Brendan Smialowski—

Life As A Photojournalist: Picture Perfect

By Nancy K. Crevier

Since his first Fisher-Price camera was catching family members unaware, and his Newtown High School days taking black and whites for The Newtown Bee of vehicles wrapped around the flagpole or wedged beneath the Church Hill Road underpass, Brendan Smialowski has developed his love of photography into a flourishing photojournalism career, with a client list that includes The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Agence France Presse, Newsweek, and Getty Images wire service, among others. He has done so with a sense of energy and enthusiasm that portrays history as it happens in photos ranging from famous figures captured in introspective moments to undiscovered athletes springing into potential renown.

The credit line on the front page photo of the Sunday, December 14, New York Times caught the eye of longtime Newtown Bee staff members, who recognized the name of Brendan Smialowski, not just because that byline has been seen frequently in the prominent New York paper and other high profile journals, but because as a Newtown High School student in the late 1990s, Brendan freelanced as a photographer for The Newtown Bee.

Visiting Newtown over the holidays, Brendan took a few minutes Friday, December 26, to update The Bee on his career that has come a long way since supplying black and white car crash and sports photos to The Bee a decade ago.

His appetite for photography was whetted at NHS, where he took photography classes and became involved in a mentoring program with Newtown freelance photographer Joseph Kugielsky that led to a New York Times assignment. “It was for a racquet ball club in Hartford, and the photos never actually ran, but it was a start for me,” recalled Brendan. Following his graduation from NHS in 1999, Brendan attended the University of Missouri, intending to get a degree in photojournalism. But since that major was not accessible to freshmen and sophomores, he contacted The Columbia Daily Tribune and freelanced for that paper while earning his undergraduate degree — in history. He also picked up jobs with Icon Sports Images, Newsweek, Getty Images, and continued his relationship locally with the Danbury News-Times. “I had learned a lot of spot news skills at The Bee, and at the Danbury News-Times during my senior year in high school, and I was learning on the job by then, so I decided on a history degree instead of photojournalism,” said Brendan.

Being based in Washington, D.C., for the last five years, primarily shooting political photos on Capitol Hill, the history degree has actually served him as well as a photojournalism degree would have done, said Brendan. “A lot of times when I’m taking a picture, I think back to a history class on ancient Greece. The bulk of what we know comes from one tiny piece of history. And I wonder, what will people think in 3,000 years of my crooked little pictures? I try to approach my work as a sort of reverse historian,” he said.

His contacts at the Missouri paper helped him to build up a client list that increased his credibility, said Brendan, and in 2003 he “cut his teeth” overseas in Iraq, shooting a picture story for the News-Times, and covering spot news, including one of the three UN bombings there that year. “Spot news takes on a new feel when you’re overseas in a war zone,” Brendan said.

He has photographed things as simple as high school football games, and as thrilling as an Army-Navy game or President Bush visiting the Katrina hurricane disaster site; he has traveled on Air Force One as part of a presidential travel pool, and has flown alongside Marine One. He also regularly covers the daily poverty, crime, sports, and cultural events in Washington, D.C. But it is Capitol Hill that he loves best, his passion for the job spilling over into his descriptions of the events moving about him there. “It’s the chase of the news that is exciting,” explained Brendan.

A travel pool, while interesting and good for cocktail hour tales, is not the place where groundbreaking photos are taken. “On The Hill, there is not the control that there is in a travel pool. There are better photo opportunities without a set stage of play. It’s when and where you can capture a moment, it is where you find an emotion-packed photo,” he said.

One such photo was picked up by the News-Times recently, he said. “Joe Lieberman was arriving in DC for a meeting after campaigning for John McCain. It was a big thing; he wasn’t sure what the outcome of the meeting would be; there were a lot of unhappy people in his party. I figured I wouldn’t get a shot of him once he got to The Hill. So I went down to the subway where I figured he had to come in, and I was just lucky enough to see Lieberman and his staff getting into an elevator,” recalled Brendan. There was some pushing, as staff members tried to curtail his photography, said Brendan, but he was able to capture a winsome Lieberman surrounded by melancholic staff members before the elevator doors closed. “That’s the kind of photograph, full of emotions, that I love,” said Brendan.

