’s 64 megapixels. But it has to the high ISO capabilities of a wet blanket. So I would probably pick something else given the opportunity if and when I buy another camera. Though I do like it, I would like to keep it as a backup. And there’s a 70-200 f2.8 and a 16-35 f2.8. Yeah. And that essentially covers 95% of what I do, with the remainder being occasionally getting some kind of prime for a portrait, or like a super telephoto - a 300mm or 400mm.
So that is pretty much all of my journalism work. It's not always a Sony. It's been a Canon 5Diii. It's been to one, 1Dx, it's been a D5. It’s been all kinds of different things. But that's what it currently is.
MB:
And essentially that sort of range of lenses. That package, right?
NS:
Yeah. I mean, I'm still using a Canon 16-35 zoom that I .had before I got my 5Diii and I use an adapter. So yeah, the thing's almost old enough to drive
And then the Fuji, I use it for occasions when I am not quite so “press”. It's a lot more personal work, a lot more if I'm going to walk around or if I'm kind of scouting out a situation. It's all primes, right? So the equivalent of 35, 50 and 85 roughly, aps-c crop sensor. But functional, it's quiet, it's small, it's a little less obtrusive.
MB:
I was going to say, if you're kind of scouting or trying to scope something out, not dragging around a huge zoom helps.
NS:
Yeah. If I'm trying to meet with someone who isn't sure if they want to be photographed and I know I'm going to have multiple opportunities, I'll bring the X Pro II just because it's not in their face as much. Or if I'm in a situation I don't know if I want a photograph from, and I don't want to carry a bunch of stuff around. It ends up doing a lot more personal work than the Sony does.
So that kind of is the division there.
MB:
I shoot pretty much mostly all primes. How do you feel like going out with your prime kit and knowing that you don't have the zoom options that you would have with the other kit? Is that something to think about before you leave the house?
NS:
Yeah, I mean, I would say generally speaking, if I am leaving the house knowing I need to come home with a photo, I take the Sony. If I'm leaving the house and it's not as big of a deal, or if I'm doing personal work and I just want to enjoy what I'm doing - because I actually enjoy the Fuji much more than I enjoy the Sony. The Sony is a very, incredibly powerful, sterile tool, right? Whereas the Fuji feels more like doing old school photography, playing with my Leica or my AE-1.
MB:
Yeah, and that's kind of the standard photojournalist’s lens kit, right?
NS:
And yes, I'm usually pretty comfortable if I'm taking the Fuji, knowing that maybe I won't have what I need to get a photo that I might want. But also the limitations of the primes does kind of help clarify things sometimes.
MB:
Yeah, I find a lot of people use a zoom lens to crop rather than to choose a focal length. For assignment work you kind of need to have that. But if you can if you can take this approach of personal work and say, today I've got a 35 then those are the pictures I'm going to be taking.
NS:
That's what I got right now. So that's kind of the gear. So the Fuji is pretty much always with me. It stays in my main backpack, whereas the Sony has its own work bag. There have been times, for example, this photo right here that you chose of the fire. ..
MB:
Yeah…
NS:
This was actually taken with my Fuji and not because I wanted to, but because my 5Diii - this was in Georgia - a plastics factory you caught on fire and I happened to be nearby and so I got there before the police did and was able to just hang out inside the police cordon. But in the midst of the smoke and stuff, I went to change lenses on my 5Diii and right as I had the lens opened came down to wrath-of God rain storm and turned the 5Diii into a puddle. And so that's just life. I just looked at it and was like, cool…
So I ran back to my car and swapped out the Fuji, which only had a 23 mm lens - the 35mm equivalent - and I photographed the entire rest of this fire with just that.
There's a decent chunk of my portfolio that has been taken with the Fuji because it just happened to be what I had with me in a breaking news event or something happened. I also liked throwing it around my neck is a third camera for when I was photographing large sporting events so I could have a usually a 70-200mm or 24-105mm on one camera, a 300mm on the other, and then I would keep the 35mm just around for atmosphere. So yeah, it's gotten plenty of use.
MB:
I love the simplicity of these two kits, you know, that you're not thinking all the time about a carrying a bunch of stuff and which thing do I have on here right now. What do I need to change?
NS:
Yeah, if I could change literally anything about it, I would just have two cameras just so I didn't have to change lenses. Because, I love my mirrorless but that thing gets dirty like nobody’s business.
MB:
Oh, yeah. When you’re swapping lenses.
NS:
Yeah. Especially if you're in a fire or things like that.
MB:
And then you do drone stuff. I don't know anything about drones really, except that they’re - up there.
DRONE KIT
NS:
Yeah, that's honestly kind of what it's come down to - it’s just up there, you know, That's kind of where it's fit into my kit. I've been doing it for about a year and a half. I got my license while I was at Searchlight, they helped pay for it. I didn't know that you don't need a license to be a drone photographer. You only need a license to make money with a drone. That is the only difference.
MB:
For fun is free, then?
NS:
Yes. Literally, an FAA Part 107 license is specifically to engage in commercial activity. Everything I can do with a drone, you can do with the drone. Except for I get paid for it. Right? Really, it just has come to a point of, like I need to be up there.
MB:
Another viewpoint.
