If you live in Waco, you’ve likely seen Rod Aydelotte (’77) and his camera: maybe at the dedication of tiny homes for the homeless; or the reading of the Declaration of Independence at the courthouse; or any protest, parade, art festival, high school clothing drive, or amid the frenzy of a breaking news story or a soaring, last-second score at a playoff game. Camera in hand, capturing images for the Waco Tribune-Herald for 44 years, photographer Aydelotte’s images have also appeared on the front pages of The New York Times and The Washington Post.
He’s covered the 51-day standoff between Branch Davidians and federal law enforcement agencies in 1993; George W. Bush at his Prairie Chapel Ranch in Crawford, when Bush was governor and president; the West Fertilizer Plant explosion in 2013, and the trials following the 2015 Twin Peaks biker shootout — along with hundreds of other stories between and since. It’s possible there hasn’t been an event in the Waco-Baylor ecosystem in the past four decades that Aydelotte hasn’t photographed.
For the past 16 years, Aydelotte has taught Photo II to 15 students per semester in his Baylor photojournalism class. They meet twice a week on campus and then get out into the field as much as possible. The point, he said, is that to take good pictures, you have to experience the world. “You’re going to be so much better at the end of my class than the beginning because you’ll be out shooting more than you ever have in your life,” he said.
When on assignment, he tells his students to be bold, instilling a list of guidelines, including: “First, get close to your subjects. Cherish who you meet. Understand your mistakes. Be well-rounded. Ask questions. Don’t limit yourself. Look for something different. Often you will also f ind great photos unrelated to the event.”
Years ago, Aydelotte notes, he and a group of students covered five events in one day, including an air show, a Wild West reenactment, and an art festival. “It was grueling,” he said, “but if you keep up with me, you’re learning something.” That day, over a late lunch eaten outside, he recalled: “Here comes a man pushing a shopping cart, and there’s a pit bull sitting in the cart. Everyone looked at me and I said, ‘Well?’” They all got up and took the shot.
“That’s called finding a moment.”
That’s hard to teach in a classroom, he continued. “I want my students to learn that photojournalism is more than the photograph — it’s about capturing the moments that define a community. It’s about being part of a community and loving that community.”
Born in Spokane, Washington, Aydelotte was in grade school when he moved to Waco with his family, and has spent most of his life here. He enrolled in law school at Baylor in 1973, but someone told him there were few jobs for lawyers then, so he switched to journalism. At Baylor, he found jobs working on the school newspaper and yearbook. “Being on The Lariat staff helped pay my rent so I didn’t have to live at home,” he said.
Later, he met his wife, Becky, a Houston native, covering the 1989 Waco Creek flood. She was working at the Tribune-Herald at the time. He helped her get her car out of a flooded parking lot. Becky now works for the city’s tourist board.
Photography techniques may have changed drastically since Aydelotte was developing film and color transparencies for The Lariat and The Round Up yearbooks back in the ‘70s, but the elements of a great photo remain the same today, he said. Today, both he and his students shoot with digital cameras. Aydelotte will accept images taken with a student’s phone if the subject matter is unique. (“Sometimes you just don’t have your camera on you,” he acknowledged.) But for the most part, he advocates using a camera.
From an aesthetic perspective, composition, exposure, light, and angle are the elements that make a good image, he said. “There are certain aspect ratios we go for but, for the most part, it’s just really important to shoot at an angle,” he explained. “We don’t want to shoot straight onto someone’s face. We want the subject to be shot at an angle, to show some background. I’ve stood on chairs and desks to shoot down and gotten low to shoot up for the right angle.
“When you create an angle,” he continued, “you’re telling more of a story because the viewer can see more.”
Just as important is feeling. “A good photograph will reach out and jump at you,” he said. “It’s that idea of capturing a moment. It happens in a split second, so you have to keep looking. We call it the hunt, and it can only come from experience. The student has to bring everything he or she has experienced and learned and is, or will be, to the forefront of themselves. It’s emotional.”
