His life was in pictures

Dave Nielsen captured the world - or at least the Mid-Valley slice of it - for Appeal-Democrat readers for a quarter century.

Dave was the newspaper’s photo editor for a decade, taking pictures each worth more than 1,000 words. In many cases, the stories that ran with his photos were superfluous.

Now it’s time to tell Dave’s story. He died Monday at his Yuba City home. He was 49. He was diagnosed with colon cancer last year.

“Perhaps his life story is best told through his eyes, the photographs of many years that express his vision, which ranged from delightfully capricious to dark, wistful and sometimes saturnine,” said Samanda Dorger, an A-D photographer in the early 1990s.

Dave “was one of the most good-natured people I have ever met. Even when he was mad, he smiled,” said Tim Keown, a former A-D sports reporter who now writes for ESPN The Magazine. “With good humor and an easy laugh, he had a way of making people feel good about themselves without seeming to try. His humility was epic.

“He would casually drop into conversation a trip he had just taken, and it would take some effort to get him to admit he was in Los Angeles or Santa Barbara or somewhere else receiving another award for one of his great photos.”

A Stockton native, Dave took photos for Keown’s 1994 book, “Skyline: One Season, One Team, One City,” about an Oakland high school basketball team.

The A-D hired Dave in September 1981, shortly afer he graduated from Fresno State University, with a degree in photo journalism. He became photo editor in January 1996.

Dave’s reputation for excellent photography spread, helping him lure young photographers to the paper.

“Dave Nielsen built a photo department that rivaled the photo departments of large metros like the San Francisco Chronicle and the L.A. Times, and he did this with a much smaller staff and almost no resources,” said Max Whittaker, a former A-D photographer. “I took a pay cut so I could work and learn from Dave and his photographers.”

Dave was “first and foremost a gentleman, a mentor to the many young photographers lucky enough to have worked with him and an artist with a camera,” said Joe Calderon, the paper’s editor from 2003 to 2006. “Dave preached the gospel of ‘capturing the moment’ to every one of his photographers and he practiced what he preached every time he went out to shoot an assignment. His work was inspiring and moving.”

Calderon recalled going to a job fair with Dave at San Francisco State University.

Dave was “immediately surrounded by young photographers eager to have him critique their work. He was in his element then. He was at once critical and supportive, and the kids literally hung on his words. When I retired, I regretted that I would no longer be able to work with him. I missed his good counsel.”

Chris Kaufman, the paper’s acting photo editor, said of Dave: “In a haystack of mediocre images, Dave could find the needle-sharp image that would captivate readers. He was committed to making the people around him better, and he also deeply cared about how the paper looked as a whole. He was the boss but more importantly he was like a father, brother, friend and neutral observer all at the same time.”

Julie Shirley, the paper’s executive editor from 1993 to 1999, said Dave was “one of the nicest guys I’ve ever met. He was giving with his staff, supporting them as they won just about every photo award from state publishers when I was at the A-D.

“His ability to relate to people also made him a wonderful photographer who always captured peak moments. He could laugh at the hard times and enjoy the good times.”

Don T. Bricker, the paper’s publisher, said Dave “leaves a legacy of world-class photography, and his presence at the Appeal-Democrat will be sorely missed. But more than his work, Dave was a great guy. He was the kind of person you wanted to be around and when he had something to say it was always worth listening. Dave will live on through the great photographers he touched during his long career and the family we know he loved so much.”

Len La Barth, the paper’s editor, said Dave “cared passionately about his craft and the community he covered. That passion was reflected in his photos that graced the pages of the Appeal-Democrat.”

Sherry Barkas, the paper’s former city editor, said Dave was “one of the kindest, gentlest men I have ever known, two qualities that helped him immensely as a photographer because it was very rare that he couldn’t put a hesitant subject at ease.”

Barkas said she was “always impressed by how willing he was to wait as long as it took to get the right photo. I saw this a lot in covering the crime beat when, very often, Dave would pair up with me to cover drug raids and parole sweeps that required a lot of standing and waiting for something to happen.”

Dorger recalled that Dave “would buy me lunch for doing good work, and once paid a parking ticket for me that I got while detained in the courthouse on assignment.”

Barkas said she had a “deep admiration for the love and devotion Dave had for his two children. I loved how, when Austin was younger, Dave would take Friday mornings off to spend with his son. Austin loved trains, and I can still see Dave and Austin one Friday morning standing hand-in-hand, facing the railroad tracks behind the Appeal-Democrat office as a train passed.”

Austin is 10. His sister, Hannah, is 15. Dave and his wife, Jackie, were married for 21 years.

“Since he had his kids, they were always number one,” said Chris Conde, a family friend. “Everything he did revolved around his family. He fought to the very end.”

She said Dave was baptized last month.

“In the most difficult of times, Dave was focused and saw the big picture. He cared about people, and he took that caring to every facet of his work,” said Laura Nicholson, who succeeded Shirley as the paper’s editor and now heads the Yuba-Sutter Chamber of Commerce.

“He worked holidays so others didn’t have to; when there was breaking news, he worked alongside the other photographers to get the job done.”

Dave “put his heart into every assignment, waiting for the right photo and not just taking a picture and calling it done. He passed that passion on to his staff and the people he worked with and that was part of what made the Appeal-Democrat a great photojournalism paper during his tenure,” Nicholson said.

Dave had “an unusually keen sense of weather. Because some of the newspaper’s hardest work is done during weather-related incidents, particularly as it relates to flooding, Dave had this uncanny ability to consider a coming storm and predict what he thought might happen and where we needed to be,” Nicholson said. “He then could work calmly with an entire newsroom in coordinating the efforts of photojournalists, reporters and layout people working together.”

When he wasn’t mentoring young photographers at the A-D, Dave was at Yuba College, teaching photography.

“When looking at a good picture on the light table or on the computer screen, his whole face would light up and become animated: discussing the light, composition, and “the moment” captured on film,” Whittaker recalled. “In fact, he’d get way more excited about looking at a good picture from one of his photographers than in the stellar work he continually cranked out himself.”

Dave was “a born journalist, always excited about telling the stories of the community and covering everything from breaking news to local sports,” Whittaker said.

Keown, who worked for the A-D in the late 1980s, recalled a big fire in the foothills that the paper wasn’t going to cover because it was outside its primary circulation area.

“I disagreed strenuously, while Dave disagreed with his typical good humor. Tired of listening to me, Dave finally called my bluff. ‘Let’s go,’ he said. ‘Let’s go cover the fire.’ And so he packed up his cameras and I grabbed a notebook and we headed for the burning hills,” Keown said. “As usual, his photographs proved to be the best part of our coverage.”