One evening when I was ten years old, an abandoned and dilapidated house in our neighborhood caught fire and was soon enveloped in flames. I hurried over to the scene with my camera, thinking such a big fire could represent a chance for me to have a photo of mine appear in our daily paper, The Bergen Evening Record. I rushed home to develop the film and make a print. When I called the paper however, I was told that they were sorry but I had missed the deadline for the next day’s paper. If something like this were to ever happen again, I was told, I shouldn’t bother processing the film myself but I should take it immediately to the paper’s office, and they would develop it.
I was terribly disappointed but, as things turned out, the Record published a monthly newspaper just for paperboys and they offered to publish my picture there, along with the story of how I had rushed to the fire with my camera and printed the photo in my basement darkroom. Looking back, I realize the people at the paper thought the newsworthy part of this was not so much that an abandoned house had burned down as that a 10 year old photographer had been able to get a photo done so quickly. Either way, even though only other paperboys saw it, this was the first photo of mine to ever appear in print and I was quite proud of myself.
In a year or two, my photographic skills had improved so much that I decided to apply to one of our weekly papers for an after school job. The offices of the Park Ridge Local were in the next town over from ours, so one afternoon I took some of my best photos and went to visit the editor and publisher, Mr. George Graves. I think Mr. Graves was also more impressed by my young age than by my pictures. He was an irascible old guy who seemed to do a little of everything at the paper, from writing many of the stories to working the Linotype machine and the printing press. Mr. Graves took kindly to me and said he would send some assignments my way. The pay was a few dollars per picture, big money to a 12 year old in 1960.
Mr. Graves kept me busy. There were the women’s club events, the boys who had become Eagle scouts, the policemen who had been promoted to sergeant, the famous entertainers or politicians who had come to speak at the local high school. I photographed them all—thanks to the willingness of my mom to drive me to the events and wait while I got my shots. Every Memorial Day was a windfall , with parades to cover in nearly every nearby town.
The first thing I learned from Mr. Graves was that newspaper photographers are also responsible for the captions that appear with the photos. These are the first thing people read, he explained, and the text had to be very accurate—most especially the spelling of each person’s name. Every week he patiently critiqued my pictures and suggested how they could be improved.
One thing I quickly learned was how eager people were to have their picture appear in the newspaper. At events I was often surprised at how people were so welcoming to me and, if I couldn’t stay long, were even willing to interrupt their meeting to pose for a photo. With Mr. Graves as my mentor, I became an expert at group shots, making sure each person was visible and getting folks to smile for the camera on cue. I also mastered those frequent “grip and grin” shots—two business leaders or politicians shaking hands energetically while smiling broadly for the camera.
While it certainly boosted my young ego to see my name in the photo credit that appeared beneath each of my photos, the paper’s reproduction of the photos themselves left much to be desired. Whatever do-it-yourself process Mr. Graves used to reproduce the photos, it involved creating an etched plastic plate that was used in the printing press. The reproduction of photos printed this way compared very poorly to other newspapers that used metal plates. The contrast of the pictures was poor and the unpleasant lines of the etching machine were, at least to my eye, very disturbing. While this was probably a very minor concern for the average subscriber, it had become a weekly disappointment for me to see my photos reproduced so poorly.
This was not a problem at the nearby Westwood News, another weekly paper that was the Local’s only competitor. Their quality of printing was equal to that of any daily paper. I so much wanted to see my photos appear with that level of quality that one day, without asking Mr. Graves, I showed up the Westwood News office to offer my services to Mrs. Shirley Rehill, the editor. Mrs. Rehill happened to have been friends with my mom, and was happy to send me assignments. For a few months my photos appeared in both papers, though from different events to be sure. And of course, out of concern for how Mr. Graves might react, I asked Mrs. Rehill not to run a photo credit under any of my pictures that appeared in the Westwood News.
Though I was gratified to see my photos reproduced so well, after a while it began to bother me that in the Westwood News they appeared without any photo credit. I began to wonder if Mr. Graves even read the Westwood News. Perhaps he didn’t, or if he did perhaps he would not even care if my photos appeared there as well as in his paper. They were of different events after all. Yes, I thought, perhaps he wouldn’t even notice or care. So one week I decided to tell Mrs. Rehill that from that issue on it was okay to have “photo by Bruce Parker” appear in the captions under my photos.
A day or two after the next issue of the Westwood News appeared, I went to deliver an assignment to Mr. Graves. He took the photos I handed him without looking up from his desk and then he tossed an envelope to me across the desk. “There’s your pay for the pictures,” he said. “Just take it and go. And don’t come back.”
“Don’t come back?” I stammered. “What’s wrong?”
“You know damn well what’s wrong,” Mr. Graves said angrily. “You didn’t know anything about this business when you came to me. I taught you the ropes. I kept you on when there were problems—and there were a lot of problems early on, my friend. I helped you in every way I could. And what thanks do I get? You go off to work for the competition.”
I offered some feeble explanation about the plastic plates and how all I wanted was for my photos to look better in print. “You know,” he said, “that almost makes what you did worse. Just take the money and go.”
There was nothing more to say. I took the envelope, left and never saw Mr. Graves again. I felt terrible but not as terrible as I should have felt considering my behavior. I had caved in to purely self-centered motives twice actually. Once by such over-fastidiousness over how my photos looked in print that I was willing to betray my mentor and then again by needing to have that all-important photo credit.
One of my seminary professors used to say that most the trouble in the world was due to people needing to have that “last éclair.” You may have had the whole box to yourself and eaten up every other one but there it sits, that last éclair that you could forego, but you’ve just got to have it. That sadly was what my youthful self had also insisted on having.