The Five Ws and an H

“It is the angle that counts” he said while chewing on a Granola bar. “Not only the physical angle, but the story you bring out.”

He is a retired journalist who, like me, still uses film and spends long hours in his darkroom. So we have a lot to talk about when we meet on hiking trails.

“We used to have two guidelines – the “Five Ws and the H” and the “Inverted Pyramid.”

Of course I was curious so he explained. “The Ws are Who, When, Where, What and Why, while the H is How. These should come out in any story you write, or any picture you take.  The Inverted Pyramid has its base up so it narrows down to the tip of the pyramid going down. This is how you present things: people should get most of the information at first read or first glance like the base of the pyramid; if not, you lose them.”

As an epidemiologist the Ws are part of my investigative training. But I had not placed these within the context of presenting a story.

…So, on Earth Day, when a lot of people were in the streets learning about ways to keep our environment clean and attractive, I took my camera and decided to find physical angles in the crowd.

At a kiosk about water management, a split second clicking gave me hands and a brochure around this doll. But why was the doll there? Was the umbrella a symbol of rain and water?

A man was discussing the wild animals that co-habit with us in the desert. I wanted an angle where man and antelope show the sharing of the land. His mustache seems to blend with the chin of the antelope. 

Finally, I found it interesting that the country music singer on a platform in the town square had taken her sunglasses off. It was a very sunny day and she was singing with the sun in her eyes. Why take the glasses off?

I did walk around looking for a context in these pictures. The arm of the man and the hands of the woman gave a frame, maybe a framework, to wondering why was that doll in the kiosk which sported a banner about water conservation in the high desert of Arizona.  The antelope and the man still give me a serene feeling of being grateful to having the beauty of the desert.

The singer, framed by the vertical lines of the stage, is a bit of a challenge to interpret. But perhaps it helps if I say that the refrain of her song was:

                    “Everyone wants to go to heaven but nobody wants to die”

April 4, 2015

©Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2015