KEEPING THE PASSION ALIVE

Thanks to the NPPA’s 2005 Airborne seminar, we’re able to share more tips from one of the best in the photojournalism business. Photographer of the Year Corky Scholl of KUSA in Denver is a great shooter, but perhaps more importantly he’s an enterprising journalist who finds stories that keep him passionate about the TV news business.

• Listen for stories: “I drive with my windows down, listening for good stories,” Corky says. When he finds them, he makes an extra effort to get great audio. In one story, he put a mic on a birdfeeder, and captured the buzzing sound of a hummingbird’s wings. “It makes the shot more compelling,” he says. Obviously, Corky cares about photography, but he says, “I would take a great sound bite over a nicely composed shot any time.”
  
  
• Balance action and reaction: Corky spends about half his time at a breaking news story shooting action and the rest shooting reaction. “I shoot the event first,” he says. Without the action, he says, there’s nothing to react to. He also tries to anticipate action so he can be in the right place at the right time. Covering an apartment fire, he noticed a piece of the roof fall in but missed getting it on tape. He figured it would happen again, set his camera up on the tripod and let it roll for five minutes until he captured "the money shot."
  
  
• Be unobtrusive: Most of Corky’s stories are shot with only natural light. Sometimes nighttime video is a little grainy, but he believes he gets better, more spontaneous sound from people if he doesn’t hit them with a bright camera light. "I just put a mic on them and let them do their thing," he says. "I get 'fly on the wall' sound as opposed to 'mic in the face' sound."
  
  
• Know your people: When he finds an interesting character he'd like to follow, Corky often spends time with them without his camera before beginning to shoot. He wants to get to know them first, so the story he tells is "a real story" about the person's life.
  
  
• Shoot over time: For his award-winning story about a formerly homeless blues musician, “King James,” Corky invested a year of his time, shooting about one day a month. About half the time he was off the clock, but he also worked on the story on company time between other assignments. “Doing it yourself makes it a lot easier to get the desk to give you time to go do it,” he says.
  
  
• Stay under the radar: To make sure he has the time to work on long-form stories, Corky doesn’t tell producers what he’s doing until he’s almost done. If he tells them at the start, he says, they want it tomorrow! Instead, he keeps in touch with the assignment desk and squeezes in shooting time when he’s on V/O-SOT patrol. “They’d rather have you out shooting than looking at the Internet,” he says.
  
  
• Take ownership: Corky often involves a reporter in stories only after he’s done all or most of the shooting. He’ll take hours of tape and edit it down to a 10 or 15 minute compilation including all of his favorite sound bites. He structures the story before handing it off, putting shots and sound in the order he hopes they’ll be used. “That way I ensure that my vision ends up in the story,” he says.
  
  
• Sell your stories: It helps to know how to get stories on the air. Corky's way is to know what producers need and when they need it. Several of his favorite stories aired on holidays, when producers were grateful to have a longer piece. He also targets the Saturday 5 p.m. newscast, which runs an hour, for the long-form stories he produces.
  
  
• Enjoy the work: Corky says having a story on the back burner and working on it a little at a time keeps him happy. “We can’t do great jobs on stories every day and that can be frustrating,” he says. “To know that in a month or two I’m going to have a great story keeps me sane.”