Photojournalism as a career

Checking into this, I'd love to do international photojournalism, so I can travel as I work, wondering if anyone's got some hidden booty of insightful knowledge about this stuff. SPILL IT

thanks

i don't, but you should do it!

sadly as with most decent jobs, your likelihood of getting it very strongly correlates with the number of people you already know who do it

it's a dream job, a fantasy. especially in this new era of journalism and in this economy. you'd probably have a better shot at being a professional basketball player.

sorry, i'm not sayin don't chase it but you're better off starting a career in a 'real' profession and pursuing it as a hobby and eventually, possibly, making it your career.

i'm saying you should major in engineering or computers or something useful.

ZMm

Always wanted to do this, but being so far into my studies I thing I've passed it

No advice but this was interesting, see if you can download it http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00sjdmt

hidden booty lol

The only way to start a career in this is to spend your own money to go to somewhere like Africa or South America, find interesting stories yourself and send your photos back to a slew of Editors and Photography professionals. There's no interview, no actual job until you're recognised enough to be commissioned.

Mostly already rich kids, or seasoned travellers become Photojournalists. It's an idyllic profession, but it takes a complete lifestyle change.

Are you talking about still photography or video? I believe a lot of this work is freelance so what you'd have to do is break into freelancing and get your name going. Then i think you'd be set. Working toward this sort of thing myself. Right now I just edit video for local news.

Oh and you'd have to get to a big city that does a lot of documentary work.

might help to grad in photography, no? get some credentials

  On 2/27/2011 at 4:11 AM, Al Hounos said:

it's a dream job, a fantasy. especially in this new era of journalism and in this economy. you'd probably have a better shot at being a professional basketball player.

Slight exaggeration, but yeah. This economy + the 100,000,000 competitors in the marketplace = ouch. Even before the internet raped printed media, writing and photo journalism jobs were scarce and the pool was saturated.

I also agree with the notion that you basically have to foot the bill yourself until you do something of note.