Amateur photographer humble in aftermath p. 13

By: Julia Prodis

Bank clerk who took dramatic picture
outside the Oklahoma federal building
meets with mother of baby he photographed sp.

CHARLES PORTER IV didn't realize his snapshot of a bloody baby cradled in the arms of a firefighter was anything special, until three clerks at Wal-Mart, where he developed the film, started weeping.
"I was only thinking that they came out clear, they're in focus," said Porter, a 25-year-old bank employee who had never photographed anything more dramatic than the Bullnanza Rodeo at the Lazy E. Arena.
The photo showed firefighter Chris Fields cradling the diaper-clad baby in his arms. A companion shot showed police Sgt. John Avera clutching the limp body to his chest, running to hand the infant to Fields.
Ever since the photos were published in newspapers around the world, Porter's life has been in chaos. At times, he wishes he had never taken it. He can't even bring himself to pick up his camera.
But when he met with one-year-old Baylee Almon's mother recently, he felt better.
"We never would have known she was treated so good if you didn't take those pictures," Aren Almon, 22, said during the tearful meeting.
"I'm relieved," Porter said. "I thought, 'What must they think of me? I hope it didn't hurt you.'"
"Of course, it broke our hearts, but it let us see how much they did care," said the baby's grandmother, Debbie Almon.
Porter had been sitting at his computer in his office three blocks from the federal building when he heard the explosion. He thought it might have been a planned demolition, and he might get some interesting pictures.
Grabbing the camera he always keeps in the trunk of his car, he headed to the scene and was swept up in a tide of smoke, screams and sirens.
He looked through the zoom lens on his fully automatic Canon EOS-A2 and started shooting. He had no idea what he had captured on film until he went to Wal-Mart about an hour later and waited 20 minutes for the prints.
"The only time I knew the pictures were dramatic, a little different, was when employees started looking at them and were weeping," he said.
In the hours after the bombing, he was so affected by the image of the child that he put the snapshot in his pocket and went to the hospitals to try to find out her fate.
"Have you seen this baby? Have you seen this baby?" he asked the nurses.
No one had. But, by then, the Almons had found her at St. Anthony's Hospital. The baby had died before she reached the hospital. "I'm not the focus of this whole thing," Porter said. "Mr. Fields and Mr. Avera did this. All I did was take a stupid photo."