I went from reporting news to taking pictures; Now I have proof everywhere

By John Toth

The Bulletin

When I attended college, reporters stuck to reporting, and photographers took the photos. That was the hierarchy at my college paper, and we stayed in our lanes.

I have always been a shutterbug, though, ever since my mother bought a used camera in Vienna, Austria back in 1966. But in college, I had no use for a camera. Photographers were territorial. Cross their line, and you heard about it.

That was fine with me, since I was focused on getting the information for articles and then typing them out on my portable manual typewriter. After I landed my first paying job at The Daily Tribune in Bay City, I quickly realized that I was taught wrong in college when it came to the separation of reporting and photography.

On my first day on the job, managing editor Jay Jacobs shoved a point-and-shoot camera in my hand and told me to keep it with me at all times.

“We have one photographer. He can’t be everywhere. Don’t leave your camera at home or in the office. It goes wherever you go,” he said, laying down the rules.

Max, The Tribune’s sole photographer, was nothing like the student photographers at the college paper. He wanted us to do as much of the camera work as we liked. He even taught me how to develop black and white film. I developed quite a few rolls during my time at the Tribune.

I was strictly a point-and-shoot photographer. The first thing I did was set the camera on “A” for automatic. I was not going to mess with shutter speed or any other setting. I stopped at the Kodak experience of pushing the shutter button and let the camera decide the rest.

As a writer, I never overstated my camera skills and preferred a photographer to handle that part of the job. But I have to admit that over the years, I developed a good eye for content.

I religiously carried a camera with me everywhere on and off the job, and I lucked into some opportunities that would have been lost if I had not been able to take the photos right then and there.

After I landed a job at The Houston Chronicle to cover Brazoria County, that habit became even more important because the nearest Chronicle photographer was an hour away.

They did send photographers out to work with me on stories, but there were times when it was go with my camera skills, or nothing. I had numerous Page 1 photo credits because I had that point-and-shoot camera with me.

I found out quickly that some Chronicle photographers did not think like Max, but more like the student photographers at college. Some of them resented reporters taking their own pictures, but that was the nature of a satellite operation The Chronicle ran at the time in counties neighboring Harris County.

They hired reporters to cover the outlying areas, but the photographers had to come from Houston. Sometimes, they only came to pick up the roll of film I shot. They hated that the most. We often used carriers, but when push came to shove, and the story was already scheduled for Page 1, we all did what we had to do. Part of that at times was to drive the roll of film up to Houston.

A side benefit of always having a camera with me for work was using it for personal reasons. I shot thousands of photos of my wife, Sharon, and our three children over the decades. I may hold the unofficial record for having the biggest shoe box filled with decades of memories. I have digitized some of them, but scores of photos are still waiting for their turn.

In retrospect, a big thank you is owed to Jay for making sure that a camera was glued to me all the time, and to Max, for entrusting me with so much of the camera work that it allowed him to go home early to his family. I was single and didn’t mind.

These days, of course, I carry a modern smartphone everywhere, meaning I have thousands of digital photos waiting to be organized, right alongside the legendary shoe box.

(Email John at john.bulletin@gmail.com)