SL Trib:
Items in the vehicle when Jeffs was captured included: 27 stacks of $100 bills, worth $2,500 each; 14 cellular phones; a radar detector, two Global Positioning System units; two female wigs, one blonde and one brunette; several knives; several CDs; three watches; three Ipods; multiple credit cards; seven sets of keys; a photograph of Jeffs and his father; a Bible and a Book of Mormon.
The items were seen on pool video footage created with official permission.
Here.
KSL:
FLDS prophet Warren Steed Jeffs, 50, was taken into custody after he and two other people were pulled over late Monday by a Nevada Highway Patrol trooper on Interstate 15 just north of Las Vegas, FBI spokesman David Staretz said.
Here.
NYT:
But the case has since taken a surprising turn, even by the bizarre standards of violence, organized crime and police brutality that have accompanied Chechnya’s lingering war. It turns out Elina Ersenoyeva, 26, led two lives.
In addition to her public positions, she was a secret bride of Shamil Basayev, the one-footed Chechen terrorist leader and Russia’s most wanted man, who died in an explosion on July 11.
Ms. Ersenoyeva’s mother said her daughter had not voluntarily married Mr. Basayev, who remained unapologetic and defiant after sending female suicide bombers to Moscow and onto passenger jets, and who had planned the lethal hostage sieges in a Russian theater and a public school. She agreed to marry him, her mother said, only because the separatists had threatened to kill her two brothers if she did not do as they said.
Here.
Washington Post:
A crowd of as many as 5,000 people, including hundreds armed with AK-47 assault rifles, attacked Camp Abu Naji and hauled away window and door frames, corrugated roofing and metal pipes, despite the presence of a 450-member Iraqi army brigade meant to guard the base.
“The looters stole everything — even the bricks,” said Ahmed Mohammed Abdul Latief, 20, a student at Maysan University. “They almost leveled the whole base to the ground.”
Here.
Wired:
Regardless of the threat, from the would-be bombers’ perspective, the explosives and planes were merely tactics. Their goal was to cause terror, and in that they’ve succeeded.
Imagine for a moment what would have happened if they had blown up 10 planes. There would be canceled flights, chaos at airports, bans on carry-on luggage, world leaders talking tough new security measures, political posturing and all sorts of false alarms as jittery people panicked. To a lesser degree, that’s basically what’s happening right now.
Here.
My assignment Tuesday was to photograph the destruction of a Titan rocket at the Utah Test and Training Range. If you need to visually picture the Test and Training Range, just picture miles and miles of scrub desert. It’s just pure nothingness as far as you can see. I don’t know if my photographs could do it justice. If you were ever going to set fire to the aft section of a Titan IV-B, a 291,700 pounds solid fuel booster rocket capable of 1.7 million pounds of thrust at 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit, this is definitely the place.
Picture the world’s largest bottle rocket sitting out in the desert with its stick ripped off. To set it off safely, the plan was to use explosives to break it apart, allowing the fuel to burn off in all directions without the rocket “going ballistic.”
Crazy talk begins.
My idea to dispose of the rocket would have been a little different. I would make it more of an show and raise some money for the public schools. I would set the thing off like the world’s biggest jumping jack firework. The thing would launch forward, bounce off a mountain, spin around like mad, skip across the lake, hit another mountain. Can’t you see it? For more fun, we could strap a couple elephants to it and see what happens. To raise money for the public schools, we would have the people of Utah place bets about which city it finally landed in. I’d put five bucks on Brigham City.
But by the time I drove out to the test and training range, it was obvious that my plan wouldn’t work. Coordinating with the elephant trainer was proving too difficult, and I still hadn’t talked to anyone with the Air Force.
Crazy talk ends.
Events like this where something is blown up or set afire are heavily controlled for safety reasons. We were taken to the top of Bug Hill, about four still photographers and maybe five TV cameras. The rocket was two miles away. Photographically, one guy had a 600mm lens, another a 400mm lens, and other guy had a 70-200. I considered bringing a 600mm for a really tight shot, but to me the real photo would be the huge cloud of smoke. I settled on a 300mm lens with a 1.4x teleconverter and a second camera with a 70-200mm lens.
We waited for a couple of hours before the countdown finally began. I had the long lens on a tripod and the other camera in my hands, ready to pounce on the shot. Finally the blast went off, it looked like a hundred shooting stars heading toward the sky. I held down the buttons on both cameras, one tight and one a little more tight. It was a beautiful explosion, and then the fuel started burning. It was a lot brighter than I expected, and smoke was just pouring out of that thing. An incredible sight.
After four or five minutes, the fuel was all burned, and the Air Force offered me a styrofoam box lunch for $1.80. Inside were beans, mashed potatoes and gravy, and a piece of fish.
