PHOTO: The last second of life

Was the photog actually triggering the flash, or is that his story now because he was actually shooting a photo? Does rapidly triggering the flash set off the camera itself? And frame the photo just right?

 

I tend to be in the minority on these sorts of things, but I was actually thinking that it was OK to run the photo. Yes, it's a sad story, but it has people talking and probably more cautious around the tracks. Had the gentleman been saved, we'd be more apt to agree to run it... I don't know, that's just me. It's not like you see him being hit, it's the final moment.

 

I don't have a big problem with running the photo. I think too often we shy away from running very powerful images when they tell the story far better than the next option.

I do have a big problem with the headline, which is shitty and exploitative and cheapens the power of the photo.

 

Ethics question:

gawker.com/5965659/would-you-have-taken-the-post-subway-photo-pulitzer+winning-photographers-respond

 

This

 

To go along with my previous post, here's the comment in that link from Mark Johnson of the University of Georgia:

And that approach drives me nuts. To me, that argument boils down to "The story is worth telling; it's just not worth telling well."

 

If you are trying to light someone up so that the driver sees them, you are going to point the flash right at them, which is going to put them in the center of the photo. If you point the camera directly at the train, you are just going to blind the driver. So, if he did it several times, it's no surprise that he ended up with one shot with both the man and the train in the frame.

If you believe the Post, the photographer wasn't physically capable of pulling the guy out. He's a photographer and he's got a source of light, which he used to illuminate the victim. It didn't work, but it wasn't the worst idea under the circumstances.

Could he have done that without actually taking pictures? Maybe. Depends on his camera. But he's a trained news photographer. He did what his instincts told him to do. I think the Post running the picture, especially with that headline, is repulsive, but he didn't make that decision.

 

Let's say the flashing light works and gets the attention of the driver (conductor?) Granted I don't live around trains like this, but would it have really been possible for the train to actually stop in time? It just doesn't seem like stopping in time would have been a viable solution.

 

With how fast they come, no way they could have stopped in time.

 

This picture, of course, is not gruesome, in the way that much good suspense writing isn't really gruesome. It's our filling in of the blanks that makes such things gruesome.

 

How far away was the man who took the photo? It seems to me he might well have been too far away to have any hope of reaching the man in time (probably a few seconds).

What kind of person pushes a man onto a subway track? That makes as much sense as pushing someone off a 10-story building.

 

No way I'm trying to help save his life with the train that close, because if he pulls me in, I'm a goner too.