how to get started as a photojournalist

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dan_sutton

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Hello. I have a question about how to get started as a photojournalist. I hear about photographers who seem to go off and shoot in Kosovo, Rwanda, etc. Paolo Pellegrin apparently would travel to the fragmenting Yugoslavia for years and take photographs. Apparently Steve McCurry saved up for a couple hundred rolls of Tri-X and traveled to Asia. Sebastiao Salgado quit his economic post and became a photographer.

Thus my question follows, how? How do people become freelancers. For instance, if my intent were to move to Palestine and travel between Gaza and the West Bank, how do I accomplish this? Where does the funding come from? Is it a task of submitting portfolios to charities, publishing houses and foundations seeking funding for a year or does a photographer have to fund his own capital to move and start shooting?

I'm confused as to how to begin. I am enrolled at University of Louisiana at Lafayette to obtain a photography degree having already received a mathematics degree from the university. I also have a pending application to Louisiana State University for a photography degree as their program is much larger, with respect to course offerings and professors. But this seems to only delay what I'm trying to do.

I have also flirted with the idea of showing up in a recruiting office and say I'll ship tomorrow if its with a camera, not a gun. I just want to do this but don't know how.

I've looked into the VII internship but I don't live in New York City and certainly couldn't afford to live in NYC while working for free. I work with a wedding photographer here in Louisiana and second shoot occasionally and don't want to go down that route. I am not held in one place with family commitments or financial obligations so I am a 26 year old who wants to explore the world and make pictures of the way humans interact.

So how do I move on this? I'm asking this of this forum as I hope to come across several people who have made this journey.

Thanks for your time,
Dan Sutton
 
Dan, this is probably the worst time in the last 100 years to want to become a PJ. You will be competing against Pulitzer Prize winning PJs who are struggling to make a living. Getting work from NGO's is also very competitive.

I've been a PJ for decades, and my advice would be to find another way to make a living. A little brutal, but things are tough out there.
 
Andy Kibber said:
Being independently wealthy would be a good start. 🙂
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No doubt about that. That is just a very tough market to crack. Hell, it's tough enough just breaking into ordinary run-of-the-mill photojournalism working in a mid-sized U.S. city.

I'd never want to discourage someone from pursuing their dream, but I think you need to understand that it is very tough to make it as a freelancer - particularly for the type of work you are talking about combined with your very limited experience.
You'd be competing with throngs of veteran photojournalists who have been laid off or have taken buyouts from magazines and newspapers that have been shrinking in recent years. Many of those photographers are still in the business - as freelancers, often taking assignments from their former employers.

If this is a route you want to go, the first thing you have to do is gain experience as a photojournalist. If you plan to go the freelance route, you'll either need a second job or some other way to support yourself. Because you will not make much money (at least in the early stages) selling individual images to newspapers and most magazines.
 
A while back I quit my job at a technology company and decided to pursue photojournalism full time. My honest opinion is that it can not be done quite that way. I have worked my tail off and although I have had my share of success, it came a high price. There were/are months that the only income we have is from my wife. She makes a good amount so this helps very much. I also do other photography work not related to PJ, it can suck at times but you know, I gotta feed the monkey. As long as the majority of my time is spent pursuing projects for publication that I feel are important, I feel like I am fulfilling my goal.

If this is your passion you will find a way to do it. If it is a fleeting interest, save yourself the suffering and just do photography as a hobby. Your gear will be in better shape and so will your ego. (Lotta rejection in this biz)
 
Sad but true. The only thing that I can really think of to tell you is that it used to be important to matter to a little to a a lot of people, but now it is important to matter a lot to only a few people. In other words you have to find a niche, even then it will be hard and you probably won't be able to make ends meet doing photojournalism alone. Don't give up on the dream though, we are yet to see how the media revolution will end. So far we have only witnessed to fall of the giants. We are still in the thick of the aftermath and things haven't quite worked themselves out yet.
 
Dear Dan,

For the first few years -- maybe forever -- it's self funded. You earn some money doing something else, and save every penny you can: one award-winner of my acquaintance has been known to work as a cinema usherette. Then you blow that on something you believe in, and either get it published or have an exhibition. Do that often enough, and show you're REALLY GOOD, and you might pick up a bit of financial or practical support, or win an award that has actual prize money instead of prestige. Eventually.

Go to Arles and Perpignan to see what's being produced right now by some of the best photojournalists on earth. No excuses: if you can't get to at least Perpignan, and preferably Arles as well, you are profoundly unlikely to get to Kosova (note the Albanian spelling, because the population is 92% Albanian), Moscow and the Himalayas.

Accept that you are going to have to live on very little money, and that you're going to be freezing your arse off in unheated rooms, unable to have a bath for days or weeks on end, and get grief from minor officals. Ratchet it up a notch (a higher level than I've ever worked) and you may actually have people actively trying to kill you.

Finall, stop pissing around with degrees. If photojournalism -- as distinct from a safe reporting job on the Nowheresville Tribune -- is really important to you, you should be out there shooting by the age of 26.