Aydelotte recounts an example of the hunt that ended up being profound for him and one former student. They were out shooting on a practice session some years ago. “We noticed a man lying down by the Brazos River. As we walked closer to the river we saw he was lying on his back and a goose was sitting on his stomach,” he said, adding that they took the shot. “Then, closer we got, the goose came at us, trying to run us off. The man couldn’t talk. We asked around later and found out he had befriended the goose to protect the goose from being teased and bothered by some teenagers. And now the goose was protecting the man.”
In his class, each student is required to produce at least one 10-image photo story — about either one theme, one idea, or one event — per semester, Aydelotte said. “Creating photo stories is how you get to be a better photographer.” The story is as important as the aesthetics of the image, he said.
It took him 20 years to learn, but that’s where the meaning comes in. “It’s not about the photographer; it’s about all these great people we are shooting. It’s about their stories,” Aydelotte said. “And after so many years, now I know a lot of these great people. I go places and I know I have to get the shot but I’m talking and shaking hands with folks more than taking photos.”
Aydelotte said he still loves his job at the Trib and, at 71, has no plans to retire. “I’m going to do it as long as I can,” he said. “It’s a great job; there is always something to shoot and every day is different. You have the seasonality of many events, year after year, that I enjoy, and then when there’s spot news you drop everything else.”
Aydelotte is so used to this unflinching schedule that he can be at a loss when not on assignment.
When asked about the images he has taken that he’s most proud of, he chuckles. “That’s history,” he said, bringing up his students again. “I’ve had some great students — students who go off on their own, shooting all day, telling stories with their pictures.” More than anything, Aydelotte hopes his students take away something they learn about their own humanity from his classes.
“You want to be a better photographer? Be a better person,” Aydelotte said. “Cherish the experience. Don’t be a fly on the wall. Talk to strangers — that’s how it all works.”
All photos courtesy of the Waco Tribune-Herald and shot by Rod Aydelotte.
Reporting on the Branch Davidian Siege
From the Waco Tribune-Herald’s article “Branch Davidian tragedy at 25: How the story overtook the storytellers.”
The five stood by the car and stared at the scene 250 yards away: a militarystyle raid like none they had ever witnessed, with agents scaling ladders and breaking windows. Then, a fusillade of gunfire. An agent on the roof fell on his side. A bullet hit the silver Honda.
Moments later, the five newspaper reporters were lying in a ditch, face down in the wet grass, where they would remain until a cease-fire more than two hours later. Bullets and tracers whistled overhead. From the house where [reporter Tommy] Witherspoon had knocked, an ATF sniper, perhaps the agent who had opened the door moments before, returned fire.
Witherspoon scrambled for a bricklike cellphone and asked photographer Rod Aydelotte how to work it. Another reporter turned on his cassette recorder. On the tape you can hear him hyperventilating as the gunfire escalates.
“Oh God. Oh God. Oh God,” he repeats.
“Get your Hail Marys going, man,” Witherspoon says to him.
“Should we, uh, try to get in the g—–n car and get out?” wondered [Mark] England, the soft-spoken “Sinful Messiah” writer. [“Sinful Messiah” was a seven-part investigative series on the Branch Davidians, published in the Waco Tribune-Herald in 1993.]
“No, stay where you are,” Aydelotte barked, still shooting photos as bullets f lew by. “We’re protected from the line of fire. We’re down below.”
After cussing the cellphone repeatedly, Witherspoon finally got through to another car down the road, carrying Tribune-Herald employees, including “Sinful Messiah” co-author Darlene McCormick.
“Darlene,” he says, “you gotta stay where you are. We got some serious s–t happening. Yeah, it’s coming right over us. … We’ll just keep our heads down. All right. We’re all right, just a little shaken up, but all right.”
Before the tape cuts off, the sound of helicopters and bullets continues, and England mutters something.
“What’d you say?” Witherspoon asks him.
“We’re going to get blamed for this,” England says.
