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US Soldier Explains Why He Uses a Rifle Stock to Shoot Photographs
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US Soldier Explains Why He Uses a Rifle Stock to Shoot Photographs |
Original material is licensed under a Creative Commons License permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution.
01/30/09
01/31/09
Ernie Pyle is the war photographer whose last photo is of his dead body, shortly after he got killed by a Japanese machine-gunner during WWII, but there's another similar instance that happened more recently. In 2006, independant documentarist Brad Will was filming footage of the violent armed conflict in Oaxaca, Mexico when he was shot and killed. The video reportedly shows two armed gunmen in the distance, and right after one or both of them fire shots the camera was dropped. The belief is that Will actually filmed the shot that killed him. Both of these stories only show half of the story, and it's not the same half. One shows just the dead body after the fact, and the other shows just the killing act.
01/31/09
wow. morbid.
01/31/09
Yeah, in a way. But if you actually look at Pyle's photo, you can't really tell that he's not just sleeping or unconscious. There's supposed to be a bit of visible blood coming out of his mouth, but it's a B&W photo that was shot over 60 years ago. The image quality isn't exactly the greatest. And with the video, you can't actually tell _why_ the camera was dropped unless someone tells you.
And when you get right down to it, neither of these men was taking a walk through the park. Both were trying to document the real horrors that take place very far away from our mostly-secure little corner of the world (in the entire last century, Pearl Harbor, 9/11, and the Unabombing are the only three comparable acts of violence that I can think of that have been perpetrated on US soil).
01/30/09