at the star-exponent i needed to supply the paper with at least one stand alone feature each day. even on the rare occasion that i would go on vacation, i would have to have images on file and ready to use.

when i go to an assignment i am always searching for the next wonderful moment. i try to position myself so that i will have a clean shot at capturing an "instant" the instant it occurs...

there is always "a moment"...
wait for it.

Being a small town photojournalist can be rewarding and humbling. Everyone loves the cute kid shot or the slam dunk by the high school basketball star. Take a beautiful shot of a rainbow at sunset after a storm and reprint requests pour in by the bucket fulls. Photojournalism is not all rainbows and little kids however. Many times I found myself taking photographs of people at the lowest point in their lives. Aiming a camera at them when they found themselves in situations that would show them in the worst possible light. Sometimes the photographs would be of bad people getting what they deserve. A criminal just after getting caught by the local police. A convicted killer in tears as a judge hands down the death sentence. A drug dealer dealing with a life behind bars.
Sometimes however, the camera captures innocent people in tragic situations. Family members holding onto each other at the shore of a lake as divers search for their missing friend. A mother collapsed in the arms of a neighbor, a tiny shoe left alone in the road in front of them. An elderly couple in tears as firefighters continue to put out flames which have destroyed the home they have lived in for 30 years. These are the difficult times for people and they are also the most difficult times for me as a photojournalist.

All my life i have loved looking a photographs. When my friends were getting baseball gloves and robots for Christmas (this was the pre-video gamer area), i would unwrap picture books about animals, outer space, war and far off peoples in far away lands. The words never interested me much, it was the images and it was this love i have for the image that led me through college. Now as an upstart photojournalist with no training, i drew upon my memory of the photographs i loved in national geographic and in all the books i collected to shape the way i would take photographs for my newspaper. Certainly it would be easier to take interesting photographs of a battle torn village or starving children in Africa but, i was determined to find the extraordinary in the everyday all around me.

I began to look. I began to see everything around me. Were as in college, photographs were carefully constructed with light and lines and color, now i had to let life construct the art.

Most of my assignment for the fronts were (and still are) about event coverage. An elementary school receives the gift of a new American flag that replaces the old tattered one which has flown outside the school for over a decade. This scene takes place repeatedly all over the country every day. The faces are different. The name of the school is never the same. Where is the photograph?

I reasoned that capturing an image of faces unique to my town was not enough reason to make 20,000 people look at the image the next morning. What makes an image more than the sum of the parts which comprise the image? A decorated veteran hands over a folded American flag to the principal of a school as hundreds of small children gather around them to watch. Is it enough to show the event, or is there an "EVENT" tucked away within the event?

I snapped a few shots of the presentation, but i knew that there must be more.

Finally, my eyes came to rest on a single child standing and saluting the flag as it was rising on the flagpole. It was quick and sudden and lasted for only a moment. The MOMENT.

The next day we got plenty of positive calls about the image. It seems that i was the only one to see it actually happen. The "moment" is what i have been looking for ever since. Some days are more successful than others, but i will never stop trying. That's what i do....i collect moments.

this is J (janet).
J is my wife and best friend.
J takes photographs too.
J uses a zero image pinhole camera and a holga.
For christmas i bought J a digital camera.
J looks cool in infrared...

And so it began.

My very first day on the job at the Culpeper Star-Exponent i found that my duties included photos for the two section fronts, all the sports images as well at all the photographs used in advertising. The advertising photos comprised of group shots of business owners, store front drive bys and an endless parade of used and new cars for sale. Everything had a deadline and everything was shot on b&w film which was processed in a closet and printed by hand in a bathroom in the basement of the newspaper building. Every head shot, every house for sale, every price-to-sale late model Chrysler or Oldsmobile, every pet-of-the-week from the local SPCA, every check passing, every ribbon cutting, every photograph that appeared in the paper every single day had to be created by me...all by deadline.

This may have been fine except for the fact that i had completely forgotten how to process and print black and white. Heck, i hadn't even taken a photograph in six years.

It was my very first day on the job and i was beginning to feel a bit overwhelmed.

After digging through some boxes, i found my old college bible, the Kodak Black & White Darkroom Dataguide 7th edition, published 1980. Salvation.
It was Friday and I would not officially begin until Monday. I had the weekend to retrain myself.

When Monday morning arrived i realized that i was in way over my head, but maybe if i could tread water long enough i could find my way to shore...or at least a sand bar.

