This photo was probably my favorite from in an assignment last week, but for a couple different reasons, it clearly falls into the category of an outtake, a photo that would normally never reach the eyes of our readers.
Last Saturday night, October 17, reporters Amy Bickel and Kristen Roderick and I went to do a story on the new Halloween attraction, The Forest of Horrors, near the small town of Elyria in McPherson County. Amy had arrived separately about a half an hour before us, and after getting lost and turning around several times, it was about 10:30 p.m. before Kristen and I arrived at the ticket stand. From there we met up with a group of fright-seekers and were taken on a hayrack out to the forest where we were told unspeakable terror awaited us.
I knew this would be a challenging environment to shoot in due to the fact that horror filled woods at 10:30 p.m. don’t usually contain a lot of light. I wanted to use my time sitting on the hayrack ride to experiment with different exposures so that by the time we were dropped off, I’d be ready to shoot and could keep the fumbling with buttons on the back of my camera to a minimum. After getting some spooky, blurry images of the tractor pulling us along, I turned around to try capturing some faces of the people on the hayrack. During this one-second exposure, the red taillight of the tractor pulling us along lit up part of one face with a ghostly red color. I still have no idea where the lights forming lines behind her came from, but they create a surreal sense of motion in an otherwise black frame.
I love this picture because it is completely unexpected from the context and plays with light, lines and color within an otherwise utter blackness. What makes this picture cool, however, is precisely why it is inappropriate for publication with the story. As a photojournalist, the photos I’m looking for are not only visually pleasing, but help tell the story of the subject I’m covering. Although this image does portray a somewhat eerie mood, it does not easily identify the Forest of Horrors experience. Secondly, the face in this picture is that of Hutchinson News reporter Amy Bickel, a fact that makes this photo unsuitable for publication with the story even if it did happen to accurately represent the scene.
This photograph is a great example of an outtake, a kind of picture that we photojournalists are thrilled to have made, but have to leave out of the paper in order to tell the story clearly and objectively. I was very pleased to be able to share and discuss this outtake in today’s Ad Astra section. It is one out of many that will never take shape in newsprint.