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February 12, 1998
Newspapers rarely have the luxury of assigning more than one staff photographer to cover an assignment. There are exceptions to the rule, but it usually works out to be a one man band. Because of this, I feel that it behooves every still photographer to be well trained and experienced in all of the photographic arts in order to compete in today's market. A long, long time ago, when I entered the field, there was little or no specialization. We were expected to be able to go from shooting a morning press conference to a high school baseball game and then end up in the studio doing a bard shot. To me, that was the greatest thing about being a newspaper photographer. You had to be able to do it all and you never knew what the next assignment was going to be like. And I loved it all. I enjoyed the creativity of studio work. I enjoyed lighting a plate of bard to make it look appetizing. I loved photographing beautiful fashion models. And shooting home interiors called for special skills in selecting the right lens and appropriate lighting to highlight details. I loved covering sports because every click of the shutter could produce some spectacular action if you were lucky. And most of all, I loved the thrill and uncertainty of covering a breaking spot news story. Most of the assigning depended on your shift and where you were when an assignment came in. It was a lot easier in those days, because an editor could use almost any man/woman on the staff to cover almost anything. Of course, we had some people who excelled at one thing or another, and the editors would make an attempt to put that person on an assignment that called for his/her special talents. But, for the most part, any of us could shoot almost anything and I loved the diversity of the job and the challenges that it brought. Alas, changes came to our paper and soon we had one man assigned to cover major league sports and nothing else. Then it was decided to have a special staff of shooters who did nothing but work for the feature sections of the paper. And the rest covered the news jobs. I spoke to our department head about what I perceived to be the shortcomings of specialization. I pointed out that if a feature section photographer was out east doing a home interior in Southampton and a plane crashed in Moriches (ala TWA Flight 800), we would dispatch a news photographer from our office in Melville who would probably pass the feature photographer somewhere on the Long Island Expressway coming from Southampton who was much closer to the scene of the crash but wouldn’t be sent to cover it because that wasn't his/her specialty. I pointed out how much I would miss being creative in the studio and on feature assignments and I was asked if I wanted to join the feature specialists. “Not at the expense of covering spot news,” was my reply. And so, for the past 15 years or so, I have been denied the opportunity to expand my talents in other areas of photography because of specialization. It is really a shame. Because sometimes, some little photographic technique that I may have picked up while shooting in the studio, might save my bacon one day on a news job. You just never know. Dick Kraus Staff Photographer Newsday February 12, 1998
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Dick
Kraus
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Contributor
since 1998
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Behind
the Viewfinder - A Year in the Life of Photojournalism |
