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Interview: SCOTT STRAZZANTE Scott Strazzante, 40, joined the staff of the Chicago Tribune in October 2001. Prior to that, Strazzante worked at The Herald News in Joliet, Illinois and the Daily Southtown in Chicago. Strazzante has a slew of awards under his belt, including the title of Newspaper Photographer of the Year in 2001. Usually when I hear his name mentioned at conferences and workshops people attach the words "rock star" to it.
Here's the unofficial first-person bio: As a chubby bespectacled teen growing up in Chicago in the late 1970s I spent many a day watching the error-prone Chicago White Sox from my family's box seats at old Comiskey Park. After receiving a subscription to Sports Illustrated on my 16th birthday, I started to cover the walls of my bedroom with images of sweaty men in uniforms and buxom women in bikinis. I enjoyed the action and the eye candy, but ultimately the best thing SI did for me was provide the impetus to start lugging my dad's old Canon AE1 to the ballpark. One fateful summer day in 1980, I snapped an under-lensed ill-composed frame of Sox fan favorite Chet Lemon sliding into second base and promptly entered it in a local photo contest. A month later I was bestowed a certificate proclaiming me the winner of 3rd place in the First National Bank of Evergreen Park Snapshot Roundup. It would take 5 more years for me to realize that I wanted to pursue photography professionally but at that moment the seeds of my future career were planted. Do you ever miss working for a smaller newspaper? Before I started at the Chicago Tribune, I had two polar opposite experiences at "small" newspapers. In 1987, I began an 11-year run at The Daily Southtown, circulation 50k. The Southtown had a great marketing campaign based around the slogan, "People Up North Just Don't Get It!", but for me that's about all it had going for it. The Southtown was a very good word paper but an incredibly poor photo paper. A typical day consisted of 4-6 assignments, mostly environmental portraits and building exteriors, with little possibility for creativity. The only escape was the night shift and it's sports-based assignment load. I gravitated to shooting sports because it was one of the few chances to shoot true emotion while at the Southtown. In 1998, I took a pay cut, going from 4 weeks of vacation a year to one, to accept a job at The Herald News in Joliet, Illinois. The Herald News, circulation 40k, was at the time owned by the photo-friendly Copley Newspaper chain. It was the best career move I ever made. On day one, photo editor Michael Hamtil gave me the names and phone numbers of two photo subjects and told me to call them and set up the best time to make meaningful images. What a refreshing change from the inflexible reporter-arranged requests at The Daily Southtown. At Copley, working on long-term documentary photo projects was not only encouraged but expected. I learned from and was pushed to excel by a stellar crew of fellow photographers including Rob Finch, Todd Heisler, Brian and Kathy Plonka, Jon Lowenstein and scores of other young hungry image-makers. OK, back to the question. The only things I miss from my Southtown days are some co-workers and a kick-ass hot dog stand on Harlem Avenue. As for Copley, I miss the control I had over which photos appeared in the paper and the amazing camaraderie that existed in the photo department.
