I hate good photographers. I despise great photographers and I know too many of them.
Background: I was always the family photographer, simply because I had the good sense to walk up to the subject instead of standing a fathom or two away. I had my little Nikkorex and took years of color slides before I built a darkroom and started turning out black and white prints. I got my first newspaper job when I took a good picture of Celtic Tommy “Satch” Sanders at the Attleboro, Massachusetts Rotary Club. No one cared about the accompanying story. That set the trend for me: the photograph (especially on Page One) was more important than the writing.
I was a contender.
During my career, I had a photo studio on Boston’s classy Newbury Street and was encouraged to apply for a new rock magazine in San Francisco. You know it as Rolling Stone. I thought I was hot stuff. I had pictures in the Boston Globe, Yankee Magazine and Down East Magazine. I submitted Washington peace march photos to the Atlantic, but I missed the deadline.
When I was hired by the Bangor Daily News, the pay was minimum wage and a magnificent $3 a picture, plus mileage. I drove all over Knox and Waldo County to take pictures to beef up my paycheck. I loved that Page One photo. I hated the competition.
The first photographer I hated was Steve Heddericg of the Courier Gazette. He had a picture of the Cushing town meeting, complete with oversize flag, on the cover of Parade Magazine. Hated him.
Then there was Neal Parent of the Camden Herald. Legend has it that editor Jane Day (personal hero) handed him a Nikon one Tuesday and said she needed a front page picture for the next day’s paper. Neal walked to the waterfront and the famous schooners and a star was born. Parent wasn’t a photographer. He was an artist with a camera in his hand. He routinely got prizes for his front page photos and I hated him, of course.
Neal developed (pun intended) his photography so well that he quit the newspaper business and took his “boring boat pictures” (my jealous criticism) on the road to craft fairs, where he made a small fortune. To mock me further, he opened up his own studio in Belfast. Several of his amazing photographs are not of sailboats. Parent somehow stayed with the 35mm format even as he expanded his prints from 8×10, to 11×4 and finally 20×30. The rules are that you cannot do that with a 35mm negative. Parent does.
Hate him.
I knew that Joe Devenney was a star photographer who routinely sold to the New York Times when newspapers still had money, so I hated him from the get-go. He was a friend of Jefferson Phil, so that was another strike against him. But Devenney has now invaded Facebook. Alright, I hated his sunrise and sunset photos of Pemaquid and various tourist sports. But now Devenney (he is also a potter) routinely rises pre-dawn to take pictures of Rockland and Camden. He has even added pictures of my psychic home, the Black Pearl in Rockland. The nerve.
Now, I hate him even more.
I always hated Bill Harting. He was an officer in the Roslindale High School “army” and routinely called me to attention. When Pompous Bill became editor (natch) of the Northeastern News, I went into his office to chat about Roslindale Square. If you can believe it, Pompous Bill said, “That is a period of my life I don’t care to discuss.” See? He became a big time editor at the Globe and always flashed his expensive Leica in my face. Now that he has retired, he has “graduated” to a large-format camera which he uses to capture black/white of ballerinas that would make Degas weep.
Always hated him.
I have lost my “eye,” my ability to compose, from using digital cameras, then smartphones. I suppose I could buy a new Nikon system for $3,000 or so and show these interlopers what a real photographer can do.
Nah. I don’t have the money. The “eye” is gone.
I will just hate the good and great ones. As long as I live.
Emmet Meara lives in Camden in blissful retirement after working as a reporter for the Bangor Daily News in Rockland for 30 years.