In such a group of owners of the quintessential
press camera, there's sure to be at least a few newspaper photographers...

I'm one. I'm finishing up my first semester with the top college newspaper in Texas, and just starting a summer job* at the "real" newspaper--got my first photo published there yesterday. I don't use the Graphic for either; the News-Journal is all-digital, and I didn't get it until after the last paper of the semester at school. I plan on going back to the same school next semester, though, and I'll use it then...


*--a classmate in my photojournalism class is a part-time photog at the News-Journal, and he's going away for the summer and got to pick his own replacement (me).

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Baker on 2002-04-30 21:49 ]</font>

I used to be one, more or less...had a short stint...I'm in the NPPA still, and that's a great organization to belong to if you're just getting started in the business....btw, I started as a stringer in high school with a largish evening--then morning--paper...this was in the early to mid 80's and my assigned gear was one domke bag with 2 Nikons--an FE and an FM with a motor drive. I carried 4 lenses:24,35,85, 180. and a 283 flash and used one of the early quantums. I also had a Norman 200B strobe that I used for shooting night football etc. We shot all tri-x, and developed & did our own printing using Kodak Royalprint processors. As a stringer, I usually shot prep football & basketball, some spot news & alot of grip & grins, and features...A typical friday night for me was to drive to the next county and shoot the first quarter of a football game, then run back to the lab & process the film, pick out the shots, make my prints--write the ID info--stick the rc print into a selectric typewriter & type right on the back of the print--the cutline. Then I'd stamp the crap out of the thing--my name, the edition, etc. and thgen run out to deliver it to the editors...it took me about three hours to do this. When I started they told me not to come back until I'd shot at least 4 rolls of film....I'd shoot 'em in like 15 minutes or less because I was often so far away from the paper...btw, I shot with a Nikon FM, synced at a 125th, with Tri-x and a 180mm f2.8 Nikkor and that 200 ws Norman. My exposures would be f8...that strobe would throw light for half the field practically & keep up with a motor drive....a couple of years later I got a job at a dinky bi-weekly paper that had zero for budgets....we had maybe 200 feet of film for the entire year. I shot football games out in the boonies, where the editors gave me a 12 exposure roll of film and a 283 with no battery packs and said to cover the game....the fields looked like they were lit by kerosene lamps...I'd shoot Tri-X with direct flash, and push it to 1600 in Diafine, and it would still look like crap. Then, we printed the shots onto pre-screened Dupont PMT paper & burned the plates for the press right off that...

The big paper I worked at part-time, still had some staffers who'd been there for 25+ years, and those guys used speed graphics and Rolleis for a good part of their careers...they told me all sorts of stories of covering football games "with one holder"--standing out on the fifty yard line & shooting one sheet and then enlarging this to get about 3-4 images out of it. I saw the negs & it sure looked like they could do that...I print some of this stuff occasionally--like a shot of Choo Choo Jusitce at the Rose Bowl in the 40's...it's just like this...a super loose 4x5 with all this action--all on one sheet. I remeber messing around with an old Rolleiflex from the equipment room...I was on a lunch break & came upon an accident...I shot it as spot news with this Rolleiflex and ran back to the paper & processed & printed it....I was showing the shots to this old timer and said something like "can you believe I did this with this old thing??" he smiled and said something sarcastic about using them every day....

oh well....times sure have changed....fwiw, I shoot events & gov't press functions now as well, but for a gov't...same sort of work, very little difference in fact. Only we still shoot chrome film & Tri-X.....and everything else is shot on 4x5.

Check out the NPPA, or a local state chapter,it's a great organization.