Sorry to be harsh, but this is why I'm not a full-time photojournalist and it's a fair description of the lives of several I know.

Cheers,

R.
 
I used to be a combat photographer in the Navy 'till 2005. When I got out, I spent a year unemployed & moving from retail to retail. I'm 33 years old now & working on finishing a degree in journalism (though it should have probably been in political science). It's a very hard market to even make enough money to live off of. I don't do it now but hope to one of these days.

As far as what to do, you have to keep your portfolio current. I just finished a trip to New Orleans in an effort to cover the Gulf oil spill's effect on the area. As an independent journalist, I did not have the backing of bigger media so it was a bit more difficult to gain access. Regardless, I got about 700 decent digital photographs & a few rolls of film shot while there. It was a big learning experience and I know what mistakes not to make next time, what or how many different story threads to chase so I don't spread myself too thin.

I did this completely on speculation, for free, just to keep my portfolio current. I'd been doing short-term documentary work for school but needed something other than a school assignment for my portfolio and resume.

That's not saying you have to travel far away from where you live. You can approach your daily life and some facet of it as a documentary. "Day in the Life of" studies are easy to do. Some are much harder if you choose to spend a few days awake, shooting everything going on. If you look around, you can probably find a pretty compelling story in your family or neighborhood which you can shoot and write about. Make it happen and then find a new one.
 
Phil_F_NM said:
I used to be a combat photographer in the Navy 'till 2005. When I got out, I spent a year unemployed & moving from retail to retail. I'm 33 years old now & working on finishing a degree in journalism (though it should have probably been in political science). It's a very hard market to even make enough money to live off of. I don't do it now but hope to one of these days.
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Dear Phil,

Quite apart from your other excellent advice, I'd be grateful if you could tell us a tiny bit more about your decision to do a photography degree, and why you think Poli Sci would have been more use. I do not argue with a word you say ( have a law degree): it's just that you clearly know more about certain aspects of this than I do, as well as being little more than half my age and therefore more au courant with the market.

Cheers,

R.
 
Roger and others,
I started school before the Navy as a history major. After the Navy I thought I'd make it in mechanical engineering, but my math grades weren't up to snuff. After that, I changed to journalism at Temple University.

The curriculum is not just writing or photography. As the media is changing so very rapidly right now, we're learning a lot of non-traditional ways of making news. Blogging and social media are the big ways for people to get their names and work out into the world. With all of the main media sources blogging, tweeting, and facebook-ing, an easy yet essential way to get one's work out is to integrate with that "cloud" of information with one's own blog, twitter, and facebook account. With all telephones these days, one can post blog entries via voice and with smartphones, PDA's, iphones, etc, one can manage a blog as you would with a computer, but from the train, bus, airboat in the middle of the swamp, wherever, whenever.

My degree is not so much journalism or photography, but more marketing and staying current with the latest methods of information exchange. I'm not an expert on any of them, by no means. In fact, I'm often asking my friends how to make certain settings on my blog. I don't have a facebook or twitter account, but will probably within a few months.

Aside from the technical aspects, I still do have to produce stories and photography. My articles are critiqued as are photos. An added benefit is that in this day and age, many professors in the field are also staffers at local publications. I've had classes with staffers from the Philly Daily News and the Inquirer for the past several years. I've made some great contacts and have been invited to speak to a class by Pulitzer prize winner Jim MacMillan, on the topic of secondary trauma experienced by journalists in the field. The contacts I've made are almost worth the years of time & work. Add to that the "muscle memory" of writing in AP style is indispensable.

This is not a degree in photography. Personally, I think those are for people going into commercial work, which pays better than the news but few commercial photographers are going to be able to say that they were slogging around in a swamp, being eaten alive by mosquitoes & horseflies last week while at work.

Phil Forrest
 
PJ is as crazy a business as you can want, and that was 25 year ago. Today, it is very risky in every conceivable way. But... there are great photographs taken everyday and you do not have to be in China to do it.

Bit of background - spent 20 years as a PJ during film era - mid 70s to 90s. My best month was about $7,500 (pure profit, after expenses were billed) for a Middle East assignment and there were many months when I made damn little money. Luckily I lived in Austin, Texas back then when you could really live on rice, beans and macaroni and rent a house for less than $400/month or so. Being strapped for cash is pretty common for a freelance PJ.

On the other side, many of my classmates (about 20 in our graduating class) from UT school of PJ went to be very successful newspaper photographers or began a studio business. Few crossed over successful from newspaper to studio, or vice versa. And very few successfully switched back and forth from newspaper to magazine to PJ. One exception was Larry C Price, classmate of mine who won 2 Pulitzer Prizes. Photo editors from both papers and magazines loved his work and he truely is the best photographer I have ever known personally. He won his PPs at 2 different national papers and still freelanced for National Geographic, Geo (when it was spectacular) and others. But VERY FEW can make this work.