NYT:
In Capcom’s action game Dead Rising, almost everything is a weapon, including mall benches, mannequin arms, stuffed animals and wire hangers. Not that beating a zombie with a stuffed animal is very effective, but you can do it.
The game begins as Frank West, a photojournalist, arrives by helicopter in a small town that has been sealed off by the National Guard. The game begins, not with killing zombies, but with photographing them; one can unlock new skills through points awarded for photos of zombie hordes, imperiled humans or the cleavage of scantily clad female zombies.
Here.
Roy Gutman, DART, via Romenesko:
For example: a deportation of Bosnian Muslims from a village on the Drina by the Serbian state railways in sealed passenger cars—which could only have happened on the orders of the top officials in the state. Upon hearing about the existence of concentration camps, I made an enormous effort to put together a complete picture of what went on in one place—I chose Omarska. It was not just because of the atrocity, but because in a fixed location under state control, any crime can be attributed to the state.
After reporting that there was a string of concentration camps throughout Bosnia, I had a rather rude awakening. What I discovered was that I was not just up against the rump Yugoslav state and its criminal leadership, but the US and nearly every other western government as well, who had every ability to find out the facts on their own but chose not to. The US government response to my initial stories on Omarska—confirmation, denial, and then after several weeks of supposed careful collation of intelligence, a more considered denial—spoke volumes about the West’s overall attitude toward Bosnia, toward European Muslims, toward war crimes, and toward genocide.
Here.
This photograph of mine won 3rd place in the Spot News category of the Utah News Photographers Association’s Photojournalism Competition. Here’s the backstory:
When people hear that I’m a news photographer their first impression is that I must spend all of my time chasing sirens and photographing horrific car crashes and fires. I can only guess that they get that idea from watching the TV news, which is awash in these stories of mayhem and danger. We don’t really roll on too many car crashes or fires unless it’s something really big.
When I started at my career at the Daily Herald in Provo, there was no car crash too small for us. We would run out on anything. You name it, I photographed it in Provo. Oh, the stories I could tell. They’re all flooding into my mind right now. My very first assignment ever was a rollover in Provo Canyon (no one was hurt). I’ll tell those stories somewhere else some other time.
I worked in Provo for 2 1/2 years. When I have an assignment in Utah County now, I try to find a little extra time to hit my
favorite photo spots. I’ll try to swing by the rope swing, the falls, the train bridge, the hobo camp, the steel mill, the lake.
Utah Lake State Park is a wonderful place for photography. I drove to the lake in January 2005, where the jetty was being extended. This large truck had tipped over. The driver was fine aside from a maybe a small breakout of embarrassment. It wasn’t the biggest news, but the scene was great for an unusual news photo. I actually sat in my car
staying warm, listening to music and shooting through the passenger window. The whole recovery process took about an hour.
I shoot everything in color. But after looking at it, the photographs from this scene were amazing in black and white. (And that’s how it ran in the paper.) With black and white the viewer is able to concentrate more on the shapes of the image. Also, I was shooting into the sun on a hazy day. Not great conditions for color. The blues just didn’t pop like I would have hoped. Remember, in news photography you can’t go in and over-saturate that hazy blue into a beautiful photo.
Here’s how the scene looked in color on that hazy day:
Washington Post:
ABC News’s Martha Raddatz was not satisfied. “The violence has gotten worse in certain areas,” she reminded him. “Is it not time for a new strategy?”
Bush acted as if Raddatz were Cindy Sheehan. “We’re not leaving (Iraq), so long as I’m the president,” he vowed. “That would be a huge mistake. It would send an unbelievably terrible signal to reformers across the region. It would say we’ve abandoned our desire to change the conditions that create terror. It would give the terrorists a safe haven from which to launch attacks. It would embolden Iran. It would embolden extremists.”
“Sir,” Raddatz pointed out, “that’s not really the question.”
Bush shook his head in disbelief. “Sounded like the question to me,” he said.
Here.
So I’m photographing the Jordan Beetdiggers vs. the Alta Hawks High School basketball in January 2005. And since I shoot dozens of basketball games every year, I’m looking for a new angle. The game is in the fourth quarter, going down to the wire. I climb up to the top of the bleachers for a good shot from above of players reacting to victory or defeat.
Alta pulls ahead in the final moments and snatches the win on Jordan’s home court. One of the star players for Jordan pulls his jersey over his head in disgust and I photograph his reaction with a long lens.
It’s a nice storytelling image and runs in the paper the next day. Normally, that’s when the story ends.
But a few days later I’m looking at that picture and a memory is triggered. I realize that I took a similar shot in 2004. With a few keystrokes I pull up my shot from the year before.
I can’t believe it. This January 2004 shot was also taken at Jordan High School. It was taken from the same spot, top of the bleachers. It was even the same situation, a close loss for the Jordan Beetdiggers. Even more bizarre- it’s the same kid!
