By Kristina Tlusty
Eau Claire Leader-Telegram staff photojournalist Dan Reiland has shot only two close, group photos since the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic.
After an audience member called in wondering if two subjects in a photo were 6 feet apart, Reiland captured one group, ensuring they were adequately socially distanced, and then abandoned his past practice of the group photograph.
The inquiry was surprising, Reiland said, but it makes sense. Eau Claire residents following the community expectations and Wisconsin’s face mask mandate likely expect photographs of their community to adhere visibly to safety measures, such as social distancing and mask wearing.
It’s a common challenge many local photographers face, under the watchful eye of the community: capturing engaging, honest photographs while still portraying and practicing the COVID-19 precautions that have significant visual impact on their work.
“I’ve spent my career trying to make people look engaging, look close, look interested,” said UW-Eau Claire’s visual assets manager and photographer Bill Hoepner. “Now, they have to be distanced, 6 feet apart and masked. It’s very different.”
McKenna Dirks, a staff photographer for The Spectator (UW-EC’s student newspaper), overcomes the visuals of COVID-19 precautions by bringing willing people outside to take a quick photo of their mask-less face in order to capture the emotion that masks can obscure. But even as she follows safety measures, onlookers often appear to disapprove of her work.
“I’ll get angry looks from others, almost as if what I’m doing is optional and I shouldn’t be choosing to do it,” she said.
“There are incredible risks for photojournalists these days, for doing your job,” said Sue Morrow, the editor for the National Press Photographers Association’s magazine, News Photographer. Nationally, she’s seen photographers and photojournalists struggle to capture imagery of COVID-19 while managing reactions to politicized safety precautions.
She said she hopes audiences understand the difficulties photographers face right now. The general public doesn’t know the visual choices photographers make or the edits that their captions go through, Morrow said, and if it’s not explicitly explained, photographers become targets of criticism.
Volume One staff photographer Andrea Paulseth explained how her camera lens choice affects how her subjects appear. If she uses a long lens on a camera, it will compress space and make people appear closer than they are and be susceptible to criticism, she explained.
“I don’t want my photos to be the reason someone appears not to follow guidelines,” she said. “My photos shouldn’t distract from the story we’re trying to tell.”
Since his audience member’s surprising inquiry, Reiland has made other precaution-related adjustments to his work, including indicating in a caption that an unmasked photo subject removed his mask specifically for a photo. He said he is looking forward to a wider range of assignments in the post-pandemic world, especially the COVID-19-absent ones.
After all, he said, “there are only so many masks and vaccinations you can shoot.”
NOTES: Kristina Tlusty is a UW-Eau Claire sophomore. She wrote this story as a class assignment for the Beginning Journalism course taught by Emeritus Prof. Michael Dorsher.
The home page photo, of a masked and socially-distanced campus tour, was taken by Bill Hoepner.