I want to address some of Steve's questions about how photographers work in relationship to people and their environments. Steve asks:
What is it about working close, working wide and yet not having the camera change the moment? I love the way a wide lens takes you into the subject and allows you to create emphasis with angle. Is that a talent that a new photojournalist can learn, or is it a kind of charisma that some have like having big lungs is required to be a great bicyclist and there is no way you can teach that or train to achieve it?
Photographers can work close to people without changing the moment if they openly accept the experience as a visual embrace rather than something that is to be possessed or captured. So much about the process of photography seems to be focused on the photographer and not on that which is being photographed. Photographers who learn to accept themselves and others as fallible human beings tend to make images that are more honest, intimate and revealing of the universal conditions we all face day in and day out.
Photography is an act that can be driven by either hubris or humility. If you stick a camera in a person's face and click the shutter, that's hubris. If you patiently wait for someone to accept you -- if you wait for some unspoken acknowledgment that it is okay to be interested in making an image of a person, then, that seems more like humility. Just because we can take pictures, doesn't mean we always should. Photography, especially when you are close to someone, should be considered a gift from one human being to another.
Julianne Newton's The Burden of Visual Truth is a good book to read if you are more interested in the practice of photography and human visual behavior.
Newton, Julianne H. The Burden of Visual Truth: The Role of Photojournalism in Mediating Reality. Mahwah, NJ: LEA, 2001.