NS:
It's been particularly useful for things like when I was photographing a wildfire and it's just hard to wrap your head around how massively devastating these things can be if you can't get any kind of aerial view. Although the aerial view also kind of does de-personalize it. So having the ability to go back and forth is important. I wouldn’t just photograph it with a drone.
You know, I photographed illegal weed farms, which is found in my newsletter.
MB:
And what happened to your drone?
NS:
And that was a great question. I still don’t know - I just don't have it anymore. Yeah, it was over the illegal weed farm when it went down. I don't think it was shot down - well, at least not with like a traditional gun - because I didn't hear a report… potentially maybe an airsoft gun or something like that. There was also a hawk in the area, which is a known problem for drones. There were fairly high winds that day, so a lot of the panoramas I tried failed because of shake, right?
But yeah, it's gone. So this is the new one.
MB:
And you went to try to get it back, right?
NS:
Kind of. Well, first of all, it happened while Ed Williams, the reporter, was talking to a source. We were in her driveway, like across the street, when we took off and flew the drone. So he was talking to her and I just said, like, “Ed, we have a problem.”
And then we called my editor, and Amy Linn was like, I don't think it's safe for you guys to go there. To try and sneak onto an illegal weed farm to try and recover a drone. Actually, she asked me how much it cost, first, before she made her decision.
Regardless, I actually I insure all of my gear because I know some of it is going to get destroyed. So I was like, don't worry, it's insured. The deductible is not that bad. But we did actually still go to the front gate of the of the weed farm because we wanted to see if that had anything posted. And because it was it was a previously legal weed farm that had been unlicensed. They revoked the license and fined them for problems. It's not hidden in the back hills, like hillbilly style or something.
But we went up to the front gate and it's still had it signs and it still had everything kind of published, and the gate was open and we went there and we stopped to take a photo and just like read the signs and stuff. And a guy came out and was like, “Hey, do you need anything?” And we're like, “Oh, we're reporters.” And so he photographed us and then closed the gate.
Well, I think it was to let his boss know because we had had interactions with his boss before. It was a farm run by a guy named Dinah Benally who had previously run a weed farm up on the Navajo Nation that engaged in human wound rk trafficking, and Ed Williams and Don Usner at the time had done a story about that got that shut down, raided by the FBI. Then he moved down to Estancia where we just kind of did a little follow up like, hey, this guy who got raided and had his farm shut down by the FBI is back. And then the state licensing board came out and we're like, Oh, you're not running a clean operation. You have four times more plants than are on your license. We're shutting you down. And then we went back again because they shut him down and he did not shut down. So we were kind of a known quantity to them.
MB:
Well, the drone stuff is really cool and I can see how it gives you like a way to kind of back out of the personal the very personal parts of the story and give a perspective.
NS:
Yeah. And it kind of ends up being for me, it's like an overview tool. So a lot of the time I use it to photograph a complex, I need a photograph of a large building, a hospital, you know, a large swath of forest or river or something like that.
MB:
And are you shooting motion at all or just stills? Because, I mean, you're a website, so you can actually post motion if you need to.
NS:
Yeah, yeah. I think there's a looping gif that we have on the fire story on Searchlight. You know, the overarching one of the drone panning over a lake and into burned woods. So I do both, but stills are primarily what we use.
MB:
Okay, so this is the Rio Grande story. And this is all black and white.
NS:
Yes.
RIO GRANDE
MB:
And you kind of inherited black and white from Don’s establishment of that as a look for Searchlight when they started, right? Is that why it's black and white?
NS:
Actually, no. We ran the story in color.
MB:
Oh, you did?
NS:
I spent a lot of time photographing it in black and white. I found my thinking switched to more black and white as I was photographing in black and white, starting to work at Searchlight. I mean, I originally started photographing black and white way back in college, so it's not like I'd never done it before. But I thought I started thinking in black and white.
MB:
And so, I mean, you're shooting color - you don't have a monochrome camera - you’re shooting color, and then going black and white when you post.
NS:
There was a point where I actually was shooting camera raw with a black and white filter in camera so that I could see kind of what it looked like in black and white. But I had all the data of color, right.
Anyway, so I did an edit of this in black and white that we didn't end up using, but that I really liked. So it ran in color. But here it is, black and white, because that's how I like looking at it. There's a few more photos in here than ran in the story itself.
MB:
Okay. How are you thinking in black and white when you see it? I mean, you're shooting color, or you're, you're seeing color on the back of the camera, but you're just thinking you’re going to go there. It's got your sensibility, that lighting and contrast difference?
NS:
Sometimes I actually do have the black and white filter in camera while I’m shooting RAW. So I’m seeing in black and white. And then sometimes I'm just thinking in black and white of where the light and shadows are, kind of where the tonal contrasts are. Especially if I don't like some of the color contrast or color compatibility. Sometimes I'm just like, I think this would work better in black and white. Or if I really want to emphasize kind of the beautiful light in some areas, I will kind of think in black and white.
MB:
I think it's traditional. I mean, when I'm working with students, it's always like, “Why are you going to black and white?” And to me it's photojournalism - that’s classic traditional photojournalism. And it tells a story in a completely different way because you don't have that added conflict of color that gets in the way sometimes of what the picture is all about.
NS:
Yeah. For example, this photo right here, super sweet guy. He runs - I do not want to butcher all of the proper titles, but he works for he works for the government. This is the Azatoe Outlet Tunnel. He's in charge of drawing water from the Colorado River, bringing it through the Continental Divide to join into the Rio Grande. And he was like in a bright yellow security vest, right?
