Roanoke Freelancer Teaches Through Photography Stephanie Klein-Davis is a professional at stopping time, but only for a split second. With the click of a button she is able to freeze time and sit back in awe of the beauty that is what she felt inspiring and timeless. As a staff photographer with The Roanoke Times, her 19 year stint seems like a flash from one of her cameras, but Klein-Davis loves her job and the exciting places and different people she meets along the way.
As busy as she is, she had time to sit down and answer some questions and share some advice and personal experiences as a seasoned veteran of the never-ending, always morphing world of news. Her laid back personality and ever present smile in the midst of chaos that is The Roanoke Times newsroom was quite a dichotomy but nevertheless, real. Her long career as a journalist has shown her the many sides of humanity, and she said that it is hard not to get involved emotionally when you “literally are living people’s lives with them.” Q. You first worked as a staff photographer for The Sun News in Myrtle Beach, S.C. What was it like to work there? Klein-Davis: That was my first full-time job. At the time, the newspaper was smaller because it, Myrtle Beach, was a smaller beach town then. I was one of two photographers, and the workload was really heavy because we covered a huge territory. However, it was a really great learning experience because I had five to seven assignments a day that allowed me a lot of creative license to be able to take photographs with my own story ideas. There was also a senior photographer, Bill Scroggins, who taught me a lot. He has since passed, but it was back when they had the darkroom where we shot film, black and white mostly, until we started to move into color. We now use computers and are all digital. I’ve really experienced the revolution of photography. Q. What made you decide to come to The Roanoke Times? Klein-Davis: I was looking for a larger market to work in, and a friend told me about the job so I applied. The opening was up in the bureau near Blacksburg, and they told me I’d work two days a week there and three days downtown, but it didn’t work out that way. And I’ve been working here since June 1987. Q. As a staff photographer for The Roanoke Times, what does your average day or week look like? Klein-Davis: Most of us are on a rotating schedule but just recently I’ve been put on pretty much a Monday through Friday schedule. We have assignments that are given through each department. There’s a photo editor that distributes the assignments, but the assignments could be features, sports, business, news - all the different areas of the newspaper. Sometimes you’ll go out with a reporter, and sometimes you’ll go out on your own. For example, yesterday I was in Charlottesville doing a story on a student, he is the valedictorian of his class, and a candidate for the Jefferson Scholarship. We followed him through his day, visiting each of his classes. On the other extreme, last Saturday I was on a general news assignment doing a light story on gardening and the opening of spring, and then there was a fire so I went to that fire and later in the day there was a brush fire. So you could be sent anywhere at anytime. Q. Are you allowed to pick and choose what events or stories you’d like to cover? Klein-Davis: You pretty much take your assignments as they are given out, but you do have a say. I can come up with my own story ideas, or if I know of an assignment coming up that I am really interested in I can state my interest and say, you know, I’d really like to photograph that. Q. You are also a freelance photographer. What other newspapers or organizations do you do freelance work for? Klein-Davis: I do freelance work for The Washington Post, The New York Times, USA Today, and I’m doing an assignment this weekend for Popular Mechanics. I shoot weddings, in a photojournalistic style, and I’m also doing a chapter of a theater textbook for McGraw-Hill. Q. Do you travel a lot? Klein-Davis: I do. Most of our travel for the newspaper is instate. Every now and then we’ll have an out-of-state assignment. In the early 1990s, or whenever it was, I went to Hawaii with an inner-city basketball team. So, every now and then there will be that little exotic trip. Q. Is it difficult to balance your job and traveling with family life? Klein-Davis: It’s hard, but I’m really lucky because I’m married and my husband is really helpful; he’s wonderful. I mean he does everything that I do with the kids. The laundry might stack up a little more when I’m out of town, but he’ll cook and pick them up from school and help them with their homework. It’s a shared responsibility. Q. What would you say is your favorite thing about your job? Klein-Davis: The diversity of the assignments. Everyday I meet somebody new and everyday I go somewhere different. It’s a continuous education, and I love the creative aspect; I can photograph in whatever style I want. Q. You were formerly a professor of photography in the Hollins University Art Department, and currently you are teaching at Virginia Western Community College. Could you tell me a little more about that? Klein-Davis: I was an adjunct in both of those positions, only teaching one class. At Hollins I taught beginning photography, in black and white. At Virginia Western I taught the introductory class for photography and the intermediate/advanced photography class, and that’s all in black and white as well. I taught photojournalism and next semester I’ll teach digital photography. Q. Can you see yourself teaching in the future? Klein-Davis: Yes, I love teaching. I actually hope to teach fulltime someday. Q. You won several awards for your photo-essay of Vernon Bernard, who was dying of Lou Gehrig’s disease. What was it like to be covering this story? Klein-Davis: It was very challenging. The hardest thing is when you spend that much time with a family and get to know them very well. You can’t help having feelings about them. I was with him the night he died. I was really sad. He had children. I actually kept in touch with his wife. It’s really hard, and it’s hard not to cry. I had to walk out of the room when his mom was hugging him toward the end there. You know, there are a lot of emotions that you feel when you literally are living people’s lives with them. Q. You received your Bachelor of Arts in Communications from Sophie Newcomb College of Tulane University, which sustained a lot of damage from Hurrican Katrina. What were your reactions to that? Klein-Davis: I felt like someone had died. It was as if part of my life was just washed away. I felt so lucky to have lived in New Orleans when it was the beautiful, European-like city that it was. I keep thinking that I’m going to pull out my old negatives and print some of those pictures, because it will never be the same. I’ve been reluctant to go to New Orleans, I mean, I’ll probably go eventually, but it’s kind of like you’ve got to remember something in a good way. Q. Do you remember what your favorite college course was? Klein-Davis: It’s been a long time! (laughs). Well I of course loved photography. I had a lot of great photo classes; they even had an independent study that I liked. I really enjoyed expository writing. I also took a linguistics class that I really liked. Q. Do you prefer working with digital or film cameras? Klein-Davis: I honestly don’t have a real preference. I think the technology is phenomenal. But I still really love the papers, and working in the dark room, because I love the old black and white fiber paper. I just like the way it looks. I don’t like the chemistry; I do think it’s pretty toxic. But I just think it seemed more of an art form back then, now it seems more mass produced. Q. What would your advice be for a college student who is interested in pursuing a career in photojournalism? Klein-Davis: First of all, I would recommend to any student to get a good, basic liberal arts foundation and not just take photojournalism classes and journalism classes. Because I think what makes people good journalists is having a diversity of interests, trying to understand many different subjects. The journalism skills should be secondary to the basic foundation, of understanding life (laughs). I’m not saying that I went the best route, but I’m glad that I had the opportunity to have a liberal arts undergraduate education and then specialize in graduate school. |
Klein-Davis is also a photography professor at Virginia Western Community College. An award winning photographer and dedicated to her work with The Roanoke Times and teaching, Klein-Davis is always on the go, but she has mastered the balancing act of managing her career and family life with an elegance and air of confidence that some people spend a lifetime searching for.