How to Become a Photojournalist

Video Transcript

"This is Anthony and I am going to talk about how to become a photojournalist. Now a photojournalist is two words, photo journalist so being a journalist you are telling a story, that is key to thinking about how do I become a photojournalist. Photojournalism is not fashion photography, it is not product photography and it is really sort of not you are really a fly on the wall, you are documenting news most of the time in a way that you think will be appealing to newspaper editors and to people who sell the news. So that is very important to remember about how to become a photojournalist. Photojournalism almost always requires an interaction with people so if you are the type of person that doesn't really like dealing with a lot of people I would say photojournalism is not going to be something you want to do. To become a photojournalist there are schools that offer fine programs in photojournalism. There are some amazing, amazing photographers that come out of programs but on the other hand you don't have to go to school to become an amazing photojournalist. You do have to have an eye for news. It is another one of those cases where you really do need a cell phone or a pager or a laptop or a blackberry because you are going to get tips, you are going to get information that you are going to need to act on yesterday so you have got to go quickly so there is many ways to become a photojournalist. You are going to want to build a portfolio that shows your strong suits in covering possibly mundane events but making them look really really interesting. I try to tell all my students to go find a parade or really go find something that really is not that great and make it look like it is the most amazing thing in the whole world. That is a great exercise to see how good you are at documenting something and how good you are at making any kind of an event look really special and really interesting to a point where people are going to want to buy your images and pay you and that is how you become a photojournalist."