That morning was filled with meeting people at the paper, meeting people in the community and lots and lots of used cars to photograph. I was told that my monthly budget was $500 and I had to buy all my supplies, film and paper and chemistry out of that. As i figured it, I was limited to about 54 exposures per day. Thank God i didn't own a motor drive.

Early that afternoon i was given a police scanner and was told that i would be responsible for breaking news 24/7. Before my jaw could hit the floor, a report of a shooting on the highway south of town came across the fire/rescue channel. I grabbed my gear and took off like a rocket in hopes of being the first media on the scene. Forty-five minutes later, as i made my way up a mountainous incline, i realized that i had driven the wrong direction and was 30 miles north of where the media was gathering to report on a witness for a trial in a neighboring county who was shot dead on their way to court and as i listened to the reports on the radio i felt sick to my stomach.
ooops.

As i pondered possible excuses i found myself rolling up on a gathering of fire and rescue vehicles lining the breakdown lane near the top of the mountain. It seemed that a hour before, a tractor trailer had broken through the guardrail and tumbled down the mountainside. They were just beginning to make the rescue and were lowering down the "jaws of life" to the cab where the driver was waiting in an up-side-down position. I scurried down the mountainside with everyone else, not even asking to be there and, to my surprise, i was not asked to leave. It was as if i belonged there, documenting an amazing rescue effort. I felt invisible. I felt privileged. I felt as if all my voyeuristic tendencies had been given the freedom to soar. The driver had a broken foot and a few scratches. A few firemen gave me their addresses in hopes of getting copies of the photos. I even helped carry some equipment back up the slope for the rescue squad.

Later that afternoon i came clean with my editor. The shooting was the lead story. AP called asking for any images from shooting, but i had to tell them that i had none. The tractor trailer accident occurred just north of the county line and ended up buried inside. This is the photo that ran.

My day began just after 7am and ended after 11pm. It would be the first day of a new life for me. A life filled with long hours, little pay and a lifetime of memories.

My name is mike hensdill and i have been and continue to be a small town photojournalist.

I guess it began in college at Virginia Intermont in Bristol, Virginia. I was working on my BFA in fine art photography and vowed NEVER to prostitute myself by devolving into a children's studio photographer, a commercial shooter or deviant photojournalist. I did however find myself with few options after graduating. I worked on a lawn care crew. I worked as a janitor, as a member of a road survey team. I worked as a roofer on log homes in Vermont in the middle of winter (what was i thinking). I worked briefly as a midnight gas station attendant, and as a record store clerk (remember Peaches?). My last job prior to becoming a photojournalist was as the assistant manager at a family run bookstore in the suburbs of Richmond. It was after being fired from the Book Gallery that i told myself that maybe i should put my degree to work. After all, i had a ton of unpaid loans to remind me that i indeed had some experience in something.
The very next day i found a listing in the Time-Dispatch classified for a entry level photojournalist. Hurray! I didn't have to live out of my car and shower at the local YMCA after all (several years later i did exactly that after a messy divorce, but that's another story). I sent in my resume and waited a week until i began calling the managing editor every day asking for his decision. After three weeks i wore him down and he invited me up to Culpeper, Virginia for an interview. I was ready, except that i did not have any newspaper experience and no printed photos of any kind to show as a portfolio. Hmmmm.
At Virginia Intermont College, we learned how to hand color photographs. We learned how to use 8X10 view cameras. We learned how to process and print E6 color slides. We learned how to make tie dye tee shirts. We learned how to bullshit our way through an endless number of photo critiques. And now i found myself preparing to bullshit my way through an interview about a form of photography that i knew nothing about. I dug through my last remaining negative notebook looking for something worth printing up. Finally i came across a series of images that i had forgotten all about. In 1981 a man had taken the librarian hostage at the campus library. Police surrounded the building and locked down the dorms. My dorm was next to the library and i had gotten myself and my AE-1 out before the police had shut everything down. For over 5 hours i clicked. I clicked police crouching around corners with their guns drawn and worried students and faculty peering out of windows. When the police finally made their way into the library, it was empty. No one was ever found and within a couple of weeks the entire ordeal was forgotten about. These would have to do.
They day before i was to go to the interview i discovered that no one in town would make prints from my negatives so i met with the editor the next day with a portfolio of one plastic sheet of eight-year-old negs. I think, in the end, it was my firm grasp of bull shittery that got me the job.
In the spring of 1989 I packed up my life and moved north to Culpeper to begin my life as a photojournalist for the Star-Exponent. The last place I stopped before leaving Richmond was Main Street Pawn where I bought a Canon AE-1 with a 50mm lens. I guess it was time to remember how to take pictures again....

the photo of me was taken by my wife....J