I never heard from Nick Howard, the player behind the jersey. I wonder what he thought, seeing that photo of his frustrated self two years straight. Once was probably enough.
Nick, I hope you have a good sense of humor.
NYT:
“The victory that Hezbollah achieved in Lebanon will have earthshaking regional consequences that will have an impact much beyond the borders of Lebanon itself,” Yasser Abuhilalah of Al Ghad, a Jordanian daily, wrote in Tuesday’s issue.
“The resistance celebrates the victory,” read the front-page headline in Al Wafd, an opposition daily in Egypt.
Hezbollah’s perceived triumph has propelled, and been propelled by, a wave already washing over the region. Political Islam was widely seen as the antidote to the failures of Arab nationalism, Communism, socialism and, most recently, what is seen as the false promise of American-style democracy. It was that wave that helped the banned but tolerated Muslim Brotherhood win 88 seats in Egypt’s Parliament last December despite the government’s violent efforts to stop voters from getting to the polls. It was that wave that swept Hamas into power in the Palestinian government in January, shocking Hamas itself.
Here.
This photograph of mine won an Honorable Mention in the Sports Action category of the Utah News Photographers Association’s Photojournalism Competition. It shows US goalkeeper Kasey Keller making one of his six saves during a 3-0 victory over Costa Rica. Here’s the backstory:
The assignment was last June, when the U.S. soccer team faced Costa Rica in a World Cup qualifying match. It was a huge game, the biggest soccer game in Utah history and the biggest international sporting event here since the 2002 Winter Olympics. So the pressure was on to produce great photography. In a game like this you can’t afford to miss a moment. Anything can happen and you have to be in place and ready to catch it.
We had two photographers assigned to the game, Danny La and myself. There was no sideline access so once you picked a side, you pretty much had to stay put. Danny worked one end of the field and I worked the other. If something happened on my end, it was my responsibility.
Shooting soccer presents a lot of challenges. The action moves all over a large field. The right lens to bring is a 400mm, which gives you a sweet shot near the goal, but it doesn’t quite reach out to action further away. The problem is, a lot of the action is away from the goal. You need a much longer lens to reach out to that action, but it’s not really practical to have a 600mm in one hand and a 400mm in the other. These are huge, heavy lenses! But as one top European soccer photographer told me during the Olympics when I asked him about soccer: “The goals are all that matter.”
So Danny and I each staked out a goal and waited for the action to come to us. During the game you do track the action that’s too far out, but most of those shots require more cropping that I’d prefer to do.
From what I remember, Costa Rica was sprinting to the goal. At that point I had two choices: stay with the player attacking or put the lens on the goalkeeper. There’s no way I could have photographed both, and if they collided it wouldn’t matter who I started with. So I went to the keeper and let the camera do the rest.
This sequence shows the frames I shot of this particular save. You can see the second of the five frames was the award-winner. It happened so quick, like snapping your fingers. The camera fires 8.5 frames per second, so that ball was moving like a bullet.
You don’t see it much on the screen or in the paper, but the focus is tack sharp on the ball and the keeper’s face is a little behind the focus. It happened so quick I’m surprised the camera kept up with the ball so well and then stayed on the keeper once the ball left the frame.
After the game I was editing in the press box, surrounded by other photographers also pounding away on their laptops. While we’re all competitive, when someone gets a photo like this everyone comes over to look at the screen and offer compliments. The real satisfaction, though, came the next morning when I opened the paper to the sports page and saw the photo very large as the dominant image on the sports page.
Several things that make a great sports action photo are in this photograph: relatively clean background, peak moment, great facial expression. But most importantly the photo tells part of the story of the game. Keller had a great game with six saves.
I’ll write more about Real Madrid and David Beckham’s visit to Salt Lake City last weekend. That was another great game, and it’s worth an entry.
This post also appeared on my work blog on The Salt Lake Tribune’s website. As always, thanks to my marvelous “word editor” Peg.
CJR:
On July 25, Fox News reporter Bill Hemmer stood on a balcony and pointed to a hilltop on the Lebanon side of Israel’s border. The camera zoomed in. “It’s possible the latest Katushya rocket round left that high point,” Hemmer said, the camera following his sweeping hand over the hazy landscape, “and went down valley to the lower point of the Golan Heights.”
Later, Fox News reporter Greg Palkot provided an update: Hezbollah had issued a directive to “the American media,” starting with Fox. “We have been advised by the Hezbollah militia here not to show the exact positions where those rockets are launched from.” Under Palkot’s long face, a graphic read, “Hezbollah’s Request.”
Here.
My assignment Thursday was to photograph the Carbon County Sheriff Department’s search effort using a K-9 dog and heavy equipment to look for a child who went missing in a flash flood near Helper on July 30.
