What impresses me most when I look through his stream on Flickr is his access.
It is not easy to get into as many events as he has managed, and it even harder to get a seat or being allowed to get close enough to get a good picture. If he is not working for, or assignment for a media company he probably doesnt have a press pass, or at least not one that gets bouncers / security people to step aside.
Presumably he gains more and more access as his pictures are published. This is the key thing that will help him if he ever wants to get paid work out of it. Leading powerful politicians will know him, and know him as a photographer. Getting that recognition is not easy for a photo journalist.
Getting started in photo journalism is really hard, and its getting harder as news agencies downsize both regular journalists and photographers The market is turning more and more toward video and crowd sourcing images.
Lets say you went to school, studied photography, getting started as a freelancer, you take ok pictures and you submit them and pray for a publication. If you are luck you get picked up a little here and there, but unless you get lucky, no one really pay attention to who you are.
He has taken a bold step, and his name is now known to editors at major publications. Getting that network is far more difficult than learning how to
take pictures.
The kid has money. Traveling to all these events isn't cheap. So I think it safe to assume he and/or his family are donors at some level. It doesn't take much of a donation to get a seat close to the front, far less than the cost of traveling to the event.
Parents in the US spend money on their kids' activities. This probably is equivalent to mid-level travel sports, selective musical organizations, and beauty pageants. It is almost certainly less expensive than traveling with horses.
Ten hours of driving each way and a budget hotel runs a couple of hundred dollars and provides a substantial operating radius...and that ain't much money for a lot of people.
Individual venture capital from parents to their son. Probably a lot less than a brand name university, with a lot more benefit in terms of network, personal brand, and skills.
once you get connected to people like he seems to be, he's probably getting rides with people and crashing at houses and other hotels too. hell do you know how many hippie bernie supporters are riding around in the 'mystery machine' living on $6 dollars a day.
The article mentions where he sees this as a hobby and is more interested in pursuing a more traditional career in business.
On the other hand, in the comments section you witness some bitterness by more well known photogs who see him as an amateurish interloper.
He knows it's a career that's dying that it'll be overtaken by crowdsourced images taken from cellphones as their image quality improves (for the telephotos), so he's uninterested in it as a career.
Access isn't too hard if you can get up early and hustle. I went to NH (invited by my SO), the candidates like publicity and photographs (bring a camera they said). Though I had to go through a metal detector they were fine with my rig (slr and 100-400mm lens, not small) I posted a couple "cc".
Though in the age of the cell phone, these photos pretty much they way things are going.
As former photo editor of my college (UMass daily) paper and someone who knows a couple people that make a living at it (though one is a freelance "stringer"), its truly is a hard way to make a living. Oddly I talked to one and after 15 years he's not loving like he used too, sees to much of the same things, finding it hard to keep a fresh perspective.
Agreed. There are, admittedly, a lot of political rallies and speeches and they're not particularly exclusive. That said, just looking at the first few pages of his photos, he was right up front at some Rand Paul event shooting with a wide angle lens. And he was at one of the Republican debates that I assume (perhaps wrongly) you can't just walk off the street into.
It is not easy to get into as many events as he has managed, and it even harder to get a seat or being allowed to get close enough to get a good picture. If he is not working for, or assignment for a media company he probably doesnt have a press pass, or at least not one that gets bouncers / security people to step aside.
Presumably he gains more and more access as his pictures are published. This is the key thing that will help him if he ever wants to get paid work out of it. Leading powerful politicians will know him, and know him as a photographer. Getting that recognition is not easy for a photo journalist.
Getting started in photo journalism is really hard, and its getting harder as news agencies downsize both regular journalists and photographers The market is turning more and more toward video and crowd sourcing images.
Lets say you went to school, studied photography, getting started as a freelancer, you take ok pictures and you submit them and pray for a publication. If you are luck you get picked up a little here and there, but unless you get lucky, no one really pay attention to who you are.
He has taken a bold step, and his name is now known to editors at major publications. Getting that network is far more difficult than learning how to take pictures.