The Value of a Picture

A few years ago there was a house fire just down the road from where I live here in Southern Indiana. Being a photojournalist I covered the fire for our local paper here.When I first arrived I saw flames beginning to come out of the back of the house. The family that lived there was working to get as much as they could out of the house before it got to the point they couldn't go back in. A few minutes later the first of two fire departments arrived but the fire had a big head start. I watched as the family moved away from the house on the south side and gathered together as the flames began to consume the building. I started taking pictures with the family sillouetted in the flames and suddenly saw the couple who owned the house take each other by the hand as I was clicking frames.
The picture and the story ran across the bottom of the front page of the paper a few days later. Later in the week the couple who owned the house came to my house asking about the picture. They told me they wanted a copy of it because it told so much about that night. Even though they were watching one of the worst moments of their lives they were still together as a family. They told me the picture should get an award for it.
I've had a lot of people ask my why I take some of the pictures I do. Since I cover a lot of high school sports I've taken pictures of injured players and players right after they've suffered a season or career ending defeat. The reason is they pictures tell the story of a final outcome, a final ending.
Over the weekend I had the opportunity to see the work of and listen to James Nachtwey. A New York photojournalist who has earned more awards than any photojournalist on the planet. He has covered wars, famines, poverty and all of the things nobody should ever see. He has been to Hell and back a hundred times over and has the images to show for it.
While he showed his pictures the audotorium was so quiet you could hear a pin drop. As I watched each black and white image come up on the screen I thought about my own work and how insignificant it seemed to be after watching his images. But there was something he said that made me think differently. He said we have to keep shooting to keep telling the story. We have to keep stirring emotion and debate. Even as hard as it might be to look at the images, they were stories that had to be told and there are stories that need to keep being told.
For me I've decided I'm going to work even harder on my images. If I stop then the adventure stops.