Cloud shadows on the North Atlantic

Flying home a couple weeks ago, I snagged these photos of some boundary layer clouds and their shadows somewhere south of Iceland.  We were at 32,000 feet if I remember correctly.  The shadows on even the really small ones were visible.  Love it.

Profiteering, Pulitzers, and Photojournalism

A storm chaser and freelance photographer has come under a metric ton of criticism for taking a photograph of a 5-year-old girl on a stretcher after her town was hit by a violent tornado.  (The Memphis Commercial Appeal has the photo available here.)

My specific interest in all this is in trying to understand why so many in the meteorology community seem irritated...nay, downright angry...about the photo.  My observations and opinions follow.

Storm chasers who distribute ANY photos fill a dual role.  No matter the media -- Twitter, Facebook, or sold to a television or newspaper outlet -- if you distribute a storm-related photo you are performing a service for the community and are wearing an additional hat: that of a photojournalist.  I believe this is true whether or not you profit, or even seek to profit, from your work.
 

Don't think that high-impact weather is a news story?  Tell that to AccuWeather, The Weather Channel, WeatherNation, and so on.  If you don't want to wear this additional hat, leave your camera and your social media apps at home when you chase.  Yeah, I know...not gonna happen.

Weather phenomena and the destruction they produce are inseparable.  Those who want to have one without the other must wake up with Tobey Maguire and Reese Witherspoon living in the next house.  Once we detach the storms from their damage, destruction, death, and aftermath, what's left?  All the people and places they harm are demoted to snippets on the nightly news.  "Oh that's horrible.  We should pray for them.  Pass the potato salad."  The same fate as Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, Ukraine, and a half-dozen other crises in the world.  This isn't Pleasantville, y'all.

"But that doesn't mean we should photograph it."  Shouldn't photograph what?

- The storms?  Yeah right.  Not gonna happen.

- The tornado carving up that house and barn and silo?  I would guess that in any given year, hundreds of thousands of dollars change hands for professional-quality photos and video of high-impact weather doing its thing  I have no empirical data to back up that number, and I'd love to see some.

- The damage afterward?  Again, check the nightly news.  How our society has evolved, to come to really expect to see these scenes of destruction and damage, is a separate matter.  Can someone tell me a better way to communicate to the world how horrific some of these scenes are?  How much these places need our aid?  What better to tell people that a town and state need our help than photos like this one, this one (linked to by Discovery News), or this one (linked to by the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal)?

- The dead and dying?  I defer to people who have been in the business far longer than I have to decide what should be published and what shouldn't.  The FCC sets the rules for television I'm sure, but even the American Red Cross has guidelines when it comes to photos of human suffering:

- Are we caught up in the fact that the subject of the photo died afterward?  Via the Fort Collins Coloradan, The USA Today reminds us that in 1996, in the aftermath of the Murrah Building bombing in Oklahoma City, a firefighter carrying a severely injured child who later died was photographed, and the photo won a Pulitzer Prize.  (The photo is here.)  That's right: nearly 20 years ago, a photo just like this one received one of journalism's highest honors.

Individually we may dislike the photo or find it distasteful or objectionable, but society seems to want it (money and ratings and clicks are speech, sadly), and the profession apparently supports it, and it doesn't appear to violate standards espoused by our national humanitarian agency, either.

Which leaves what?  Are we offended at the photo, or at the person taking it?  I'll be the first to admit that wanting "highly photogenic and destructive tornadoes" for financial benefit is repulsive...but only the second part of that.  Profiteering as the result of anyone else's loss is shameful.  I don't know how to separate that from the demand for high-impact weather footage, though.  I really don't.  Insensitive as this comment may be, I challenge everyone to dig back through their Facebook feed (which is secured and private for a reason, right, mmm hmmm?) or their Twitter feed for an offensive comment.  Badgering someone on the basis of a single public (yet insensitive, yes yes yes) comment wreaks of some other issue. 

I don't see this photo as a case of a storm chaser behaving recklessly by getting to close to a storm, or by blocking roads, or by otherwise interfering with emergency responders on the scene.  One photo gives no proof as to whether or not this person later put down his camera to aid others who needed help.  Of course, I must ask: what is the second role of a "storm chaser" -- that is, what is the responsibility once the storms have moved on?  Are we supposed to act as "volunteer emergency responders" (my vocabulary) or photojournalists?  Don't the professional emergency responders tell us to stay off the roads, to stay out of their way, to avoid getting ourselves hurt and compounding the need for aid?  Wouldn't conscious photojournalism be the wiser course of action?  I don't know but it's worth asking.  (A third option: leave the scene entirely.)

In addition to a critically-injured little girl, there are also two other human beings in the frame, performing a Herculean task and risking their own lives digging through rubble.  Let's zoom out a little and acknowledge that this photo isn't just about the girl and now her memory, but also about what they do after every storm, every car accident, and every 9-1-1 call.

Personal opinion: the photo is poignant, not offensive.  It is weighty, not disrespectful.  It shows, in an incredibly direct and heartfelt and painful way, how ravaged this town became, in a matter of seconds.  This photo is the face of Pilger, Nebraska on June 17, 2014.  I think we're all better for seeing it.

The Monument

To commemorate the Great Fire of 1666, this column was erected.  It's certainly not a world-known structure, but it is very important to the history of London.  Possibly 70,000 out of the 80,000 homes inside the city walls were destroyed over those four days.

That percentage of loss reminds me in some ways of the numerous small towns that have been impacted just as heavily by tornadoes over the years here in the states (Manchester, SD in 2003; Greensburg, KS in 2007; Picher, OK in 2008; Hackleburg, AL in 2011).  Some have chosen to rebuild (Greensburg, Hackleburg), some have not (Manchester, Picher).