Unless you’ve been hiding somewhere for the last 8 years, you probably know that the newspaper and print media in general are not doing well.
The size of its staff has been drastically reduced. As a result, most are more than willing to drop their standards on what can be worn when it comes to photos.
Today’s business climate aside, newspapers have always traditionally relied on independent sports coverage, especially for sports. Sporting events occur mostly on nights and weekends when newspapers can’t carry as many games.
So if you’re still fired up, those are the hours you’ll probably need it. So be prepared to sacrifice “quality time” with your loved ones. At this point, I should mention that many newspapers will want you to sign a work-for-hire contract.
If they do, make sure you don’t. I would go as far as to avoid that discussion, so you can’t get ripped off. Simply put, by signing that document, you are granting all of your rights as the author/creator of that work forever, so don’t. No matter how tempting “them” sounds, don’t do it! With all those jokes aside, what’s next?
create a portfolio
Start shooting a variety of sports. Show you can stop maximum action, expose properly while paying attention to ensure you have clear backgrounds.
Unless you have deep pockets and can afford long, fast lenses, shoot games played in daylight. That means you may need to be selective about the types of sports you want to cover. Indoor sports like volleyball and basketball can be a problem if you don’t have a fast lens, so try soccer or baseball instead.
If you do qualify, some newspapers allow their correspondents access to their pool of lenses, but you haven’t quite gotten there yet.
When you have a body of work you’re comfortable with, make 8″ x 12″ copies of your favorites. Also consider putting your images online along with a resume.
Next time you see a photographer from your local newspaper, introduce yourself and get a business card. Then ask for the full name of any or all of the image publishers.
From that business card, you’ll probably be able to figure out that person’s email address. For large organizations, they usually have some sort of syntax that you can figure out by looking at the business card of the photographer you just met.
With that email contact, you can send the URL to your images online and follow up with a phone call. If they like what they see, then those impressions will come in handy when you interview them and you should be on your way to that first gig.
As for where you should host your images, there are many sites online that offer “free” accounts. I do not recommend free ones like Flickr because of their terms of use. Instead, pay for the web hosting service and keep your copyright.
Places like Zenfolio, Smugmug, and others are very popular and actually have built-in eCommerce solutions. That just means there are built-in shopping carts for you to sell your work.
Should you pay for your own domain name and web hosting? It is a question you will have to answer for yourself. If looks are important and they are in this business, you should register your domain name and set up your own web hosting.
It’s not just about getting a cool email address like Leo[at]leo.tv. Moving along…
Learn how to send files electronically
Getting great photos is only a small part of the job. You need to know how to connect to the Internet using a WiFi network or by connecting an ethernet cable.
Once you’re online, you can send an email or use FTP (File Transfer Protocol) to transmit your images to the newspaper. From time to time email gets flaky and doesn’t work right, it helps to know how to compress files, upload them to a web server, and then get the URL (web address) to send to your recipient for download.
That means you’re expected to have a laptop running Photoshop and some sort of FTP or file transfer protocol software. Depending on the size of the newspaper you work with, they may or may not allow you to access your Starbucks or Metro Wi-Fi account name and passwords.
That is generally the way the photographers on your staff transfer their images to their newspapers. These days it is becoming very common for staff photographers to have mobile broadband cards.
These are special antennas that are either USB 2.0 or PCMCIA connectors that plug into laptops to allow fast Internet connection. So anywhere you are where you can have cell phone service, you’ll be able to connect to the Internet.
Making contact
In every newspaper there is at least one image editor who works at night or on weekends. They are the ones you want to make first contact with, not the Director of Photography or the Grand Kahuna in the photography department. They are the ones who will ultimately supervise you. Evenings and weekends are when newspapers have fewer staff in the photography department. It makes sense because the content for the local and metro sections of the paper is already laid out and breaking news has been covered by the daytime crew. Most of the night work tends to be concerts or speeches and sporting events.
Have computer skills
The computer is your digital darkroom. The sooner you familiarize yourself with its ins and outs, the better.
As a freelancer, the more proficient you are with these technical problems, the more likely you are to impress your supervisor/editor. When he’s out in the field, things often go wrong.
You should know how to get out of a frozen app, how to troubleshoot, reboot and troubleshoot.
Understanding your computer’s operating system is vital. If you haven’t figured this out yet, the actual shooting is maybe 50% of the actual work you’ll be doing.
Getting there, not getting lost, writing captions and identifying the subjects in the image and setting deadlines constitutes the rest of the job. In my next installment, I’ll deconstruct as best I can how to photograph a sports assignment you might get in the local paper.