Here are a few tips, in no special order:
1. Get an honest review of your portfolio from the photo editor of the largest newspaper in La. (NOT your college instructor unless he/she has prior experience as a photo editor.) Pay him/her $100 if you need to, or buy dinner or something. You WILL be asked to improve your work. Don't forget to ask if you can shoot an a feature for them on spec.
2. Get an honest review of your portfolio from the photo editor of the largest magazine in La. Doesn't matter if what you shoot is aimed at that magazine or not, get as many photo/art editors to review your work. Again, you WILL be asked to improve your work.
3. You will need some financing, and as much as I hate to say it, credit cards are about the only option if you are not blessed with cash.
4. Equipment, get the best you can afford that will never need replacing. Get to know your local camera repairman, because all serious photographers will know him.
5. Shoot great local assignments and get them published. Shoot great regional assignments and get them published (published also infers you received some payment!) Very little chance anyone will publish your China, Middle East, or "where ever" shots unless you have an agreement beforehand. So get published, get published often and get to know a lot of photo editors. Starting locally worked for me back then, I am not so sure that network of photo editors is still intact these days.
6. Part of a successful PJ is ideas. Especially starting out, especially at the local level. Good ideas=good photos=getting published= chance at something big (and a small chance at that).

It can be done, have faith and courage...
 
Dear Phil,

Thanks very much. Sorry for the sloppy reading, and conflating journalism with photography: I was reading it after dinner. I can certainly see the logic of a degree in modern media/marketing, never mind the contacts -- which makes me all the more intrigued about Poli Sci as an alternative.

Cheers,

R.
 
My .02 - having done both the military (not recommended - people shoot at you for no reason) and the PJ, and having spent almost 50 years in newspapers and mags: Print, as we used to know it is DEAD. Wedding photogs (some) make a good living, especially if they create a style and deliver as promised. But if I were young again, I would dump my still cameras (except for baby pix 🙂 ) and start thinking and shooting for TV. Anderson Cooper did it that way.
 
I'd say Poli Sci as alternative to actually LEARN something about the world on which I were reporting. Poli Sci, anthropology or specific histories are very good backgrounders for particular areas that a journalist would be reporting on, if you ask me. Aside from living in a place for months or years, studying that region's political issues in an academic setting is probably one of the best ways to prepare oneself to write about it.

Phil Forrest
 
PJ Career

PJ Career

If there is anything else you can do and enjoy to make a living go do that. If not welcome to something meaningful and try and find a rich girl to marry or at least one with a job.
 
I spent about 6 months working as a small-market PJ, doing local sports, features and covered an election. I never had more fun working in all my life. I also never made less money in all my life.

The problem for me was all the things you have to do BESIDES taking photos. I wasn't hungry enough to chase down clients, call editors, schedule my days and nights all the while living on a budget.

If I was independently wealthy it would be a different story.
 
Could I suggest you go to “Lens,” the excellent NYT site

http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/

and look up the June 22, 2010 entry, “Restrepo” and the Imagery of War by Michael Kamber. Journalism is changing. Print journalism is diminishing. Here is one photojournalist’s material being used in a magazine (Vogue, which would have been a most unlikely outlet in the heydays of Time, Newsweek, Paris Match), TV (ABC’s Nightline) and in a movie released commercially and being hailed by critics as one of the best movies on screens today and one of the best “war” movies of all time.

The marketplace is changing. Tim Hetherington is a seasoned pro with a track record of published material behind him. Still, to survive, both financially and in terms of telling the story, he’s exploring a variety of outlets. These days you have to do the job, package the job (probably in a variety of ways) and sell the job. Things will eventually settle down. But, for now, photographers who are just starting rarely have the contacts and reputations to sell the job. I think the most intelligent act for someone starting out is to work with an agency familiar with this changing world.
 
I tried to switch to being a PJ a few years ago and unfortunately it is true that the business is in very serious trouble. Apparently things have gotten worse in the past two years with the recession.

To be honest I'm not sure what the answer is, because it don't really have one for myself.

I got two pieces of advice from various people in the profession:

A) Marry rich
B) Get a job that pays the bills, save your pennies and then take time off to shoot your own projects.

I took option B, but am not adverse to A...

Obviously B is not the same as working for a media outfit and having their backing etc.
But of course there are real advantages to working fully independent. For one thing you have total control over your work.

I'm pretty certain that if you were hell bent and determined to do this, it could be done. One would hope that if you had extraordinary talent, you would stand a chance, even with the current state of the business. But you'll probably have to live off Saltines and coffee and if you start a family it could get interesting. I may have gone that route, if I was in my 20's, not 30's.

But in any case I think you would need to augment your income with something else (weddings, portraits, industrial, advertising, catalogs etc)

I also think learning how to also shoot video is a good idea. Flexibility gives you an edge and like Bill says the business is changing. Just the simple fact that DSLR cameras are shooting useable HD video is going to change things in the next few years dramatically. The days of people just shooting stills are probably numbered.
 
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