EVERY IMAGE HAS TO EARN ITS SPACE

Client: 1859 Oregon’s Magazine
Assignment: Editorial photography
Subject: Bandon Fire & Rescue Dive Team / U.S. Coast Guard
Original Scope: 1-page editorial story
Result: 5-page cover story

In 2017, I was the real-life Peter Parker, photojournalist.

I had recently transitioned into commercial and editorial photography after seven years of fine art documentary wedding work. I was balancing photography with construction jobs, barely getting by supporting my family, and I needed every assignment I could get.

So anytime a magazine called with a last-minute photo assignment, I always said yes.

No matter what.

But this one… was different.

SCUBA divers? The U.S. Coast Guard? Helicopters? A daring water rescue and CPR in bad weather?

Hell yes.

There was just one problem.

The budget for the one-page story would barely cover my travel time.

Financially, the smart move was to photograph the assignment as efficiently as possible, deliver the images and move on to the next paying job.

But I knew the story was worth more than one page.

And by this point, I was beginning to understand how editorial photography actually worked.

A magazine is a business.

Every page has to create value.

Advertising pages generate revenue directly. But people don’t buy magazines for the ads.

Editorial pages cost the magazine money, but they bring value. Strong photographs help build stronger stories. Stronger stories give people a reason to pick up the magazine, buy it and come back for the next issue.

That’s the value a photographer is being paid to bring to the page.

At 1859 Oregon’s Magazine, photography was also paid based partly on how an image was used. Covers paid the most. Full pages paid more than smaller placements. Aside from being a self-motivated artist, there was a direct financial incentive for me to create photographs worthy of more space.

But that space was competitive.

If my photographs didn’t strengthen the story, the magazine had other options. They could sell the page as advertising, or give the editorial space to another story—and potentially another photographer.

The editor had no emotional attachment to how hard I worked to make an image.

The photograph had to give them a reason to use it.

Every image had to earn its space.

THE ASSIGNMENT

I had already completed several smaller assignments for 1859 Oregon’s Magazine and earned enough trust to be given a more ambitious project.

On short notice, I was sent to Coos Bay, Oregon to photograph the Bandon Fire & Rescue Dive Team during a joint training exercise with the United States Coast Guard.

The story was originally planned as a small, one-page piece about a high profile rescue.

One year earlier, Chief Bob Hood had entered a fast-moving current in Winchester Bay and pulled a young boy from a submerged vessel.

Hood jettisoned his heavy scuba equipment, lifted the child onto the overturned hull and began CPR.

CPR.

On a child.

On top of an upside-down boat.

In rough seas.

The boy survived.

This was the team I had been sent to photograph.

THE OBVIOUS IS ONLY THE BEGINNING

Early in my career, I read a comment from another photographer that has stuck with me for more than a decade:

“First take the obvious photo. Then do the work of a photographer.”

I don’t remember who said it, but it became one of the most useful creative principles I’ve ever carried with me.

Don’t neglect the obvious just because it’s obvious.

Get the portrait.

Get the helicopter.

Get the diver in the water.

Do the job you were hired to do.

But don’t stop there.

That’s where the real work begins.

A portrait of Bob Hood tells you who Bob Hood is.

A photograph of a Coast Guard helicopter tells you a helicopter was there.

A rescue diver in the water tells you there were divers involved.

Those are all useful editorial photographs. I captured them, and several became strong images in their own right.

But each one only tells part of the story.

During the drive to the coast, I started imagining a photograph that could put the entire story into one frame.

A rescue diver underwater in the foreground.

The surface of the water splitting the frame.

A Coast Guard helicopter hovering above.

The civilian rescue diver below.

The Coast Guard above.

One photograph showing the relationship between them.

One image that could tell the story before the reader ever read a word.

And, frankly, I thought it would look badass.

I grew up reading National Geographic and being inspired by badass photos. I wanted to be counted like that.

THE PROBLEM

There was one immediate problem.

I didn’t own an underwater camera.

The assignment had come together quickly and I was balancing photography with construction work to support my family at the time. I didn’t have weeks to research underwater camera systems or order specialized equipment.

On the drive to the assignment, I stopped and bought a GoPro Hero Session 5. No swappable lenses. No exposure control. No RAW files. Not even a preview screen. Just a tiny black box with a fixed ultra wide focal length. Powered by prayer.