What is your best advice to a young photojournalist (not age/ career) to make it, to stick with it and not to give up? You have to be able to make great photos on an island. By that I mean, you need to be able to excel in the worst possible working environment. It's easy to do good work when you are at a nurturing, creative paper or immersed in a fabulous photojournalism program but can you do it when no one gives a shit? That's the key. Push yourself to improve and seek out like-minded and passionate individuals to stay motivated. No matter how financially strapped the industry becomes there will always be room for driven people with passion. What's the best piece of advice you can give to photographers who are starting to feel settled? Those that have been in the newspaper industry for five or more years, are feeling comfortable where they are at, but not sure where they are going next? Hmmmmm... good one. I would say try to rekindle that fire that first attracted you to photography. Take a workshop or start a personal project where you make photos only for you. Figure out where you want to be in five years and go out and make it happen. One can do great work and still have a life outside of newspapers. So, getting a divorce, buying a VW van and hitting the road with a Holga and some killer weed is not the only way to change the course of your career. But if that option appeals to you, knock yourself out. When it comes down to it, it all starts inside of you and you need to decide what personal sacrifices you want to make for your career. I get story ideas in two ways. I either stumble upon them or they originate from writers that I have forged working relationships with. Some examples- In 2004, I was assigned to do a quick portrait of Jehad Hamden, a Chicago-area father of three who decided to attempt to qualify for the 2004 Olympic wrestling team but not for the USA but for Palestine. After chatting with Jehad, I realized that his was a story worth devoting some time to. With the blessing of the Tribune assignment desk, I followed Hamden to Aspen, Slovakia, Bulgaria and Switzerland. His quest fell short but his character shone through. Another example is from this past year. I happened upon a blurb on the Tribune website about a bird hospital that was slated to be opened at the former Meigs Field Airport in Chicago. That small item became a 5-month story on Dawn Keller and the wildlife rehabilitation center that she runs out of the second floor bedroom of her suburban home. I shot 80% of the story before I even knew what section it was going to run in. Once I was comfortable that the story was almost done I went about finding a home for it. It eventually ran in the Trib's Sunday Magazine with fabulous text written by Don Terry. I also work closely with two idea-rich Trib staffers, Ofelia Casillas and Jason George, who get me in on the ground floor of their story ideas and brief me before they talk to their editors about them. When I first start a long-term project I don't tell the subject that I'm planning on spending x amount of time with them. In most cases, I begin by making short visits fairly regularly. After I start getting a feel for what the real story is, I then have start looking for specific situations. No matter how compelling a story is, most photo subjects don't think that there life is unusual so it's important to "train" your subject to be in communication about what is going on in their life. Stress that you want to tell a complete story and in addition to photographing compelling events you need to shoot mundane everyday activities. From those mundane activities, I find come the most story-telling images.
Your approach seems to be very organic when you begin a story. From your apad posts it looks like you shoot for a while before you find the meat or story arch. I'm curious how you develop photo stories? Once you find a compelling subject what do you do next? When you find yourself with a new story to tell, what's your thought process along the way? Do you shoot everything first and edit when it's all done, or are there points along the way you stop to redirect your shooting? I touched on this a bit in the last question but I definitely feel that most pre-conceived notions about what a story is are wrong. It usually takes me several visits to get a feel for what I think the gist is. That's one of the reasons that I like to put in a lot of work on self-generated stories before I even start selling it to a section or a writer. That way I can pitch it as what it is and not what I think it will be. The Tribune assignment desk gives me a lot of latitude in that exploration and there has been more than one case where I have spent a huge chunk of time on a story and have it never be published. Which for me is the worst because it means a photo subject has trusted me with their story and I've failed to communicate its importance to my newspaper. When I am shooting a story, I usually pull out my favorites after every shoot and keep them in a separate folder. As the story evolves my selects folder makes it easier for me to find the holes in my shooting and focus my effort on subsequent visits. Your closeness to the people you're photography is evident in a lot of the photos I see come across APAD. Given the time constraints of being a daily newspaper photographer... how do you do it? I spend a ton of my own time on stories. Someone's life rarely fits into my 10am to 6pm shift so I have to be prepared to shoot when the story dictates. Once again, the Tribune assignment desk is great with allowing that flexibility. I still average around 40 hours a week but hardly ever work 40 hours in a week. Some weeks I'll work 60 while others only 20. I also have built up countless comp days that always come in handy when Geekfest rolls around or I want to chaperone one of my kids' field trips. Your photo column, "Heart and Soul," is more than a year old now. How has it changed in that time, as far as your approach; how you see it; how others at your paper see it; how the community sees it? Heart and Soul has been great for me personally on several levels. It is the first thing since my Copley days that I have had total control over. I come up with the ideas, edit the takes, tone the photos, write the text and hand the finished product over for publication. I like the fact that I am getting underappreciated sports and athletes into the Tribune. I love the reaction when a last place bowling team realizes that they are going to get some pub. Also, it guarantees that I will shoot at least one thing a week that is real and has possibilities. When I first started the column I envisioned that every high school in Chicagoland would flood my inbox with requests to shoot their athletes. Unfortunately I rarely get ideas from the community at large. I think that the column is held back a bit by the fact that the paper rarely promotes it. The print edition version runs too small on a quarter page in the back of the sports section and the presentation doesn't allow it to jump out as something different. In fact, there are still shooters at the Tribune who don't even realize that I am doing the column. The online version is even harder to find. It is buried way down on the Preps Plus page of chicagosports.com which is a sub-section of chicagotribune.com. For one day earlier this school year, it was featured on the front page of the Trib website and I got a ton of emails and about 50,000 views but once it got relegated to its usually spot that died down. I think this season will be its last in its current form. Next year, I need to either add an audio component or change it's focus altogether. I've been mulling around the idea of following three teams, one each in the fall, winter and spring, and running a weekly serialized column on the ups and downs of a specific squad. Unfortunately, I think that the Trib sports department will think that no one would care outside of each particular school but I heartily disagree. I still love producing the column and if I can keep it going for a bit longer I think it would be a good book. I definitely consider it a long term project and I think the individual columns hold together well as a complete thought.
