For many months, the story has been building. While there have been an abundance of photographers covering the Washington scene, most of the photo staffs around the country have been content to use wire photos to illustrate their stories and my paper was no exception.

So, while the up front pages were filled with photos and stories of the frenzy in our capitol, I and my fellow staff photographers toiled daily with the head shots and real estate photos that filled the rest of the paper.

There is always a part of us that wants desperately to participate in the biggest breaking story of the moment. My friend says that this is what makes us newspukes. We are like the fire house Dalmatian that wants to jump into the truck when the alarm sounds. But, for most of us, “We also serve, who only stand and wait.” (That’s a quote from something I learned in high school, but I can’t, for the life of me, recall from where.)

©1998 Newsday

On Friday, as the Congress was debating whether or not to include an opportunity for censure before taking the impeachment vote on Saturday; and while bombs and missiles were raining down on Baghdad, I was assigned to take photos of a businessman addressing a breakfast meeting of Long Island business leaders. After that, I had to travel 60 miles to take a photo of a traffic circle in Sag Harbor that appeared in today's paper. Before ending my workday, I was to take a photo of another business leader for our Business page. But, that assignment fell through because the Biz Desk had neglected to re-affirm that a photographer would be there to take his photo and he was dressed in a sport jacket, rather than a suit.

So, like many of my fellow photographers, around the country, while history was being made in Washington and in Iraq, I spend my day on the ordinary and mundane.

As much as I enjoy the thrill of the chase on the “big” stories, I also understand that there is more to my paper (and yours) than page one through five, and those back pages must also be served. And that, my friends, is the cold hard reality of this business. Yet, I wouldn’t for one moment, think of working at anything else.

Dick Kraus