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My Search Process
I initiated my search through the Internet search engine Google (google.com) using words like “photojournalism”, “news” and “photography”. I was astonished at the amount of results from the search - there were thousands! Sites differed from those of newspapers to seminars on photojournalism. I checked out a few photojournalists’ sites, which did not provide much info but did get me more excited about exploring this subject. I used some keywords to narrow down the search like “career” or “photojournalist”. Some sites I was led to were helpful. I received some good information from a site by Nancy Ford, a photo editor. She wrote about what a career in the field of photojournalism consists of.
I was a little bitter about taking a trip to the library because sometimes I think I have all I need on the Internet. However, I found the library to be a worthwhile trip. After nabbing three books which I thought might help, I was proud at myself for paying attention all those trips to the library in middle school and elementary school because I went to town in the periodical section. I found a couple articles that sounded good, but I don’t believe our library received the magazines there were from. Believe me, I looked hard. When I got home and looked through the books I was a little disappointed. One book was much too long and was only the history of Life Magazine’s photojournalism. Another book was really interesting as it had photos from the past 150 years, but no information. My last book was helpful to me, though some of the information did not apply. The first part of the book was helpful as it talked about what photojournalism is but remainder of the book was techniques of how to make money as a photojournalist. Maybe someday I’ll need that!!
My next endeavor was to interview. Because I wanted to interview professional photojournalists and didn’t know any locally, I decided that email would be the best way to do this. I emailed John Kaplan (you may remember I loved his work) and asked for permission to send an interview. He emailed back stating that he didn’t do email interviews but would be willing to talk over the phone. I reasoned that might be difficult to document, so I decided to check around some other places to find someone willing to return an email interview. I browsed the Internet for professional photojournalists with email addresses listed. I found and emailed eight of these, enquiring permission to send a 10-12-question interview. I found “Behind the Viewfinder” (www.digitalstoryteller.com) to be a very helpful site in my search for photojournalism.
Following is the email I sent to these “interviewees”:
Mr./Ms. _____ _____,
My name is Crystal and I am doing a project with school and was hoping you might be willing to answer some questions about photojournalism. I saw some of your photographs while browsing on the web and really enjoyed them. I would like to email you 10-12 "interview" questions and if you are willing, you would elaborate on the questions and email me them back. Please let me know if you are willing to help.
Thanks,
Crystal
Followed by this email to those who agreed:
Ms. Karen Borchers,
Thank you so much! This is for my high school English class. We were assigned to conduct an in depth study of a dream of ours in hopes to gain information that might help us reach this dream. Attached is a word document containing some questions about your career in the field of photojournalism. Thank you again so much for your cooperation.
Crystal
P.S. Please let me know if you have trouble with the document.
I was absolutely shocked and really impressed to find that six of the eight photojournalists responded within the next six hours! I sent each of these professionals an email with an attached Word document and have received responses from five. I was most impressed with the response I received from Donald Winslow. He clearly spent a lot of time and effort on answering my questions and he responded so quickly. I really learned a lot from the interviews and am glad I emailed so many people.
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