Well, there are a lot of reasons to shoot news, whether one is
instinctively drawn to shooting people or not. When I began at the
paper I had no experience shooting sports, and little experience with
people. By the end, shooting people was very interesting and
learning to do it ethically and journalistically was an extremely
valuable skill which I have needed repeatedly since then. By the
end, shooting base/softball, basketball, track and field, cross
country and tennis were all great pleasures, while I was clear that I
had a visceral nearly hatred of shooting violent sports like
football, ice hockey, field hockey and lax.
Given the opportunity to resume shooting for a paper I'd leap at it
again. Such work is full of variety, technical challenges,
opportunities to master niche skills like sports and accurate flash
lighting with minimal equipment, the joy of telling a complete story
with images, editing, and often simply having to crank out something
more than a snapshot to a deadline. Newspaper work is a small part
of news journalism, and eventually print will die in the western
world and news image journalists will be using high quality video
capture for everything - already the web demands many skills from
still shooters that were simply unimagined 5 years ago and still
shooters lose their jobs if they don't adapt.
Lea, do the job - but be careful about your copyright. Most papers
will claim it and you may have to decide what to do about that.
Until they put you on payroll and offer some bennies, you should do
your best to hang on to your rights to the rest of the shoot, since
you will be unable to hang on to the rights to the images they use.
Also, your recompense will be embarrassing. But there's nearly
nothing to be done about that, since after you are 4 others behind
you just waiting for the opportunity.
--
Emily L. Ferguson
mailto:elf@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
508-563-6822
New England landscapes, wooden boats and races
http://www.landsedgephoto.com
http://e-and-s.instaproofs.com/
