Beyond captions

It’s easy to slip into the comfort zone on offer when working in the photographic department of a newspaper and it can really take something to step out of that routine to become a freelance photojournalist.

At a newspaper you know what is expected of you and indeed others know what they can expect from you. It can be quickly assertained which photographs will be selected for publication and which will never see the light of day and in the hectic pace of the newsroom, the demands of the day often preceed the quality of work being produced, particularly in the understaffed photographic departments of Australian newspapers.

Freelancers, by contrast are faced with the challenge of pitching stories to editors they may have a limited working relationship with, producing work for a wide variety of publications in a number of styles and coordinating their own time, transport and finances in such a way that they will make some money at the end of the day.

The MEAA’s Twelth Annual Freelancers Convention, held in Melbourne last weekend, provided an opportunity to explore the challenges facing freelance journalists and photojournalists in today’s changing media landscape and offered practical advice to professional and emerging contributors who attended from all parts of Australia.

Amongst the talented and accomplished speakers, Luis Enrique Ascui, who has been affiliated with agencies including Getty Images, The Associated Press, Reuters Atlas Press photo, and Polaris over his 20-year career, spoke to a small group of delegates delivering a wealth of information specific to photojournalism.

Luis offered an honest account of his own experience as a freelance photojournalist and back it up by providing links to web-based file sharing options and account keeping software.

Luis demonstrated his genuine interest in questions from the delegates in attendance and spoke to many of the photographers after the session was complete and continued to share a wealth of information and wisdom.

It became increasingly clear through the delegates line of questioning that much more training is required for producing content for online sources and while many journalists are already required to supply images with their copy, photojournalists should also consider producing words to compliment their images that extend beyond just captions.

A great summary of the conference is available at the ON THE ROAD, OFF THE PAGE blog where you will also find a complete list of speakers and information about the convention.