One of the problems with photos from a public affairs meeting is that they can be seriously boring. The McIntosh meeting photos I’ve taken in the past have been poor in quality due to light quality or vibration. My new camera solved both of those problems, for the most part.

What it doesn’t solve is the boring issue.

I found a useful tip a couple pages between last weeks readings in Kobre. The chapter was talking about meetings, and I couldn’t resist reading it. On page 51, there is a small graph about Washington Post photographer Ray Lustig noting that a wrinkled brow, a curled lip, hands and faces reveal emotions. I think we might have talked about hand movement in class, too. Or maybe I imagined that because I read it that morning.

Either way, when I was photographing the council meeting last Thursday night, I found myself waiting for officials to start moving their hands and for the emotional moments to come up in the meeting. If you wait long enough, someone will get angry, or forget that I’m there and start talking with his or her hands.

A long-standing issue in McIntosh remains how to control speeding. The speed limit in town is 20 mph. The town tried speed humps, but residents are still unhappy about how fast people travel on the main roads that intersect the highway.

In this photo, McIntosh Town Councilman Lee Deaderick suggests that the town just buy stop signs. Granted, you’d need a caption to explain this isn’t a high five.

Another point on page 51 of the Kobre book involves how news value can increase depending on who’s who and the personalities involved in the picture.

The context of this photo is what falls into the who’s who category of news value. To an outsider, it looks simple enough. In the forefront, LPA chairwoman Charlsie Stott advises the council her committee approved a rezoning application from June Glass, who is watching in the background. But what makes this photo ironic is that Stott and Glass strongly disagree on about every issue about the town, quite possibly the universe as well. Later in this very meeting, they interrupted council discussion arguing between themselves about how much Stott should have to pay for garbage pickup. Getting them together in one image agreeing that June’s land should be rezoned is something of a landmark moment.