While many photojournalists spent the last year scrambling to cover the campaigns of the Republican and Democratic parties, Brendan opted to mainly stay put in the DC area. It paid off, he said, when the economic crisis broke in September.

“This economy story I’ve been covering has been huge, and it all played out because I was sitting on the sidelines in DC when it broke,” he said. The unfolding dilemma has provided Brendan with an opportunity to tell one of America’s most trying moments through his photographs, several of which have been picked up by regional papers, wires, and The New York Times.

Capitol Hill, late at night, is filled with photo opportunities, said Brendan. “The halls are quiet, and that’s when your instincts kick in. People are moving very quietly about and it’s when photojournalism is at its best. One shutter sound can start a tidal wave of coverage at that time of night, and you want that photo of someone important before they are posing for photographers.”

Just last month, that situation reared up for Brendan when a friend in Detroit clued him in that the head of Cerberus Capital Management, Stephen Feinberg, would be in DC. A leading private investment firm, Cerberus provides both financial resources and operational expertise, and acquired interest in Chrysler Holding LLC in 2007.

“I saw this guy, surrounded by staff, and knew it had to be him. I couldn’t get close enough or get a good photo in the low light, so I went outside. He was staring out the window, so I took this photo of him looking blankly out the window. That was the night the auto bailout plan fell apart,” said Brendan.

Back in Washington this week, Brendan is gearing up for the inauguration and anticipating some historical shots if luck provides him with a good position during the ceremonies. “There are a lot of people who want to cover this event, as you can imagine. The angle positions for shooting photos is based on precedent, not the circulation of the publication you are representing,” Brendan explained. With powerful groups like the Associated Press and Reuters having multiple positions, it means that other freelance photographers are vying for the few remaining ideal positions. “I’m just hoping for the opportunity to get a good photo and to get something that will stand out,” he said, noting that when working for The Wall Street Journal, as he will be for the inauguration, he feels it is his responsibility to get photographs that will uniquely tell the story for his client. “Photographs often don’t see the light of day, but you always want to live up to the expectations of the publication you are working for,” he said.

Coming into his career during these days of digital photography has paid off, said Brendan. “There are actually a lot of positives about digital photography. It makes it possible for a young photographer to climb the ladder very fast and for more photographers to exist,” he said. Digital photography also allows a photographer to be on scene where a paper may not be able to get a staff member to, and to quickly submit photographs, a big improvement over the days of taking photographs that may or may not be usable and waiting to develop them and then submitting them for consideration.

Even so, he is full of praise for photojournalists who have paved the way, and holds a great deal of respect for their technical skills and ability to quickly and accurately assess a photographic situation. “The down side of digital is that you don’t really need to be technically proficient anymore, so there is a little loss of technical skill with digital,” he said.

“Doctoring” photos to alter history is frequently mentioned as a digital nightmare, but it is not really a new phenomenon of the digital age, said Brendan. “It has always been possible to change photos. Maybe not so easily as with digital, but it there have always been unethical photographers who have played with photos.” By and large, though, he feels that consumers can rely on the ethics of professionalism generally portrayed by photojournalists today.

The nature of his job means that every day is a new chance to observe news as it happens around him. “I love keeping up with the news and trying to tell the story through my photos,” he said.

 Working overseas again one day is a definite possibility, said Brendan, but for now, he is feeling like the historical presidency of Barack Obama may give him plenty of fodder on the local level. “With Obama coming into DC, that’s huge,” he said.

To view some of his recent works, visit smialowski.org. And watch for Brendan’s photos in regional and national papers as he continues to parlay the here and now into the history of tomorrow — just as his early photos are now a piece of The Newtown Bee archives.