Emily Fisher, the photo editor of Eastern Washington University’s student newspaper The Easterner is writing a weekly log about her experiences in photojournalism. Here’s here first entry…
Being the photo editor of my college’s newspaper is a great privilege for me. I’m gaining experience, getting clips and most importantly I get first pick of the “best” stories and photo ops that come along. Events like concerts, basketball games, exclusive tours of new facilities and even Michelle Obama have been the highlights of my editorial career. However, it wasn’t always like this…
I had to crawl before I could walk, as they say, and as soon as I learn to walk I’ll be learning to run and I’ll continue on this path of learning one thing after another. In the interim though, I hope to pass along some important (and maybe totally B.S. tips) that I have learned, and maybe help a fellow photographer.
Recently I have acquired two new talented photographers to my staff at the newspaper. This is the first time in my life in which I have had the opportunity to mentor other photographers. It’s been self-satisfying to ramble on about F-stops, ISO, composition, ethics and such, but I just hope that what I’m saying is helpful to my staff. We’ve all taken photography classes where the teacher bumbles on about the “rules of photography” and then my favorite part is when the teacher concludes with, “But of course the most important rule to remember is to break these rules.” WTF?
I’ve read numerous books, blogs magazines and websites where photographers have shared their tips and the best tip I can steal from them and pass along to other photographers is to get the “safe shot” the one you know will please your audience or client, and then shoot what ever the hell you want to shoot. Be artsy, be abstract, shoot their shoes, shoot their hands, shoot the silhouette so you can’t even see their faces, it may piss off the wedding couple, but if you’ve all ready got 100 photos of their faces it’s OK to try something different. And you know what I have noticed? The audience or client love your artsy photos! Your paper or client chose you because you have “an eye for photography” and you can see something so totally different than what they see. And I think that is the challenge, especially in photojournalism, for any photographer to breath a breath of fresh air into a stagnant situation.
It’ll take time and practice to know when to shoot the artsy shots, so when starting out try not to do it often, or practice on friends and family. Anyway that is a subject for my next blog….
Back to the paper…..
I shot the “boring” events like guest speakers, portraits of professors, and an empty community center. But these assignments have built upon one another and all my experiences continue to build. The best thing about photography for me, is that I will never run out of people, places or things to shoot. How many other professions can say that?
Final tip of the blog….
The best thing a photojournalist can do is be reliable and passionate about their work. I like to think that I was all of these things to my editor and that’s how I rose to photo editor. I was enthusiastic about shooting the library or the floundering women’s lacrosse team. I was happy to shoot the photos my editor couldn’t (or maybe didn’t want to) shoot because I love making images (do not call it taking pictures).