But when I got there at 2 p.m., the dog was done. Having sniffed since 6:30 in the morning, its day was over. A few officers were standing around. Their day also over, they talked about the search.
So what I’m trying to say is that there was no shot to be had. A two-hour drive and it’s all over. As a newspaper photographer, I can’t fake a scene. I can’t ask them to pick up their shovels and pretend to dig. My only real option is to shoot pictures of the area they were searching or portraits of the guys standing around. Neither option is pretty, let alone worth the drive out here.
Then a couple of cars pull up. It’s the boy’s parents, Courtney and Josh Seal. As they get out of their car it’s obvious they have been searching as well; there is mud on their pants, they’ve been sweating in the desert sun, Josh’s bare feet are caked with river mud. Both are sunburnt. This has obviously been a long month.
On July 30, the Seal family was on a family drive when the raging water of a flash flood picked up their SUV and carried it away. Josh, Courtney, and their 3-year-old daughter Brooklynn made it to safety. One-year-old Jayden and 5-year-old Levi were swept away. Levi’s remains were found, Jayden is still out there somewhere along the course of the river.
The search area is enormous. Items from the Seals’ vehicle have been found as far away as the Green River State Park, many miles away.
Josh told of the moments immediately after the tragedy, when he held his daughter tight against his body for warmth. Should he put her down, leaving her in this very dangerous spot and try to reach the vehicle to see if he could save the others? Should he risk one of his children’s safety on the chance he could save another one? That’s a question that I’m sure he will never find an answer for, as he ponders it for the rest of his life.
The Seals say they won’t stop searching until they find Jayden. Courtney asks me if I would ever give up the search if one of my children was lost out here. My answer is the same as hers. Absolutely not. I don’t see how you could leave a child out here, buried somewhere in the mud. She says she can’t bear that Levi is buried alone, without his brother.
Courtney has a tattoo of Levi’s name on her ankle and plans to have portraits of both sons inked onto her back sometime later. Right now she’s too busy searching. Back into the mud they go.
NYT:
The civil rights leader Andrew Young, who was hired by Wal-Mart to improve its public image, resigned from that post last night after telling an African-American newspaper that Jewish, Arab and Korean shop owners had “ripped off” urban communities for years, “selling us stale bread, and bad meat and wilted vegetables.”
In the interview, published yesterday in The Los Angeles Sentinel, a weekly, Mr. Young said that Wal-Mart “should” displace mom-and-pop stores in urban neighborhoods.
“You see those are the people who have been overcharging us,” he said of the owners of the small stores, “and they sold out and moved to Florida. I think they’ve ripped off our communities enough. First it was Jews, then it was Koreans and now it’s Arabs.”
Here.
Wired:
“It was a time where, for a while, the top-selling interactive games in the world were essentially books,” said Jason Scott, a Boston filmmaker and Unix system administrator who is shooting a documentary called Get Lamp about text adventure pioneers. As with his last film — a five-and-a-half-hour documentary about bulletin boards called BBS: The Documentary — Scott’s plan is to archive a period in computing history that’s at risk of drifting into obscurity.
Text-based games faded from popular culture in the late 1980s as personal computers became advanced enough to process detailed graphics and sound. But early favorites, like the underground adventure series Zork created by MIT students in the late 1970s, still have a cult following. Online repositories like The Interactive Fiction Archive and the Society for the Promotion of Adventure Games also maintain access to early works.
Here.
This photograph of mine won First Place in the Humor category of the Utah News Photographers Association’s Photojournalism Competition. I love photos like this. The idea that someone comes along to this refuge and blasts away at the bird so methodically. It’s a true Utah sight. Here’s the backstory:
Last year the Tribune did a series of stories on the counties of Utah. My name was called for the Davis County project. Reporter Matthew D. LaPlante came up with the idea of walking a 16-mile course across the county from Fruit Heights to Antelope Island. Since my camera equipment is too heavy to bring on a 16-mile trek, we made one revision and the plan became brilliant- we did it on mountain bikes. This allowed us to really soak up Davis County, to breathe the air, and see Davis County up close.
We rode through suburbs filled with scooter and bike-riding kids, past strip malls and through so many developments under construction. The amount of homes being built in Layton and Syracuse was astonishing. We ate shakes, fries, and burgers at a drive-in. It was a real Davis County experience.
Toward the end of the ride, we ventured into this wildlife refuge where we found this blasted-up sign. It was lousy riding. So many bugs, muddy bogs and no scenery. When we got back to pavement there were scores of thorns sticking into our tires. We rode a couple more miles to the waiting car, at which point we noticed our tires were losing air fast and even worse, the bolts holding LaPlante’s front tire to the bike had fallen off somewhere along the way.
I still owe LaPlante a photo of a pig I took on that ride last May. Someday.