MB:
Yeah. Doesn't do anything for the story part of it. Right? This is an ongoing story. So again, I know like for advertising stuff, oftentimes we're we have to make a picture that says everything that has to be said about whatever that is. You get the chance to do photo essays. So you get to build these series of images that tell stories, close ups and wide shots and drone shots and and whatever. Do you prefer that kind of a luxury of being able to tell a story over time with a number of different images?
NS:
Yes.
MB:
And Searchlight will publish it that way, right? It's heavily image driven.
NS:
Yes. They will publish it as a photo essay. So for example this was a fairly short story with a bunch of images that all had very long captions kind of detailing what happened.
I mean, I prefer working in that longer form style - assuming the story needs that. I mean, some stories just don't need that. They just don't lend themselves to that. That is one thing I'm very particular about is, is this the most appropriate way to tell this story? But for something as large scope as the Rio Grande from the Colorado to the Texas border, you definitely kind of need multiple photos to tell that. But I also kind of think of it as a package of smaller stories. So I go into each situation like this one photo needs to tell this whole facet of this story segment. It should be able to tell, you know, if I'm taking a photo of an angler along the Rio Grande, it should be able to tell the story of all anglers along the Rio Grande. If I'm making a photo of a farmer, it needs to be able to tell the story of all farmers.
Even if I then get ten photos, later on, that also help tell that, and I'm going to make a book that's 200 photos long I should, at least in my mind, a lot of the kind of core anchor points of the story, I should be able to photograph and publish standalone if I need to go to it.
MB:
How do you know when you're done?
NS:
That's a great question. I'll let you know if I figure it out. I don't know. I'm not yet.
MB:
No? Okay.
NS:
I mean, like, at least as far as publishing the story in Searchlight…
MB:
You’ve got deadlines for Searchlight, so at a point you have to be done.
NS:
I knew I was done because they told me. We’re publishing next week.
But, I mean, I've gone back and photographed since then, so, I mean, like, there is a story that is done and has been published. There is another story that I'm still working on and when I'm done with it, it will publish. And then there is the greater story of the Rio Grande, for which I am just a drop, right? It has been here for a lot longer than I have been, and assuming we don't kill it somehow, it will be here a lot longer than I am. So that being said, it does run dry at certain points.
MB:
Do you get a chance to continue pursuing a story - like, do you get introduced to a subject or a person or a kind of a theme through an assignment and then pursue it on your own after that? Outside of what the what searchlight is asking you to do?
NS:
Yes. Mm hmm. I would say the fire story started like that. I mean, I was asked to go down and photograph the McBride fire in Ruidoso, made photos, said I need to come back. The main story we we need to tell is not done yet. I was there too late for, like, the breaking news - like ‘there's a fire.’ And I was too early for the full reconstruction and longer story.
And then I went up to Calf Canyon - well, actually, at the time it was Hermit's Peak. I went up to Hermit's Peak before it was the combined fire, and then worked to kind of develop that story with the editors and with primarily reporter Lindsay Fendt, who now has another job and is not at Searchlight anymore, but was their environmental reporter at the time. And also with Alicia Inez Guzmán to kind of create a multipart fire story. But then even after that was done, I went down, did fire training to get certified as a firefighter.
MB:
Really?
NS:
Yeah. It's pretty easy, actually. I mean, it's not easy, but it's like two weekends. You need to be able to carry 45 pounds 3miles in under 45 minutes. Trust me, there were people who were in their like sixties who are there. So I went down and did that and then having that…
MB:
And that gives you more access.
NS:
Exactly. So then after that I was able to do another one, another short photo essay for Searchlight about the first thousand acre wildfire of last season, which was on private land southeast of Ruidoso. I've photographed a few other fires up north. Nothing really turned into a big fire story for Searchlight last year - I had other focuses, particularly Rio Grande story. But I have continued pursuing that and still pursuing that as kind of a personal project that occasionally makes cameos in Searchlight.
MB:
We just have a little addendum thing here with your drone stuff.
DRONE IMAGES
And you kind of inherited black and white from Don’s establishment of that as a look for Searchlight when they started, right? Is that why it's black and white?
NS:
Actually, no. We ran the story in color.
MB:
Oh, you did?
NS:
I spent a lot of time photographing it in black and white. I found my thinking switched to more black and white as I was photographing in black and white, starting to work at Searchlight. I mean, I originally started photographing black and white way back in college, so it's not like I'd never done it before. But I thought I started thinking in black and white.
MB:
And so, I mean, you're shooting color - you don't have a monochrome camera - you’re shooting color, and then going black and white when you post.
NS:
There was a point where I actually was shooting camera raw with a black and white filter in camera so that I could see kind of what it looked like in black and white. But I had all the data of color, right.
Anyway, so I did an edit of this in black and white that we didn't end up using, but that I really liked. So it ran in color. But here it is, black and white, because that's how I like looking at it. There's a few more photos in here than ran in the story itself.
MB:
Okay. How are you thinking in black and white when you see it? I mean, you're shooting color, or you're, you're seeing color on the back of the camera, but you're just thinking you’re going to go there. It's got your sensibility, that lighting and contrast difference?
