NYC Day Two
CNN - 09:30
This morning kicked off with a visit to Twanda Scott Sambou at CNN. Twanda started out as a photojournalist, which at CNN means being on-call, ready to go at any time, and later decided to become a Digital Media Producer. She was an amazing host, having us meet many individuals here at CNN. Quentin Dunn was our first stop, and he explained to us the process of editing a video for broadcast. They typically only get one hour to edit for every one minute of video. At CNN, there are 25 staff editors, like Quentin, and five freelance editors. If a transcript is needed, they send it out to a transcription service, however they also can do it in house using producers and interns to get it done. As Quentin put it, “Interns make the world go round”. Next, we spoke to Bernadette “Bernie” Tuazon, the senior photo editor at CNN. Currently she is working on the 100 Most Important Images of Barack Obama’s presidency, as well as the upcoming presidential election between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. Bernie said that stakes are higher in a place like CNN, since their images go directly out to their audience, unlike Associated Press where they send their images to their members, who then distribute it to the audiences. CNN also accepts any photographers pitch for stories, which then can be placed on their special features section.
Magnum Foundation - 12:30
After our visit at CNN, we ventured down to the Magnum Foundation to meet with Rochester Institute of Technology alum, Alexis Lambrou. Magnum Foundation was founded in 2007, and is a 501c3. We learned about many of their programs, including their Photography and Human Rights fellowship, where they invite six to seven non-western photographers to New York City for six weeks to create a photo essay on a local issue. Magnum Foundation also has a program exploring collaboration between artists of different mediums called Photography, Expanded. In the past, they have started with the photographer and then added on an additional contributor, such as a poet. However, this year is the first year that the photographers were expected to already have a contributor ready to go. The stories have always already been started, and this year all of the stories will be on religion.
Getty Images - 15:00
Our final stop of the day was at Getty Images, where we met with Hilary Markiewitz, Pierce Wright and Sandy Ciric. Both Hilary and Pierce are Rochester Institute of Technology alum, classes of ’14 and ’98 respectively. The editorial side of Getty Images, to my surprise, is split into three sort of groups; News, Entertainment and Sports. They also only have 11 staff photographers, but have a network of over 200 freelance photographers that they work with. Getty Images also has no writers, which was surprising to me, so photographers have to do more research on their own when learning about new subjects. They also gave us all some very good advice as far as freelancing is concerned. One piece of advice was that we should always have honest, good communication. They would rather someone just admit that they screwed up, rather than pretending that they will never find out.
Overview
Overall, today helped me start to narrow down the path I am looking to go towards. I now can say I’m not really interested in working with a wire service, however I’d like to explore a little bit more before I can say for certain.
