AMERICAN POLICE BEAT: AUGUST 2017 19 O ne of the parts about this job that w e l o v e here at APB is getting the good word out about all the great stuff cops do every day. Whether it’s something as dramatic as a hostage rescue or a more common occurrence like saving a dog trapped in a hot ve- hicle in July, law enforce- ment officers r o u t i n e l y save the day. Sometimes there’s even time to take a picture. We f i n d (or get sent) pictures of cops stand- ing proudly next to the p e r s o n o r animal they saved all the time. The problem is that fre- quently these photos are pretty terrible. There are good reasons for that. First of all, photogra- phy is an art. It requires tremendous skill. The fact is that most of us just take crappy pictures because we don’t know anything about photography. Sure, there are some exceptions and we’ve re- ceived a lot of pictures taken by officers that were the kind of high-quality shots you would see in a magazine. But most of the time it’s just “someone take the picture!” and that’s about it. The other problem is that after you pull some- one out of a burning build- ing or jump into a freezing river to save two kids who were screwing around on the riverbank and fell in, the last things you’re focused on are lighting, framing and composition. But there’s one trick that anyone can use to radically increase the quality of a photo. Let’s say you and anoth- er officer with your agency respond to a call of a dog trapped in a dumpster. You arrive on the scene, pull the dog out and some- one says, “This has to go on our Face- book page!” and decides to take a pic- ture. W h e n you’re fig- uring out w h e r e t o stand and all that – look up and around. You will notice that the light is usually coming from a certain di- rection. For instance, if you saved the dog around 5:00 p.m. and it’s sunny, the light will be coming from the direction where the sun is setting. Or if you’re indoors in the day time, you’ll notice that the light is coming from a combination of the electric light inside and whatever sunlight is coming in through the window. The idea is to position the subject of the photo- graph so that whatever light is available is coming from behind the photog- rapher and hitting the subject in the face. What usually happens is what’s known as “back lighting,” where the light is hitting the subject or subject’s back. This makes it hard to make out faces and other details and generally mess- es up what could be a great photo. So the next time you’re going to take a picture of a colleague holding a kit- ten they extracted from an engine block, take a quick look around and figure out where the light’s coming from and make the necessary adjustments be- fore you hit the button. It makes a huge difference. And even though tak- ing a photo can seem like an unimportant or trivial thing, especially after sav- ing a life or whatever, keep in mind that usually no one was there except the police and the victim. The photo is an op- portunity to share that moment with people that weren’t there. And the better the photo, the big- ger the impact in terms of how people react. Pictures tell the story: photography for police If you look behind the officer to the right over the roof of the cruiser, you can see the sun setting, and on the other side the electric lights. Because the camera is facing the light, the officer and the kitten she saved are visible but it’s a little hard to make out details. In contrast, the sun is clearly behind the person taking the photograph in this picture and the of- ficer and the kitten are easier to see. After you or a colleague pull someone out of a burning building, the last things you’re focused on are lighting, framing and composition. Good pictures of officers doing the job can win hearts and minds more than just words