CRITICAL PHOTOJOURNALISM

Jay L. Clendenin is a graduate of San Jose State University and native Californian, with stints in Hartford, New York City and Washington, D.C., where he worked primarily as a photojournalist, covering UConn women's basketball, NYC news and the White House and Capitol Hill. A former staff photographer for the Los Angeles Times, Jay has covered Hollywood and the entertainment industry for 18 years, with a focus on portraiture.

The interview was lightly edited for clarity and length.

The Oscars are a machine, a very dialed-in machine technologically, geographically and physically. The way it's set up, it’s a very systematic event. There are some photographers who can still be credentialed through a couple smaller agencies, they’re kind of grandfathered in by the Academy but the majority of people there with cameras are credentialed with the bigger outlets: either entertainment photo agencies, entertainment magazines, news agencies, or wires. The majority of us out there are wired cameras, i.e. we have teams out there the week before laying CAT5 cable that then gets plugged into our cameras so we are transmitting instantaneously. There are very few that aren't wired for those kinds of things because timeliness is the name of the game. We’re all in competition, we’re all trying to be first, it's about getting it on the website, getting it on the phone right away. 

One year I was with Josh Haner shooting next to me on the red carpet at the Oscars. And this is the first position of the red carpet where (celebrities) are all queued up near us, then they come out one by one so these are the first images of the fashion, the first shots you see of you know Lady Gaga and her dress. So Josh is next to me and we’re all shooting and he pulls out his phone and says let me see how it's looking and that photo that we JUST shot was already on the front page of the New York Times. He was wired and transmitting fast enough that the image went to a relay in Hollywood and Highland and then straight to the NY Times where an editor posted it immediately. It’s technology. Now there’s a database of what people are wearing and facial recognition software to match the photos and get the images up online even faster. That is the talent and technology: getting the shot, subject in focus, looking at you. 

That was the other thing I learned, doing photojournalism the first years of doing the red carpet. I'm standing next to everyone, there is lots of yelling, everything is to get them to look in the direction of the camera. And I was like ‘oh I'm just here to document’, but over time I realized it makes your photo much better when they’re looking at you. When Lady Gaga recognizes me because I just did that portrait shoot with her and she looks at me. So that's what I started to do, they start to recognize me  and they look at me. That's what it takes. That extra little look, that connection, that acknowledgment in the photo is what makes that photo stand out a little more. So that's kind of our goal. You want that connection because that's going to make people stop on your photo. This last year I wasn't there for the LA Times, I was there for Shutterstock and I was on the carpet and I was not wired, I was shipping cards. So I would shoot for 10 minutes and pop the card out and hand it to a runner and they would bring a new card. That was a much more interactive experience. The Rock looks at me from two feet away and does his raised eyebrow thing and he's doing that right near me with my wide angle lens. It's a different type of photo that I think is more inviting for people to see. I think audiences love seeing those photos, the up close of The Rock interacting with fans, taking selfies with them. That ended up being a photo of mine from that ran in People magazine. People are looking at 10,000 photos from that night but they picked one of mine. I want as many moments like that as I can. 

The Governors Ball is the official after party of the Academy Awards, held upstairs in a ballroom on the top floor. The main reason we go to capture the winners is because they come in with their trophies and the goal is to capture as many trophies as you can. The trophies have no plaque on the bottom, they go inside and there is the engraving station with a small staff of people with screwdrivers and Lady Gaga comes in and she has her trophy and they go ‘oh yes Lady Gaga best song’, and they have the nameplate that goes on the trophy. They screw it on and polish the trophy, then the talent turns around and poses for the photo because we’re standing there waiting. So, there’s only a handful of us that are there from the outlets, but we’re standing behind a rope. Then you wait and hope the talent will interact with other people. Studios reserve tables so there’s the Warner Bros area, Netflix has a table, Amazon has a couple tables, etc. so when we’re all watching the Awards, we’re taking notes on who is winning so we know when we get up there I need to get to this particular table, I need to make sure I get over to whoever the winner was for the night, get to that table, get the director, the actress, etc. You're basically plotting. And we all have minders, someone from the Academy who is at your shoulder. They are there to help you but also to make sure you don't do anything to annoy the talent. Those of us that have been anointed this position, we have the most experience. We’re there to get the pics they want us to get because that's the pic everybody uses. You're kind of roaming the room at that point, you spend an hour or two kind of roaming the Governors Ball. Wolfgang Puck makes these chocolate Oscars, so you get detail shots of those, etc.

I've had a couple really great years. One year Joaquin Phoenix won for The Joker with Todd Philips the director. I had photographed Todd a couple times and had one on one portrait time with him. I was roaming the room and the publicist had already shooed everyone away but I caught eyes with Todd and he recognized me. I yelled over to Todd ‘can I get you guys together with the trophy real quick?’ and he said ‘yeah yeah’ and the publicist just rolled her eyes and gave up. Todd says hey let's pose for this guy, he’s a good dude. I say hey let's do one with the trophy but Joaquin didn't want to pick up the trophy. So I get down on the ground to get the trophy in the shot and at the last minute Joaquin leans over and gives Todd a kiss on the cheek. So, I got that photo and I'm the only one who got it. And that wins me kudos with the publicist and the studio because it's a good photo of the talent. So those little things add up and let me get to do things like Governors Ball.