NS:
Sometimes I actually do have the black and white filter in camera while I’m shooting RAW. So I’m seeing in black and white. And then sometimes I'm just thinking in black and white of where the light and shadows are, kind of where the tonal contrasts are. Especially if I don't like some of the color contrast or color compatibility. Sometimes I'm just like, I think this would work better in black and white. Or if I really want to emphasize kind of the beautiful light in some areas, I will kind of think in black and white.
MB:
I think it's traditional. I mean, when I'm working with students, it's always like, “Why are you going to black and white?” And to me it's photojournalism - that’s classic traditional photojournalism. And it tells a story in a completely different way because you don't have that added conflict of color that gets in the way sometimes of what the picture is all about.
NS:
Yeah. For example, this photo right here, super sweet guy. He runs - I do not want to butcher all of the proper titles, but he works for he works for the government. This is the Azatoe Outlet Tunnel. He's in charge of drawing water from the Colorado River, bringing it through the Continental Divide to join into the Rio Grande. And he was like in a bright yellow security vest, right?
MB:
Yeah. Doesn't do anything for the story part of it. Right? This is an ongoing story. So again, I know like for advertising stuff, oftentimes we're we have to make a picture that says everything that has to be said about whatever that is. You get the chance to do photo essays. So you get to build these series of images that tell stories, close ups and wide shots and drone shots and and whatever. Do you prefer that kind of a luxury of being able to tell a story over time with a number of different images?
NS:
Yes.
MB:
And Searchlight will publish it that way, right? It's heavily image driven.
NS:
Yes. They will publish it as a photo essay. So for example this was a fairly short story with a bunch of images that all had very long captions kind of detailing what happened.
I mean, I prefer working in that longer form style - assuming the story needs that. I mean, some stories just don't need that. They just don't lend themselves to that. That is one thing I'm very particular about is, is this the most appropriate way to tell this story? But for something as large scope as the Rio Grande from the Colorado to the Texas border, you definitely kind of need multiple photos to tell that. But I also kind of think of it as a package of smaller stories. So I go into each situation like this one photo needs to tell this whole facet of this story segment. It should be able to tell, you know, if I'm taking a photo of an angler along the Rio Grande, it should be able to tell the story of all anglers along the Rio Grande. If I'm making a photo of a farmer, it needs to be able to tell the story of all farmers.
Even if I then get ten photos, later on, that also help tell that, and I'm going to make a book that's 200 photos long I should, at least in my mind, a lot of the kind of core anchor points of the story, I should be able to photograph and publish standalone if I need to go to it.
MB:
How do you know when you're done?
NS:
That's a great question. I'll let you know if I figure it out. I don't know. I'm not yet.
MB:
No? Okay.
NS:
I mean, like, at least as far as publishing the story in Searchlight…
MB:
You’ve got deadlines for Searchlight, so at a point you have to be done.
NS:
I knew I was done because they told me. We’re publishing next week.
But, I mean, I've gone back and photographed since then, so, I mean, like, there is a story that is done and has been published. There is another story that I'm still working on and when I'm done with it, it will publish. And then there is the greater story of the Rio Grande, for which I am just a drop, right? It has been here for a lot longer than I have been, and assuming we don't kill it somehow, it will be here a lot longer than I am. So that being said, it does run dry at certain points.
MB:
Do you get a chance to continue pursuing a story - like, do you get introduced to a subject or a person or a kind of a theme through an assignment and then pursue it on your own after that? Outside of what the what searchlight is asking you to do?
NS:
Yes. Mm hmm. I would say the fire story started like that. I mean, I was asked to go down and photograph the McBride fire in Ruidoso, made photos, said I need to come back. The main story we we need to tell is not done yet. I was there too late for, like, the breaking news - like ‘there's a fire.’ And I was too early for the full reconstruction and longer story.
And then I went up to Calf Canyon - well, actually, at the time it was Hermit's Peak. I went up to Hermit's Peak before it was the combined fire, and then worked to kind of develop that story with the editors and with primarily reporter Lindsay Fendt, who now has another job and is not at Searchlight anymore, but was their environmental reporter at the time. And also with Alicia Inez Guzmán to kind of create a multipart fire story. But then even after that was done, I went down, did fire training to get certified as a firefighter.
MB:
Really?
NS:
Yeah. It's pretty easy, actually. I mean, it's not easy, but it's like two weekends. You need to be able to carry 45 pounds 3miles in under 45 minutes. Trust me, there were people who were in their like sixties who are there. So I went down and did that and then having that…
MB:
And that gives you more access.
NS:
Exactly. So then after that I was able to do another one, another short photo essay for Searchlight about the first thousand acre wildfire of last season, which was on private land southeast of Ruidoso. I've photographed a few other fires up north. Nothing really turned into a big fire story for Searchlight last year - I had other focuses, particularly Rio Grande story. But I have continued pursuing that and still pursuing that as kind of a personal project that occasionally makes cameos in Searchlight.
MB:
We just have a little addendum thing here with your drone stuff.
DRONE IMAGES
MB:
And so, how do you know when you need to do this? I mean, it's like it's got to be a story that has a bigger scope to it, right? Something you're trying to put in perspective.
NS:
I mean, I think it's honestly not that different than doing other photography. I don't show up saying I need to do a drone right now. I showed up here - this is a lake just southwest of Mora - and I was making photos with my regular camera of burnt trees, of this burnt campground and things like that. And you know, you have your telephoto lens on and you're like, okay, I need to switch to a wide angle to get this kind of shot, and then - I need to go up.
