Rick Wilking is a freelance photojournalist based in Denver. He just returned from covering the Virginia Tech shootings for Reuters and he also covered the 1999 Columbine tragedy, also for Reuters.
By Rick Wilking
In one case I arrived within a couple hours of the shootings, before the kids were released from a locked-down school.
On the other I arrived the day after the shootings and the school was never locked down.
In one case I was invited in by the family to cover a funeral. In the other I was kept across the street and called many interesting names by passers by.
The differences between covering the Columbine shootings in Colorado and the Virginia Tech events were going to become obvious fast. I went into Blacksburg, VA, thinking I had done this already, almost exactly 8 years ago. And indeed some of the players were even the same. Michael Schoels, whose son Isaiah was killed at Columbine, showed up at VT on the anniversary day, April 20. But many things had changed, from the situation and mood to the equipment.
At Columbine it took a couple of days for the world’s media to swoop in. Actually I think it was Day Three before we reached critical mass with the morning shows all anchoring from there with their elaborate sets and high-priced talent. In Blacksburg they were there from Day One. I think one reason for this was the event taking place within driving distance of Washington, DC, where thousands of press from all over the world are based. The number of satellite trucks at Blacksburg was probably 3 or 4 times more than in Littleton.
The memorial to the victims at Virginia Tech started very small and never got very big. It was taken down completely only one week later. The usual candles, notes, teddy bears, and flowers showed up – but much fewer. I was struck by this as the number of victims was so much greater, and I still can’t explain that one. At Columbine the flower pile stretched half a block and it stayed up for over a month. And we kept getting celebrity visits to it the whole time.
One other key difference at the memorial: the shooter, Seung-Hui Cho, had a memorial stone alongside all the victims’ stones, and it was draped with flowers and notes of forgiveness as well. In Columbine when a man showed up with crosses for each person killed – including the shooters – they were promptly torn down. He put them back up and they stayed up, but they were defaced every day.
All the events at Blacksburg came in a very accelerated way. When I first heard there would be a memorial “convocation” at the school the very next day I was shocked, and I thought they would regret the chaos that it would cause. Instead it went very smoothly and was so well organized the White House could get the President into it as well. At Columbine the memorial service was several days later (the first weekend) and then only Vice President Gore could come – Clinton came the next week.
The same day as the convocation there was a candlelight vigil. This made some beautiful pictures but also showed that the locals were getting fed up with the press already, on only the second day. The still photographers particularly were annoying – there must have been several dozen – getting between the mourners and the memorial. Some epithets were thrown around and that was the first time the “vultures” moniker came out, from a man who was tired of trying to see past the still photographers who were standing in front of him only 3 feet away.
When the video of the killer came out the people had really had enough. This caused problems for getting access (more on that later) as the photographers were lumped in with “the media” from this point on.
After the vigil we covered mourners, and the investigation, and then it was Sunday so we covered church services. On Monday the kids came back to class and most of the press packed up and left the same day. Next disaster, please.
That was one week of coverage for the “largest school shooting in American history.” In Columbine the story raged for over a month and then only slowly died down over the rest of the first year.
At the Columbine funerals the families and funeral director requested I shoot the events for the families and for the world as a “pool” photographer, which I did. They also let in one television camera. I had never shot a funeral on a 24–70mm before, but that’s how good the access was. This worked extremely well for both sides and I tried to suggest this in Blacksburg, but I was met with “no media” at all of the in-town funerals as a result of the killer;s video being shown. They kept us across the street and formed human walls so that we couldn’t see the casket. At Columbine, the families felt that allowing some controlled media access was good to memorialize their student and to get their stories told about who they were. Not in Blacksburg.
When I covered one of the VT funerals we were forced to stand right on Main Street, and we sitting ducks for plenty of abuse as the traffic rolled by. We were amused when one person called us “vampires” with a one-fingered salute. When I asked to cover a church service the next day the initial reaction was “Can’t you just leave us alone?” before the Pastor agreed to let me in. The pictures I shot there are some of my favorites from the story as they are powerful illustrations of how people of faith cope with tragedy. One of these ran large in USA Today the following day.
On the technology side I was reminded of how we handled Columbine. I had the phone company install a line to my pickup truck which was parked next to the memorial site so that I could transmit! There were no such things as aircards or Wi-Fi in those days. We used Zmodem to move pictures from one computer to another one over a dialup connection. I was shooting a Kodak/Canon DCS520 2-megapixel camera that cost around $15,000 when it was new. This time an 8-megapixel Canon EOS-1 Mark II was the camera of choice, which cost less than a third of the old one.
One last note of contrast: I looked at images shot by everyone on the VT story and I was amazed at the number of really, really great images. Many people from big and small organizations made powerful, beautiful, and unique images, pictures that will be seen for generations to come. I guess I’m not the only one who’s gotten better as a photographer over the last 8 years!
