DC Trip: Summary

I have been home from DC for almost a week now. Looking back it was an amazing trip. Not many people get to go to a city and meet with this many top people in the industry. We met with wire services, newspapers and magazines, a radio station, the US Peace Institute, and the White House. We met with editors, photographers, and multimedia specialists. The trip provided us with information about a variety of different places to work as well as a variety of different jobs within those places.

Over the course of the week there were several common themes. One thing that was said at least once a day, most of the time more than that, was the importance of writing. We need to be able to write stories so that we can photograph them. We need to be able to write great, accurate captions. The importance of writing was stressed at almost every single place we went regardless of what medium they are producing the images for. The next common theme was networking. The field of photojournalism is a very small field. Everyone in the industry knows everyone. Because of this, a lot of the new hires are there because of word of mouth. In such a small field where reputation is everything, you can't afford to be anything but kind to everyone you meet. You never know who that person knows. The last common theme that I will talk about is the importance of personal work. Always be shooting and always be shooting for yourself. By shooting a story that you care about away from work you will keep photography from becoming monotonous. You will also improve your story telling and photographic skills, as well as making yourself more marketable. Shooting for yourself keeps your passion for photography alive.

My week in DC was an amazing experience. One that I would not trade for anything. I want to thank everyone that gave us their time and met with us, William Snyder and Jenn Poggi for setting up the trip, Mr. Donald Sims for letting me stay in his apartment all week, and all of my classmates that went with me for making the trip just as entertaining in the little downtime that we had as it was when we were meeting with people.