It functions just like using a regular camera. I want to take this photo and my current camera can’t do it. So then we let me grab this other camera that does. There are a few other times, for example, photographing correctional facilities where I may not be able to get close to it. Granted, the correctional facilities is not a perfect example because they also have no fly zones. But at least getting up lets you get kind of a better view of it?
MB:
And you still have to abide by all that stuff, right? There are no fly zones. There are places you can’t go.
NS:
Yeah. I mean, I can request permission. It's a little easier to request permission for some of that as a licensed pilot because I can put a license number and say this is why I'm requesting permission. But, if I want permission to fly anywhere near Kirtland Air Force Base, or anywhere near the labs, near correctional facilities, juvenile facilities, there's a hard GPS boundary that says you cannot fly in here.
MB:
Okay, Well, let's do a little Q&A.
Q & A:
AUDIENCE COMMENT:
There was a photo that looked like a geode, but I know it wasn't a geode.
NS:
It was probably an aerial. Yes. This is a river that is right above Las Vegas. So if you go up past Montezuma up towards El Porvenir, I'm trying to remember the name of the river at there, but
this is the main water source for the city of Las Vegas. And so the Army Corps of Engineers came in and put in these these rock barricades with filters to try and kind of capture some of the gunk that was washing off of the hills. They had multiple structures for this. This is just one of them. So this is swirling eddies of ash floating down the river.
AUDIENCE COMMENT:
And this is an aerial?
MB:
Yeah. Really abstract.
NS:
Yeah. There are a few video versions of this that are just kind of mesmerizing to watch because it's just the two big kind of circles are just swirling slowly as they accumulate ash.
AUDIENCE COMMENT:
And why is some of it blue, like on the right side?
NS:
Oh, the photo is in color. So that stone is the stone that they added as they filled these mesh baskets with stone to build this barricade that is helping to filter things. One of the reasons I photograph all the fire stories in color is because fire tends to just leach color. It just burns the color right out of everything that it touches. This kind of like sepia-ish color on the top left is about as much color as you got in most firescapes.
So this is just what it looks like. If you're out there, it looks like it's gray - washed out - like the color has been burnt out of it.
AUDIENCE COMMENT:
It sounds like most, if not all of your work, you're working with a writer and text journalist. What's that relationship like and what's the work in relationship to the words like? I mean, do you coordinate? Do you tell him to go write about that and he tells you to take a picture of this? How does that work?
MB:
If you're working with a writer at that time, then you don't have a finished article that you're actually illustrating, right?
NS:
So I'm almost never illustrating a finished article. At best, I have a rough draft when I'm photographing, I've had really good relationships and I've had really bad relationships. There are bad relationships where a writer or just thinks of you as another tool in their tool kit and they say, “Go take a picture of this. I want a picture of that. I don't want a picture of this other thing. No, you're doing it wrong, blah, blah, blah.” I just feel like chucking the camera at them and saying, “Fine, then you do it.”
Then there's really good relationships where, you know, you kind of really collaborate. You go back and forth on ideas, how to tell the story, who to talk to. A lot of the times, if I'm out with a reporter, they may start talking to someone and I see someone else and I'm like, Hey, I'll strike up a conversation with them and then call the reporter over and say, “You should really talk to this person. They've got some really interesting things to say.” And vice versa. They may talk to someone and they say, “Hey, I had a really good conversation with them. Can you make their phone? You can do something. Or ,“They told me about this thing that we should go photograph.” So the best relationships have a lot of that kind of back and forth.
And then also, to be clear, I am also a journalist, so I do reporting, I do talk to sources and get quotes, and I will hand those quotes off to reporters. I will record interviews that then end up in stories. So in the best relationship, they contribute to the visual experience of the story, and I contribute to the writing experience of the story.
MB:
Are you the only staff photographer?
NS:
Yes. We do have a contract photographer, Michael Benanav. He does the photos for his own stories.
MB:
Okay. And so when you're writing, you're doing the photographs for your own stories as well.
NS:
Right.
MB:
Okay. Do you like writing - more than, you know, photographing?
NS:
No? Question mark? Sometimes I like writing. I really like reporting and I really like photography. Those are definitely my like two first joys.
Sometimes if I really get into the rhythm, I can love writing, but also, you know, there are a lot of times when I have to write where I'm just banging my head against a desk looking at an empty page. So I'm not going to that's my favorite thing to do.
MB:
Well, I noticed, before we started, you were sitting outside getting a little sun and taking pictures and it's like you're a photographer. You just gotta take pictures, right?
NS:
Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
MB:
So anybody else question?
AUDIENCE COMMENT:
So can we talk a little more about relationships? Kind of following up on Eric’s question, you said in the beginning that you were kind of an introvert. Then you said in Atlanta that you felt like there was nobody to talk to about photographs. But I have to imagine that when you were at Colorado, there was also an element of competition with your colleagues? You know, like you're photographing similar stories, or the same stories. So I'm just curious like, like how your introversion plays into this and how it's evolved.
