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I have posted this on the Parents Board, but thought I might find out what my peers think:


The orange nets unfurled from the hands of the police force, I stood there frozen, not immediately alert to looming danger. The police lifted their clubs, I lifted my camera. The demonstrators fell to the ground, I kneeled beside them. Images flashed before me, and I responded with the click of a button. The danger was still present, but remarkably, so were the protesters

A man holding up a bible, a policeman holding up a gun. An elderly lady playing chess with a dog at her side, an AIDS victim struggling for his last breath as protestors trampled him. What I was witnessing was more than a democratic movement; it was a snapshot of society at its best and worst.

When it started, I feared the protestors. They picked through garbage looking for left over food while I chewed on my granola bar that Mom had packed me. I clung to my cell phone, which had the number for a civil rights lawyer on speed dial, while they simply hoped that someone might bail them out. As the days dragged on, however, our differences became less of an issue, and our commonalities became integral to both of our causes. The protestors needed the awareness that I could provide, and I needed subjects to photograph.

While the professional media sat patiently and waited for that one token shot of a protestor being dragged away handcuffed, I took an alternative approach. It all began with the purchase of a pin. It seemed simple enough. Affix an anti-Bush pin to my backpack, and reap the rewards that often come along when a photojournalist connects with his subjects. To some extent, this proved true. For days I had envied the photographers who got the “money shots”, and now, miraculously, the protestors put their faith in my pin and chose to turn to me as they were taken away. What they saw in me was the ability to make their cause known, and I felt guilty. I was not the NY Times; I could not deliver their message to the masses. When they spelled out their name as if it was to appear in the caption, all I could do was call it in to the AP wire.

As the days dragged on, however, my connections with the crowds grew closer. A bag of chips here, a free cell phone call there, any little thing that might draw me closer was worth the effort. During their brief respites, I learned first hand that the messages they wished to convey were meant to extend to all facets of society and that all along they knew I was not a NY Times editor. When the protestors turned to me, they turned to me to depict the truth to the members of my society, not their own, and not even to the readers of the Times. They wanted to show everyone the messages: the students of Northport High School, the internet surfers who passed through my website, even the relatives who viewed my albums.

The power of my camera was suddenly obvious. With the snap of a button, I could capture a movement without a word. I could freeze a moment in time that represented so much more than that one flash, and yet I could speak volumes through an eighth of a second and a few chemicals.

When the nets came sweeping through the park, I looked around with envy at those around me. At one time, I thought that they were there for the right reasons and I was there for the wrong reasons. They were there to prove, and I was there to document. What I realized in just a few days though, was that whether one was more important than the other could not be determined in that mere instant – and it really did not matter. So I grabbed a sign, affixed my button, and chanted with the rest of them. The whole world was watching!