On Monday, I headed out early (my shift starts at 7) to find something
to photograph for the paper. Generally, we try to get something in
fairly early to feed to The Post web page.
I went to a dock not far from where I live where I found four
squirrel-ly men preparing their fishing boat to head out for a long
day at sea. When I arrived, their boat was still on the trailer of the
truck and they were getting ready to back it into the water.
The boat was backed in far enough for a few of the men to hop on and
do what they needed to ready to boat to be backed all the way in. I
shot away in the nice early light while these guys did their thing. I
brought my camera down and watched for a bit. It was then that the
truck backed-up very slightly, as though it was put into park and
moved as a result. In a quick moment, the boat hit the ground floor
beneath the water and the winch, which holds the boat on the trailer,
came loose. It spun out of control with all the weight of the boat
pulling it. On it's first spin, it smacked the knee of Ken, the man in
the yellow shirt, who was standing just behind the winch.
"Take me to the hospital" Ken suddenly said. There was a pause
between Ken getting hit in the knee and him reacting, so I wasn't
quite sure how badly he'd been hurt until he said something. He was so
calm about it, too. When he said he'd hurt himself, I thought for sure
he must have damaged his kneecap from the handle of the winch hitting
him.
He climbed down from the boat and that's when I saw how bad it was.
The man was holding his skin together between his thumb and
fingers! It was as though a giant mouth had suddenly appeared just
above his knee. The shear force of the handle swinging around and
hitting him split the skin straight open. I'd never seen anything like
it. (This is when the What If scenario comes in and I bend down and
say to the mouth above his knee "Would you like a piece of candy?")
I'm completely impressed with how calm he is about it. I ask him if
he's light-headed. He says, "Oh, no, I'm fine!"
At this point, some dude from a nearby boat comes up to us, "Hey
are you guys sellin' any tools? 'Cause somethin's wrong with my
truck."
I tell him they have their own problem to deal with at the moment.
"Oh," he says, very airily, "Hey, are you a professional photographer
or somethin'?"
"Uh-huh" I say in the most
I'm-not-remotely-interested-
"Cool," he says, "Did he fall or somethin'?"
Shut it, dude, go play with your big Tonka truck.
I tell Ken and his friend where the nearest hospital is and
they're on their way. I leave my business card with one of the
remaining men. But, as I leave, I begin to question myself. Should I
have taken pictures of that? It's not necessarily newsworthy, I tell
myself. But, it is slice-of-life, in a weird way, I continue my mental
conversation. With all the accuracy issues going out there, I was
suddenly a bit torn. And paranoid. Will I get chewed-out for
wondering to myself if I had a towel in my car with which to make a
tourniquet instead of taking pictures? Um, am I supposed to mention
this incident in my cutline? I mean, do I say they went fishing when I
know they never actually made it out on the water?
I call my editor sheepishly and he teases me, "What are you trying to
kill the guy?! And why are you asking me about this? You figure it
out!"
OK, that's very fair, but I'm running on less sleep than usual and
I'm concerned that if I go with my own judgment, well, I'll end up not
even handing the picture in because I just won't be able to decide
what to do (Cut me some slack, I'm on the early shift this month and
it's hard to get the synapses firing).
He tells me to just leave it out, then later in the day, he asks me if
I tried to kill anyone else today by distracting them while shooting.
Ha. Ha.
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