Blowing it

David Viggars continues his tale of how he became a news photographer on the Reuters photographers blog. He was working as a newbie in Rome when he went to report on the aftermath of an earthquake in southern Italy and how ‘missing the story’ taught him not to miss it again,

I blew it. I was so completely overwhelmed by the scale of the suffering, by the death, destruction and misery that I blew it. Never having experienced anything remotely like it, I felt a complete interloper ashamed to be pointing a camera at people who had lost everything.
When I finally got to sleep my nightmares were full of people but my pictures were not. They showed wreckage and desolation but failed to give it a face. In the misguided belief that I needed somehow protect what shreds of dignity the victims had left by not exposing them to wider scrutiny, I not only completely missed the point of my being there but also let them down.
In such circumstances if you are not doing your job you are just in the way. link