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Mary Ann Benyo is a freelance writer from Prime Hook Beach, Delaware. She is
a frequent contributor to Delaware Beach Life magazine and other local publications.
This photographic essay by Kevin Fleming starts at dawn, moves through the
day, and ends after sunset, using a selection of landscape samples from his
latest book, Heart of America. Note the variety of close-ups and distant shots,
populated or not with wildlife, boats, planes, and cars in action or at rest.
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The
gentle glow of dawn through the fog highlights an old estate’s
granite water tower in Delaware.
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“Just like any other story, a well crafted photographic essay has a definite
beginning, a middle and an end,” says book and free-lance photographer
Kevin Fleming. “It quickly conveys a story to the viewer.”
A photo essay can be as small as two images, as large as a book, or anywhere
in between—as long as the basic requirements are met. First, the photographer
must set the scene. “Give the viewer a sense of place, or introduce the
main character in the lead photograph. Show someone up close and personal,”
Fleming says. “Then, add a verb. Show something happening. Show what they
do. How they feel about it. The challenge,” he adds, “is to do it
in the most visually interesting way possible.”
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A
horse trainer leads a mare and her foal as dawn breaks near Chesapeake
City, Maryland.
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Frost
glitters on ice-crusted maple leaves at sunrise on a farm near
Georgetown, Delaware.
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In creating his 14th book, Heart of America, [Portfolio Books, September 2004],
Fleming stretched the limits of photographic essays to include all of America—all
50 states as experienced by a single photographer, a feat never done before.
With 365 pages, including 215 photographs and text, he states simply, “It’s
an essay about the people, the land, the wildlife.” For this latest work,
Fleming was featured in the Reader’s Digest May, 2005 article “America’s
100 Best Legacies” as the Best Observer.
After working with National Geographic for a decade, then spending the next
decade making books and doing free-lance photography, Fleming commented, “At
first, I expected the book to be more typical, kind of like a huge National
Geographic story. But, it turned out to be a much more personal essay—an
essay about the people I met, the places I saw. I ended up writing the text
in the first person—something else that makes it unique in the world of
photography books.”
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A
ray of light catching only the ribs of a horse skeleton in Monument
Valley, Utah
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Mount McKinley gets its first rays of light.
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Fleming is quick to point out that you don’t need a whole book to create
a photographic essay. A typical newspaper essay is six or seven images, a National
Geographic story, 28-40.
In his shortest essay, Fleming captured the backbreaking labor of migrant farmers
harvesting cucumbers in only two shots: one showing the workers bent over a
seemingly endless field, the second a close-up of the harvest and the exhaustion
on a laborer’s face.
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A
remote-control camera—and a lot of patience—captured
the image of these fledgling ospreys on the Severn River in Maryland
early one morning.
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A
great egret lands gently in the Florida Everglades in mid-morning.
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The subject of an essay can be an event as simple as dawn, just before and
after, or merely a few dramatic moments captured on film. The most important
part is to get out there and do it.
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