I don't have kids yet. I find when I have time I want to give the attention to my wife and dog, but I also want to work on long term projects which sometimes cut into my personal time. You seem to work on long term projects and travel. How do you balance your family and being a father into this? Three years ago when my two children, Betsy and Cameron, came to live with me full time I had just started to be thought of as one of the Tribune's traveling photographers. A trip to Iraq was in the early planning stages and I already was slated to go to Greece for a month to shoot the Olympics. My first selfish thought was that my career was going to suffer. I have always been thought as a community journalist and was eager to prove that I could cover world events with the best of them. I guess that will just have to wait for 10 more years. In hindsight, my situation has actually made me a better photographer. More efficient and more focused. I still have the inability to take off to cover things like Hurricane Katrina and other breaking news events but luckily I have a mother and two sisters who are very supportive and willing to watch my youngins when I am off on assignment. Also, I drag the offspring along with me a lot when I shoot my photo column or go to a high school sporting event. Betsy and Cameron tend to whine a bit when I have to work an off day or go away for a month but overall they think my job is cool and they enjoy it when I follow Jenny's dad the plumber on Career Day. If I remember correctly from Geekfest, you said you have never lit an assignment for the Tribune, but used only available light. Could you elaborate on why this is. What is your reason for this? How do you accomplish making quality photographs in poor lighting conditions without the ability to modify these conditions? Would any circumstance cause you to change your approach to lighting? And seriously, how do you survive without using a flash? never ever? even on drab business assignments, with hideous windowless flourescent offices, and it's 6 degrees and no one wants to go outside and you're using dinosaur nikons? never? Since October 2001, besides a couple studio shoots, I have not used a strobe once. Why? First, I want to document reality and that includes the light, If something happens in a dank dark room, I don't want it to look pretty, I want it to look dank and dark. I also am very confident in my ability to find light in low light situations. I shoot a lot of photos and if 98 out of 100 have motion blur, it always seems that the two sharp ones are the best moments. Another reason is that I hate using a strobe in a situation where I am trying to be stealth. The less attention I get the better. But probably the main reason is stubbornness. I don't use a strobe because I've been saying for so long that I don't use a strobe that that fact alone keeps me from not using one. There are definitely times when I should be using one and I know that my bosses wish that I would use one occasionally but at this point I plan on continuing to rely on available light.
Now, more than ever before, exists a conflict of interest between the people gathering the news for the paper and those concerned with the financial security of the paper. How do you keep yourself motivated to make meaningful pictures of interesting stories in an era when newspapers are less and less concerned with journalism and more and more concerned with profits? I love newspapers. I love seeing my photos in the newspaper. I love having tangible evidence of my day's work and being able to share my view of the world with a small but wide-reaching audience. At this point, I have many more venues at the Chicago Tribune to get my work out there then back in the day when there was only the print edition. The limit of what I can do is only constrained by the effort that I want to put in it. I think that if I actually had to pitch story ideas to the bean counters I would go crazy but as long as there are still people at the Trib who support my type of photojournalism I will be happy. You also have to realize that I was happy at the Southtown and I will be happy no matter what happens. I'm dumb like that. [Special thanks to APhotoADay members Stephen Voss, Tyler Stoffel, Rob Mattson, Chad Pilster, Sandra Rochelle, Mike Shepherd, Julia Robinson, Nicole Fruge, and G.J. McCarthy for contributing questions to this interview.]
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