NS:
Yeah. So I'm way less shy than I was. I am so much better at just, like, walking up to people, making friends with them. I have a lot of really good friends in the photojournalism industry to the point that, like now being isolated is like almost spiritually painful for my photography. So when I was in West Georgia, I was an hour outside of Atlanta. The nearest for photojournalist was in Atlanta for the AJC, and they were just too busy. I didn't know them. We didn't really visit each other. When I was in Colorado Springs, however, it was so vibrant. There wasn't really competition, at least within the newsroom. You know, we collaborated more than anything. We would pass along like, ‘Hey, I got a really good photo. You should try this next time you're out at the stadium or the next time you're photographing this team, or I photographed that person, you know, last week, you know, They're really nice.’ Even with other agencies, when I would photograph something and the AP was there, it was all is really more camaraderie than competition. There was definitely competition - I don't want to downplay that entirely. Like there was a “HA, I got the moment, you missed it” bit to it, especially with sports, especially if you happen to be lucky and you read the situation and you were in the end zone right as they got the touchdown, man, it felt so good to see your friend running, trying to catch the celebration.
But I mean, like, we'd take photos of each other and email them back and forth. I have photos from Dave Zalubowski who's one of the AP staff photographers up in Denver. He takes photos of other photojournalists and emails them to them because we never have photos of ourselves. So it's more camaraderie than competition, especially with how anemic the photo journalism industry is right now. It's just too small to really be that competitive. You can't really throw elbows because you live and die on your reputation. If you have a reputation as being too competitive; of not working well with others; you don't get hired.
I can't speak for the same if you're in like a really major market. I've heard that D.C., New York, they get really cutthroat, but at least in the middle-America, mid-market, West Market, things like that, it's a lot more friendly.
AUDIENCE COMMENT:
You said you went to firefighters school. Were there other things you had to do to keep yourself safe? And do they get in the way of what you want to do?
NS:
So I went to the Sacramento Mountains Wildfire Academy, got all the certifications necessary to get my Firefighter Type II, which is like the most basic grunt level firefighter certification. I did that as a safety thing and also as a access thing. I now have essentially paperwork that says, don't worry, I know to not set myself on fire. And that gives me a lot more access.
They give you like - rakes - for Firefighter Type II. You don't get to play with the really cool stuff. But there are things I have to do when I'm photographing, say, an active wildfire. Searchlight has helping me invest in a lot of gear so I have wildfire rated boots, all of my Nomex gear, helmet, the whole thing. It's all in a bag in my trunk. But that's all that's required to get on the scene. Like they just don't let you into the area if you don't have that equipment.
When you're out there, it's not too different from photographing other events. You know, you want to look behind you, make sure that nothing sneaking up on you. But that's no different from photographing a protest or a parade, even. You don't get too close to the action, but you can feel it. Like if you're photographing a wildfire and a tree starts candling, you can feel how close you can get. You park with your vehicle ready - like you don't have to back up. You are parked in a way that you can just pull straight out. But I mean, I've done that at other events.
I wouldn't say there's anything too particular to fighting a wildfire that doesn't have some analog elsewhere.
MB:
So there would be a respect that you would get from the other firefighters and the people that are involved. Right? Because you've gone through that, because you made the investment in that, in order to be there. I would think that would count when you’re trying to tell personal stories or getting access and making connections with people - that would be huge for that.
NS:
It is. I mean, having gone through it, they know that I've never fought a wildfire.
There's certain derogatory terms - “banana suit” - things like that, because a Nomex wildfire resistant shirt, the traditional upper is bright yellow, and it very quickly gets dirty when you're fighting a wildfire. It gets covered in ash and it just never comes out. So if you show up with a bright yellow shirt…
Like there there's a certain amount of, okay, you've never actually fought a wildfire, but at least you know some of it. At least you've done the work. It really gives me a lot more appreciation from people in charge because they don't have to worry as much. They still have to. I mean, they worry about every single person they're sending out on the line. So I want to say they're not worried. But there’s some training, there's some understanding, there's some knowledge of where I can be on a fire line that they don't have to worry as much when I'm going out there.
So if we look at this fire, this is the El Valle Fire fire, up along the high road to Taos, and this is well within the fire perimeter. This is along the southern line. And so I went, and first of all, I was able to just walk right by the sheriffs. You know, they had all the roads closed. You walk up and you drive up in your Nomex and they don't even ask you who you are. You are just like, yeah, you're here on purpose. So then I just go straight to Incident Command and say, you know, ‘Hi, I'm with Searchlight, New Mexico, is my name is what I'm trying to photograph.’ And you know, I know all the proper channels. I know who to ask, how to go through the structure of command. And they said, yeah, okay, you're in your right gear. You know what you're doing. You have a safe vehicle, because I drive a Forerunner. I made the mistake of driving a sedan into a fire zone before, and I'm not going to do it again.
And so they were kind of comfortable. They said, hey, here's where on the fire line you can go to. And so I went there and I was able to make photos like this of trees starting to go up in flames. So I made sure I was safe. And I left shortly after this, because this bush started going up, and I was parked just off the left side of the frame, and I was parked with a few other fire personnel and we all just kind of said, “Oh, time to go.”
MB:
Wow. Awesome. And it's time for us to go too.
Thank you, Nadav. Nice job.
And thank you all for coming.
And so, how do you know when you need to do this? I mean, it's like it's got to be a story that has a bigger scope to it, right? Something you're trying to put in perspective.