It was the only waterproof camera I could get on short notice.

I had the image in my head.

I had only one tool at my disposal.

I had to make it work.

My plan was to get into the water with the divers and photograph the scene from the surface. I had spent the 3 hour drive getting excited about the idea.

Then I arrived and quickly discovered that my ambitious plan had been shot down before it started. The Coast Guard wouldn’t allow me in the water during the training exercise because of liability concerns.

I was crushed.

The central part of the plan wasn’t allowed.

After the initial disappointment, I went into problem-solving mode.

If I couldn’t capture the entire image at once, maybe I didn’t have to.

PIECES OF THE PUZZLE

I decided to attempt to composite the image together using separately captured pieces.

Before heading into the bay for the Coast Guard exercise, I spent about 15 minutes with the divers at a local lake.

The Hero Session 5 didn’t have a screen. I couldn’t preview the composition or check my framing.

Holding the camera directly at the surface of the water, I did my best to guess exactly where the lens needed to be. I directed the divers and worked to capture the underwater portrait and the waterline where I wanted them.

The bottom half of the photograph was controlled.

The top half was a gamble.

I knew what I wanted, but since I wasn’t allowed in the water during the actual Coast Guard exercise, I mounted the GoPro to one of the rescue divers.

I wasn’t framing those images.

I wasn’t pressing the shutter.

I told the diver what I was trying to accomplish and all I could do was simply hope the diver would get lucky and capture something close to the perspective I had envisioned.

Meanwhile, I photographed the rest of the exercise from the boat as the Coast Guard helicopter operated overhead.

I captured the assignment I had been sent to photograph: portraits, equipment, the rescue boat, the helicopter and the joint training operation.

But I was still thinking about the image I had imagined on the drive.

MAKING THE IMAGE

For the 3 hr drive home I didn’t even know if I got what I needed. I was so preoccupied thinking about it, I forgot to pay attention to my speed and got pulled over. For some reason I told the officer what I had just done. He saw my camera equipment in the back seat and fortunately he let me off with a warning.

Driving the speed limit, I finally made it home and anxiously downloaded all my images.

Finally, I was assured, I had all the pieces.

I hadn’t done much serious composite work before. This would be my first real attempt at building an image this complex.

But I knew exactly what I was trying to create.

I combined the deliberately staged underwater portrait with imagery captured during the Coast Guard exercise and built the photograph I had envisioned on the drive to Bandon.

The final image wasn’t exactly what I wanted.

I wanted the helicopter larger and closer to the water. If I had captured the image with my real camera I could have enlarged it, but the GoPro resolution was much more limited.

I would have preferred the diver to be surrounded by clear ocean water instead of the murky lake.

But when I finished the edit, I knew I had a home run.

I sent the image to the editor.

The text response was:

“Wow! Wow! Wow!”

THE RESULT

The assignment had originally been planned as a small, one-page spotlight.

After seeing the photographs, 1859 Oregon’s Magazine expanded it into a five-page cover story.

The composite image became the cover.

Inside the magazine, the editors opened the story with a two page gallery spread followed by a Coast Guard helicopter image spread across two pages and ending with a 5th full page image.

The additional compensation from the expanded story covered the cost of the GoPro and roughly six hours of travel.

But the impact lasted beyond that issue.

The assignment cemented my reputation with the magazine. I became one of the photographers they regularly turned to for higher-profile assignments and projects that needed a more artistic or ambitious visual approach.

I had gone to the Oregon Coast knowing I could make enough good photographs to complete the assignment.

The goal was to make one the editor couldn’t ignore.

It earned its place on the cover.

THE MEDIUM CHANGED. THE LESSON DIDN’T.

I haven’t worked heavily in print editorial for several years. Most of my work today is built for digital platforms, branded content and video.

Print taught me something I’ve carried into every medium since.

In a magazine, the competition for space was obvious. There were only so many pages. A photograph had to be strong enough to justify the space it occupied.

Digital media can feel unlimited. There is always room for another photograph, another video or another post.

But the audience’s attention isn’t unlimited.

The person on the other side still has no obligation to stop and look at what I made.

A technically good photograph isn’t enough.

A beautifully filmed video isn’t enough.

The work has to give someone a reason to slow down.

The medium changed.

Every image still has to earn its space.