Funny Thing Happened on the Way To Work Today

I was walking from class to work, ready for another night of photo editing, when I got a call from the Tulsa World. There had been a multiple-fatality school bus accident about 30 minutes away from Stillwater. I gathered my gear and made my way to the scene.

When I got there I saw the bus - it's front end was completely caved in. The bodies had already been removed, luckily, and I didn't have to see any of that. I don't know how I would have reacted if I did.



Police and sheriff officers were milling about, most of their work done, waiting to go home. I tried to make the most of what I had to work with. Light was getting low and I didn't want to use a strobe. Luckily I was shooting with a D100, so the grain wasn't unbearably bad.



I noticed a woman crying as I was arriving and made a mental note to keep an eye on her for a human emotion detail shot. I didn't want to exploit her pain, so I tried to keep my shots subtle.



Dealing with an assignment like this, involving a dead child, wasn't easy. For the first time I felt like a vulture. I circled the scene, looking for angles and shots. Talking to the woman, who turned out to be the school principal, I was as compassionate as possible, but I still felt like I was intruding on her own personal grieving experience. I'm glad she wasn't the child's parent.

I can only imagine what it must be like to shoot things like this on a regular basis.