NS:
I mean, I think it's honestly not that different than doing other photography. I don't show up saying I need to do a drone right now. I showed up here - this is a lake just southwest of Mora - and I was making photos with my regular camera of burnt trees, of this burnt campground and things like that. And you know, you have your telephoto lens on and you're like, okay, I need to switch to a wide angle to get this kind of shot, and then - I need to go up.
It functions just like using a regular camera. I want to take this photo and my current camera can’t do it. So then we let me grab this other camera that does. There are a few other times, for example, photographing correctional facilities where I may not be able to get close to it. Granted, the correctional facilities is not a perfect example because they also have no fly zones. But at least getting up lets you get kind of a better view of it?
MB:
And you still have to abide by all that stuff, right? There are no fly zones. There are places you can’t go.
NS:
Yeah. I mean, I can request permission. It's a little easier to request permission for some of that as a licensed pilot because I can put a license number and say this is why I'm requesting permission. But, if I want permission to fly anywhere near Kirtland Air Force Base, or anywhere near the labs, near correctional facilities, juvenile facilities, there's a hard GPS boundary that says you cannot fly in here.
MB:
Okay, Well, let's do a little Q&A.
Q & A:
AUDIENCE COMMENT:
There was a photo that looked like a geode, but I know it wasn't a geode.
NS:
It was probably an aerial. Yes. This is a river that is right above Las Vegas. So if you go up past Montezuma up towards El Porvenir, I'm trying to remember the name of the river at there, but
this is the main water source for the city of Las Vegas. And so the Army Corps of Engineers came in and put in these these rock barricades with filters to try and kind of capture some of the gunk that was washing off of the hills. They had multiple structures for this. This is just one of them. So this is swirling eddies of ash floating down the river.
AUDIENCE COMMENT:
And this is an aerial?
MB:
Yeah. Really abstract.
NS:
Yeah. There are a few video versions of this that are just kind of mesmerizing to watch because it's just the two big kind of circles are just swirling slowly as they accumulate ash.
AUDIENCE COMMENT:
And why is some of it blue, like on the right side?
NS:
Oh, the photo is in color. So that stone is the stone that they added as they filled these mesh baskets with stone to build this barricade that is helping to filter things. One of the reasons I photograph all the fire stories in color is because fire tends to just leach color. It just burns the color right out of everything that it touches. This kind of like sepia-ish color on the top left is about as much color as you got in most firescapes.
So this is just what it looks like. If you're out there, it looks like it's gray - washed out - like the color has been burnt out of it.
AUDIENCE COMMENT:
It sounds like most, if not all of your work, you're working with a writer and text journalist. What's that relationship like and what's the work in relationship to the words like? I mean, do you coordinate? Do you tell him to go write about that and he tells you to take a picture of this? How does that work?
MB:
If you're working with a writer at that time, then you don't have a finished article that you're actually illustrating, right?
NS:
So I'm almost never illustrating a finished article. At best, I have a rough draft when I'm photographing, I've had really good relationships and I've had really bad relationships. There are bad relationships where a writer or just thinks of you as another tool in their tool kit and they say, “Go take a picture of this. I want a picture of that. I don't want a picture of this other thing. No, you're doing it wrong, blah, blah, blah.” I just feel like chucking the camera at them and saying, “Fine, then you do it.”
Then there's really good relationships where, you know, you kind of really collaborate. You go back and forth on ideas, how to tell the story, who to talk to. A lot of the times, if I'm out with a reporter, they may start talking to someone and I see someone else and I'm like, Hey, I'll strike up a conversation with them and then call the reporter over and say, “You should really talk to this person. They've got some really interesting things to say.” And vice versa. They may talk to someone and they say, “Hey, I had a really good conversation with them. Can you make their phone? You can do something. Or ,“They told me about this thing that we should go photograph.” So the best relationships have a lot of that kind of back and forth.
And then also, to be clear, I am also a journalist, so I do reporting, I do talk to sources and get quotes, and I will hand those quotes off to reporters. I will record interviews that then end up in stories. So in the best relationship, they contribute to the visual experience of the story, and I contribute to the writing experience of the story.
MB:
Are you the only staff photographer?
NS:
Yes. We do have a contract photographer, Michael Benanav. He does the photos for his own stories.
MB:
Okay. And so when you're writing, you're doing the photographs for your own stories as well.
NS:
Right.
MB:
Okay. Do you like writing - more than, you know, photographing?
NS:
No? Question mark? Sometimes I like writing. I really like reporting and I really like photography. Those are definitely my like two first joys.
Sometimes if I really get into the rhythm, I can love writing, but also, you know, there are a lot of times when I have to write where I'm just banging my head against a desk looking at an empty page. So I'm not going to that's my favorite thing to do.
MB:
Well, I noticed, before we started, you were sitting outside getting a little sun and taking pictures and it's like you're a photographer. You just gotta take pictures, right?
NS:
Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
MB:
So anybody else question?
AUDIENCE COMMENT:
So can we talk a little more about relationships? Kind of following up on Eric’s question, you said in the beginning that you were kind of an introvert. Then you said in Atlanta that you felt like there was nobody to talk to about photographs. But I have to imagine that when you were at Colorado, there was also an element of competition with your colleagues? You know, like you're photographing similar stories, or the same stories. So I'm just curious like, like how your introversion plays into this and how it's evolved.
