World's Laziest Journalist

February 20, 2006

By Bob Patterson

On Sunday, February 12, 2006, two photographers went out to do some shooting.  One went to the Venice Beach, where this columnist found some folks using a metal detector to find loose change in the sand.  The other, a friend, Jersey Bill, went for a walk with his wife, Marcia, and their dog, Auggie, and took some very different photos under very different weather conditions.

In both cases, the photographers had permission to shoot/take pictures of the subjects.

Often the ability to take a relatively good picture that will illustrate events or things described in the column is a handy talent to have.  Sometimes a columnist with a camera will just take a picture that catches his fancy and then figure out a way to write the column so that the photo can (logically) run as an illustration for it.  Other times, it might be a chance to take a picture which can be submitted elsewhere in the hope of getting some exposure and publicity for the Just Above Sunset (JAS) online magazine. 

Photo journalists often refer to themselves as shooters. 

The staff of Just Above Sunset enjoys taking pictures to liven up the proceedings in our online magazine.  There's always the hope that we will be able to get some pictures which will help our industrious Publicity Department bring some attention to our efforts to provide original content for our audience.  Using photos to get noticed may mean taking a picture or two and sending it to Steve Harvey hoping that it will be something he will want to share with his readers and that he will mention that JAS was the source, if and when he uses such pictures.

If we get a good photo series about a particularly unique Los Angeles, location or event, we start hoping that Kevin Roderick will run it (with a link) in his daily web site, LAObserved about all things relevant to folks interested in the Los Anegels area, be they tourists, members of the media, and/or local residents.

Other times, it may be a case of submitting one of the Just Above Sunset shots elsewhere in the hopes it will qualify as a picture of the day and introduce the JAS name to folks who might not otherwise be aware of its existence on the Internet. 

JAS regularly uses botanical pictures and someday, if we get a shot of something rare or exotic, it might qualify to be used on the University of British Columbia's Botanical Garden site which runs a botanical picture of the day.

Kodak has a picture of the day that runs topnotch photos take by professionals.  Getting a shot used in that venue would be a publicity coup.

Other top notch venues would be getting photos used in Nikon World or Life Magazine - but they don't seem to want or need submissions. 

It doesn't seem bloody well likely that pictures taken in Los Angeles will make the cut for use on the web page that features the Australian picture of the day.

It's highly unlikely that Stars & Stripes would want any photos not taken by a staff member for their photo of the day page.

Flack online magazine has a photo of the day page and a page with guidelines for submitting pictures to them.

Photoblogs magazine seems open to submissions.

Smithsonian Magazine is having a photo contest. 

Photofoolery and Photographic Age both have a good selection of links for photo contests for their readers.

Winning one of those contests with a great shot might please our PR Department.

The process of getting permission to shoot someone's picture reminded this columnist of the item he read or heard on the radio some time back that proclaimed that a study had determined that statistically the last thing said by folks who died of a gunshot wound was, "Go ahead! Shoot me!"  Initially we were baffled about how the people conducting the study had learned what a dead gunshot victim had said just before they died.  Then we figured that the most likely explanation was that the study had used information supplied by people who were arrested for the various murders and who had confessed to their deed, to arrive at the study's conclusions. 

Shooting people is a very American tradition.  Western movies exported the image of a tough but dedicated sheriff delivering law and order to audiences around the world.  Many people all around the globe might think of "High Noon" with marshal Will Kane (Garry Cooper) facing the bad guys single-handedly when they think of a Western movie.

Often, in real life, events didn't match the cinematic portrayal.  The gunfight at the OK corral was, according to some accounts, more like a firefight than a drawdown. 

Often the use of a pistol resembled an assassination rather than a scene featuring Clint Eastwood who was facing several bad guys simultaneously.  When the famed lawman James Butler "Wild Bill" Hickok was killed, he was playing poker and was shot from behind.  His hand, a pair of aces and a pair of eights, has become known as "the dead man's hand." 

According to something this columnist read about forty years ago (I didn't know I would be writing this column in 2006, so I didn't jot down the name of the book, the author, or the page number), Owen Whister offered fans of Western lore a hundred dollars for a copy of any contemporary newspaper story about a real life face to face encounter that actually occurred.  The item noted he never had any historian or newspaper collector submitted an item which would earn the aforementioned hundred dollars.

Move audiences around the world often got the image of an existentialist hero who was an expert marksman.  Unfortunately the truth was a bit more complicated because the original six shooters were called smoke poles and the accuracy level was sometimes compared to throwing a rock.  As improvements for rifles and pistols were developed so did the ability to put the bullet where the shooter intended it to hit.  These days, at sniper competitions, such as the one scheduled March 8 to 10 in Phoenix, the targets can be one thousand yards away from the rifles.

Speaking of a bullet that follows a remarkable trajectory, that brings to mind the topic of the Single Bullet Theory (which was postulated by Arlen Spector - hasn't he been in the news again more recently?)

America has had many examples of shooters becoming world famous for just one shot.  Who could ever forget Leon Czolgosz or Charles J. Guiteau?

At one time, all of the US was fascinated by Winnie Ruth Judd. 

When Geli Raubal was found dead of a gunshot wound, the German press and local police politely avoided asking the pistol's owner, Adolph Hitler, any questions which would intrude on his right to privacy.  It has taken a while for that bit of courtesy to take hold in the United States.  Conservatives find it very amusing to see the press ask "probing" questions of people who have the right to declassify secret information.  If facts will help with a politician's program, then journalists will be privy to that information, otherwise not.

We needed a quote that would hit the target for a column about shooters and shooting.  We had heard about one particular quote, but could not find it in Bartlett's.  We googled around and got some suggested URL's for this quote - "They couldn't hit an elephant at this dis…"  General John B. Sedgwick, at the battle of Spotsylvania was killed by a bullet before he could finish the sentence.

The disk jockey has a handful of suggestions for this week's closing song.  He is offering to play I Shot the Sheriff, Bang Bang, Stagger Lee, I Hate Mondays, or I Got Rights (you have to know the lyrics to know why that's an appropriate song) - but the one we want him to play is the granddaddy of all the shooting songs, Frankie and Johnnie (based on a true incident?)

So, now, we'll shoot out of here.  During the coming seven days we hope you will aim for a great week and score a bull's eye.

Copyright © 2006 - Robert Patterson

Email the author at worldslaziestjournalist@yahoo.com

Photo Illustrations:

On Sunday, February 12, 2006, photographer "Jersey Bill" took this picture of his wife, Marcia, and their dog Auggie while walking in the Howell area of New Jersey.