Read Online That Devil's Madness by Dominique Wilson - Free Book Online Page A

three-and-a-half days on the floor, one-and-a-half days at RMIT, but this taught her little about photojournalism per se . She didn’t complain; she knew she was lucky to have this cadetship, as all the others here were bright young things straight out of high school. So she did what she was told, went where she was sent, but in her free time she not only examined The Herald ’s photos, but also submerged herself in the works of photojournalist like Neil Davis and Eric Piper, Robert Cappa and Larry Burrows, Welshman Philip Jones Griffiths and Englishmen like Tim Page and Don McCullin, all whose reputations rested on their reportage of war from around the world. But most of all she examined the photographs of women photojournalists – Lee Miller and Catherine Leroy, Dickey Chapelle and Gloria Emerson. There was something different about these women’s images, something more humane – those were the sort of photographs she wanted to take.
    But she knew that compared to theirs, her photographs were those of a rank amateur, so she examined each image – the angle from which the light hit, the composition of positive and negative shapes, the contrasts between light and dark – and with each photo she asked herself What is it that makes this a good photo? Why are some photos so memorable, whilst others leave me cold? And over time, she’d realised it came down to two things – emotion and energy.
    â€˜What the hell d’you think you’re doing?’
    Ted Boyd dropped his camera bag at her feet. Of all The Herald’ s photojournalist, he was the only one who actually frightened Nicolette. In his fifties, he always looked as if he’d slept in his clothes on a park bench and was permanently hung-over, which, considering how much time many of them spent at the Phoenix in Flinders Street or the Astoria, next door in Exhibition Street, was probably a fact. But she’d heard he’d cut his teeth as a photojournalist in World War II while still no more than a kid, then went straight on to cover the Greek Civil war, Indochina, Korea then the Congo Crisis. After that, rumours were vague, so that he both intrigued and frightened her.
    â€˜I’m only looking at yesterday’s proofs. I—’
    â€˜I don’t care what you’re doing – I’ve got work to do. So fuck off!’
    #
    Nicolette sat at her desk writing captions for the photos that would be used in a forthcoming edition, oblivious to the usual chaos around her. Most cadets hated being sent to Captions – they’d rather be out and about gathering bits of mediocre news – but she didn’t mind it. Better this than interviewing city shoppers for their opinion on whether they approved of Princess Margaret divorcing Lord Snowdon, or of South Australian Premier Don Dunstan’s fashion sense – who really cared! The poor man’s wife had died earlier in the year, and he himself was now ill, but it seemed to Nicolette that people couldn’t get passed him daring to wear pink shorts in State Parliament, some years previously. Not the type of news she hoped to cover. Explaining an image in no more than one or two lines was much better training for what she wanted to do; it made her realise what was important in the photograph.
    The building gave a slight shudder and Nicolette looked at her watch. Ten thirty – dead on time. Deep in the bowels of the building the printing presses had started up, and she knew that within half an hour that day’s first edition would hit the streets. She went back to the caption she was writing. Tomorrow was a public holiday – the Melbourne Cup – and she was looking forward to it. She wasn’t interested in the race, much to the horror of those she worked with, and planned instead to go with her camera gear to the Dandenongs. It was something she hadn’t done in years – she used to love going bush, loved the isolation, that