NS:
Yeah. So I'm way less shy than I was. I am so much better at just, like, walking up to people, making friends with them. I have a lot of really good friends in the photojournalism industry to the point that, like now being isolated is like almost spiritually painful for my photography. So when I was in West Georgia, I was an hour outside of Atlanta. The nearest for photojournalist was in Atlanta for the AJC, and they were just too busy. I didn't know them. We didn't really visit each other. When I was in Colorado Springs, however, it was so vibrant. There wasn't really competition, at least within the newsroom. You know, we collaborated more than anything. We would pass along like, ‘Hey, I got a really good photo. You should try this next time you're out at the stadium or the next time you're photographing this team, or I photographed that person, you know, last week, you know, They're really nice.’ Even with other agencies, when I would photograph something and the AP was there, it was all is really more camaraderie than competition. There was definitely competition - I don't want to downplay that entirely. Like there was a “HA, I got the moment, you missed it” bit to it, especially with sports, especially if you happen to be lucky and you read the situation and you were in the end zone right as they got the touchdown, man, it felt so good to see your friend running, trying to catch the celebration.
But I mean, like, we'd take photos of each other and email them back and forth. I have photos from Dave Zalubowski who's one of the AP staff photographers up in Denver. He takes photos of other photojournalists and emails them to them because we never have photos of ourselves. So it's more camaraderie than competition, especially with how anemic the photo journalism industry is right now. It's just too small to really be that competitive. You can't really throw elbows because you live and die on your reputation. If you have a reputation as being too competitive; of not working well with others; you don't get hired.
I can't speak for the same if you're in like a really major market. I've heard that D.C., New York, they get really cutthroat, but at least in the middle-America, mid-market, West Market, things like that, it's a lot more friendly.
AUDIENCE COMMENT:
You said you went to firefighters school. Were there other things you had to do to keep yourself safe? And do they get in the way of what you want to do?
NS:
So I went to the Sacramento Mountains Wildfire Academy, got all the certifications necessary to get my Firefighter Type II, which is like the most basic grunt level firefighter certification. I did that as a safety thing and also as a access thing. I now have essentially paperwork that says, don't worry, I know to not set myself on fire. And that gives me a lot more access.
They give you like - rakes - for Firefighter Type II. You don't get to play with the really cool stuff. But there are things I have to do when I'm photographing, say, an active wildfire. Searchlight has helping me invest in a lot of gear so I have wildfire rated boots, all of my Nomex gear, helmet, the whole thing. It's all in a bag in my trunk. But that's all that's required to get on the scene. Like they just don't let you into the area if you don't have that equipment.
When you're out there, it's not too different from photographing other events. You know, you want to look behind you, make sure that nothing sneaking up on you. But that's no different from photographing a protest or a parade, even. You don't get too close to the action, but you can feel it. Like if you're photographing a wildfire and a tree starts candling, you can feel how close you can get. You park with your vehicle ready - like you don't have to back up. You are parked in a way that you can just pull straight out. But I mean, I've done that at other events.
I wouldn't say there's anything too particular to fighting a wildfire that doesn't have some analog elsewhere.
MB:
So there would be a respect that you would get from the other firefighters and the people that are involved. Right? Because you've gone through that, because you made the investment in that, in order to be there. I would think that would count when you’re trying to tell personal stories or getting access and making connections with people - that would be huge for that.
NS:
It is. I mean, having gone through it, they know that I've never fought a wildfire.
There's certain derogatory terms - “banana suit” - things like that, because a Nomex wildfire resistant shirt, the traditional upper is bright yellow, and it very quickly gets dirty when you're fighting a wildfire. It gets covered in ash and it just never comes out. So if you show up with a bright yellow shirt…
Like there there's a certain amount of, okay, you've never actually fought a wildfire, but at least you know some of it. At least you've done the work. It really gives me a lot more appreciation from people in charge because they don't have to worry as much. They still have to. I mean, they worry about every single person they're sending out on the line. So I want to say they're not worried. But there’s some training, there's some understanding, there's some knowledge of where I can be on a fire line that they don't have to worry as much when I'm going out there.
So if we look at this fire, this is the El Valle Fire fire, up along the high road to Taos, and this is well within the fire perimeter. This is along the southern line. And so I went, and first of all, I was able to just walk right by the sheriffs. You know, they had all the roads closed. You walk up and you drive up in your Nomex and they don't even ask you who you are. You are just like, yeah, you're here on purpose. So then I just go straight to Incident Command and say, you know, ‘Hi, I'm with Searchlight, New Mexico, is my name is what I'm trying to photograph.’ And you know, I know all the proper channels. I know who to ask, how to go through the structure of command. And they said, yeah, okay, you're in your right gear. You know what you're doing. You have a safe vehicle, because I drive a Forerunner. I made the mistake of driving a sedan into a fire zone before, and I'm not going to do it again.
And so they were kind of comfortable. They said, hey, here's where on the fire line you can go to. And so I went there and I was able to make photos like this of trees starting to go up in flames. So I made sure I was safe. And I left shortly after this, because this bush started going up, and I was parked just off the left side of the frame, and I was parked with a few other fire personnel and we all just kind of said, “Oh, time to go.”
MB:
Wow. Awesome. And it's time for us to go too.
Thank you, Nadav. Nice job.
And thank you all for coming.