Dayhoff Soundtrack: The stories behind the pictures By Monica Lopossay

Monday, May 17, 2010

The stories behind the pictures By Monica Lopossay

Retrieved 20100516 May 16, 2010

Monica Lopossay

Daughter of a truck driver and a mill worker, Monica Lopossay grew up in rural North Carolina. At 16, she raised enough money to buy her first camera by dressing in a 20-pound chicken suit and dancing on the side of a highway. She was the first person in her family to attend college, working her way through as a grill cook, a tutor at a Buddhist temple and a car mechanic. She earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in international studies and cultural anthropology from Guilford College in Greensboro, N.C., and an associate's degree in photojournalism from Randolph Community College. In her last eight years working for The Baltimore Sun, she covered a wide range of events, including two trips to Iraq and one to

Haiti

. She was honored in 2008 with her third Pulitzer nomination for spot news, as well as awards from the White House News Photographers Association and National Press Photographers Association, Best of Photojournalism. She is currently teaching photojournalism part time at Towson University and also works for ASTT, a nonprofit organization dedicated to serving the needs of refugees who are victims of torture and trauma. Other than seeking full-time employment, she takes care of her two tail-less feral cats, Mokey and Wembley, in Hampden.

She contributed a sampling of stories from thousands of amazing moments in the life of a photographer.

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I love sharing stories, but I’m not a writer. I usually tell stories with my photographs or orally. Nonetheless, here are a few stories dealing with things that happened behind my camera. It was hard to choose just a few when I can think of thousands of amazing moments I have shared with my Sun family. (Trying to write this has helped me understand the importance of a good word editor.)

I fell out of a Black Hawk helicopter in the middle of a grain field in Iraq. I was trying to get images of our military picking up an Iraqi boy who had been shot by our guys for setting off an Improvised Explosive Device. I was not familiar with flying in an aircraft like this one and was warned immediately to stay in between the painted red cross on the side door when entering and exiting, or else I’d get my head chopped off by the rotor blades. I let that sink in.

Once we had taken off, a different soldier told me I would be jumping out a small side window, one that was clearly outside the painted red cross zone. I thought this guy was messing with me. In my time working with the military, I learned quickly that they like to play practical jokes. One lesson I learned: Never leave your camera lying around a base or you might find a photo of a soldier’s derriere amid your images of war — about which, later on, you can decide not to forewarn your photo editor and watch his face display shock and horror as the image pops up on his computer (priceless).

Once we landed, it wasn’t so much me falling 5 feet out of this window wearing some 35 pounds of gear, or me tripping another couple of times running through this field of grasses so high I could barely see the tops of the medics’ helmets, or praying no sniper bullets were awaiting us — none of that was so bad as me trying pathetically to get myself back IN through that tiny window. The helo took off as part of my ass and leg were still stuck out the window. But I had the photos and I had my head ... kinda.

After a couple weeks in New Orleans covering Hurricane Katrina and living in my rented Pontiac Aztek (literally the biggest joke in the sport utility vehicle world, and it was white), I had not bathed, had no bathroom, and had only eaten Clif Bars (which to this day I cannot go near) and MREs (the military meals ready to eat; the burritos were actually pretty good). Being in N.O. was like living in a post-apocalyptic world. But we are conditioned to keep going — looking for the stories, the people, never stopping. It’s too important to stop, and you love it. As well for fear that you’ll miss something big and your boss will yell at you with such force you’ll get third-degree burns.

Read much more here: http://wbng.org/stories/behindlens.html

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