Photo Shoot: Lessons from an old-school Cape Cod Times photo editor
When you work at a newspaper you meet a lot of interesting people over the years and many of them right in the newsroom — Saturdays were always the best. There was the proofreader, arriving in the morning to get an early start on the Sunday pages, often wearing a kimono. He was on the other side of our cubicle and would wander into photo land to see what slides were on the light table.
The soundtrack of westerns could be heard coming from a small black and white TV in the composing room as the backshop crew set type with fortification from glazed doughnuts they brought in from Ma’s Donut shop in New Bedford.
Then there was my first meeting with the new photo editor on a Saturday afternoon. I had covered a whale stranding. The film was fresh on the light table when Sunday Editor Jim Kershner came around with the Time’s newest hire, Manuel Lopez. I thought it was a good set of photos, Jim suggested Manuel give them a look. He picked up a loupe and went to work. After a long edit, he made a couple of selects. I asked what he thought, thinking he might be impressed.
“Well,” then a very long pause, "you have a couple of nice images, but if you had gotten up on a ladder and shot down on the scene, it would have made a much better composition." He was right of course, but carry a step ladder down the beach to a whale stranding?
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Such was the beginning of my photo education at the School of Manuel.
He came to the paper with a deep resume, photographer at the Chicago Sun-Times and assistant photo editor at National Geographic magazine, editing the best photojournalists in the business, arriving at the Cape Cod Times in the mid-1980s.
He usually went over staff photographers' film frame by frame, hole punch in hand for the color images, red grease pencil for black and white contact sheets. When we were still making black and white prints I was forever being sent back into the darkroom to make a print lighter or cropped ever so slightly different. He was a perfectionist who could make you crazy, especially when laying out a full-page photo essay. Like any student, as much as his staff grumbled about him in the sanctuary of the darkroom, we were all learning, but it was tough love.
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I indeed did buy that folding ladder and still carry it in the back of the car to this day. If a photo of a building was needed he always wanted it shot at dusk to give some impact through the lighting. He wasn’t stingy with praise, but when it was given, you knew you had earned it. I could always tell when I hadn’t met the challenge. He would say, “Well, that is a quiet image,” translation, not much to this photo.
I can’t count how many times he sent me back to re-shoot an assignment, kicking and screaming to myself all the way, but in the end, he simply demanded the best photos we could give the readers, a noble goal.
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Manuel passed away last week at the age of 87. On one of my last visits with him at the nursing home, I brought along the day’s paper. He was still sharp and greeted me with a smile, then set about critiquing the paper, some things never change. I had a feature photo on page 2. He felt I had cropped it too tight, it needed more “breathing room.” His advice still bounces around in my head as I take on the day’s assignments, especially when I unfold my old ladder to get a higher vantage point, solid advice all these years later.
Contact Steve Heaslip at sheaslip@capecodonline.com. Follow him on Twitter: @cctphoto.
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This article originally appeared on Cape Cod Times: Photo Shoot: Lessons from an old school Cape Cod Times photo editor
