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I'm doing some work at News Ltd (The Australian, Daily Telegraph) at the moment (a major newspaper business - for our foreign viewers).

I thought that I'd share some of my experiences for the sake of general interest...

In its favour, News Ltd. seems to honour its photographers well by framing and displaying A3 sized prints of their best news photos... They are displayed throughout the office buildings in mini-galleries with a bio of the photographer and descriptions of the photos displayed in that mini-gallery...

I see the photographers walking in and out of the building going out on assignment and coming back with their shots... They all seem to be using digital these days... Encouragingly, about 2/3 seem to be using Nikon...

I frequently have to walk through The Australian's photography department and see on-screen some of the photos that will appear in the following day's newspaper...

Unlike us, the photographers have no role to play in post-processing - they hand their memory cards over at the desk and the selection, editing, cropping and treatment of their photos seems to be handled by another department...

I walked past the photographer's hot-desk today and there was a formidable array of D2Hs and D2Xs sitting on the desks...
I stopped to talk to them and the fact that I have a D70 bought me some brownie points... I asked the D2x shooter how he copes with the WB encryption and he said it doesn't bother him coz he shoots in JPG ( i guess for the resolutions they need for newspaper photos - it doesn't really matter... )

Over the coming weeks, I hope to gain the trust of some of these pro-photographers and might be able to convince them to let me accompany them throughout a typical day...

leek wrote:Over the coming weeks, I hope to gain the trust of some of these pro-photographers and might be able to convince them to let me accompany them throughout a typical day...

and if you need someone to carry your camera bag I'm more than happy to help

Awesome!

you should name drop the forums... sponsorship

Nice insight there John, thanks. Encouraging indeed to hear that 2/3 were Nikon users...may I ask what type of work you'll be doing there?

Leek, I doubt you have to explain News Ltd to our OS members, especially the Brits and the Americans. Old Rupert has his tentacles deep into both countries (Fox network, BSkyB, hundreds of US & UK newspapers)

I am so jealous!! My dream job - a staff photographer. A couple of D2Xs, many lenses,flashes,etc all written off on tax or probably even provided by the company... And the best bit, a lackey to do the PP for you

I'd love to spend a few days tagging along with one of those guys.

Geoff wrote:Nice insight there John, thanks. Encouraging indeed to hear that 2/3 were Nikon users...may I ask what type of work you'll be doing there?

I'm doing some IT review work...

Johndec wrote:I'd love to spend a few days tagging along with one of those guys.

I'll see what I can do... Give me a few weeks...

leek wrote:

Geoff wrote:Nice insight there John, thanks. Encouraging indeed to hear that 2/3 were Nikon users...may I ask what type of work you'll be doing there?

I'm doing some IT review work...

Johndec wrote:I'd love to spend a few days tagging along with one of those guys.

I'll see what I can do... Give me a few weeks...

Bugger...
Leek - johndec told me he doesn't want to go anymore and that I should go instead .

Geoff wrote:Bugger...
Leek - johndec told me he doesn't want to go anymore and that I should go instead .

Leave it with me...

I've been down that road with other agencies in the US same as AAP in Australia, I mentioned few times in few threads long ago, all the pros at any event never known or seen what their takes.

They only shoot at their opportunities and handed the CF cards back to their Post-processing Dept. and it's up to that Dept. to choose which photos to be used, and the photographer(s) will know their photos have been used or not in the next day, they may shot a thousand photos but nothing been selected. It's a boring job.

They shot JPEGs, cos that's enough for the paper and their PP Dept. didn't want to do heavily in PP.

At some sport events, they sit still at the front line and have some runners come up with fresh empty CF card and they swapped.

They're enjoying their jobs of going out and hunting photo's opportunity but they're sick cos they may not see the fruits which they harvested. Their life is so active and have to be quick.

They use the gears as the grunt in the front line of the battlefield, they get the gears to cope with their assigments and never look after them, and they will have the latest gears in their inventory as soon as the products are available in the market.

The other are Press Coprs of the PM's Dept. or The White House, these guys travelling around the world within second of notice very frequently and always fly with VIPs in VIP planes, I love this job too but I'm not qualified

I only love to be war correspondence rather than PJs. That's the difference world and more fun same as thrills with.

Birddog114 wrote:I only love to be war correspondence rather than PJs. That's the difference world and more fun same as thrills with.

Except for getting shot at

Birddog114 wrote:I only love to be war correspondence rather than PJs. That's the difference world and more fun same as thrills with.

i'm with birddog on this one... it is my goal to do this at some stage in my life.

leek... thankyou so much for the insite... very interesting...

johndec wrote:

Birddog114 wrote:I only love to be war correspondence rather than PJs. That's the difference world and more fun same as thrills with.

Except for getting shot at

You only die once

There was a time when Pro news photographers would shoot everything on TRI-X and rush back to process the film and make their own prints. They took pride in their work and it showed in the quality of the work being published in the newpapers. These days they don't give a stuff because the imagery is taken off them and they have no say it how it is processed or cropped. It is very rare to see an outstanding image in todays newspapers, when 20 years ago it was the norm. Bloody disapointing state of affairs and a bloody shame. I would not work for a newspaper for this reason. The Dork who processes your image in Photoshop would not have a clue as to what a good image is. The only thing he knows is how to make it fit into a space not requred for an advertisement.