A photojournalist is a person who tells stories, specially through photographs. By taking pictures, selecting and editing them and arranging them in the order, to tell his stories.
There are not any limitations to the subjects of the stories he can tell.
There are more and more photojournalists that are covering the environment, or nature. Showing the negative impact that humans can have, and the beauty that is still there at the same time.
Moreover, there are photojournalists that follow athletes on their way to competitions. Detailing how they prepare, what their training routine is like and what it means to compete on the highest level.
The world is full of stories that are worth telling, and a photojournalist is out there to capture them.
A photojournalist might also be responsible for the lighting in a studio setup in case that there are studio photographs needed to tell the complete story.
More than half of photojournalist are self-employed. If you believe that a photojournalist is only a photographer who spends his time photographing and can allow others to do the rest, this may only be true for some exceptional photojournalist which have worked very hard to achieve that position.
Moreover, the photojournalist is a storyteller. Telling a story via photos is more than just shooting them. Arranging the collection and choosing photos can vastly change the narrative of a story.
The major tasks of a photojournalist are to take photographs, choose the images that should be included in the project and post- process them. These are the tasks which directly affect the story.
If the photojournalist is working on a mission from a newspaper or agency, other editors may help the photographer.
Though these are the major tasks of a photojournalist and maybe the tasks which make some of them a photojournalist, there are still many other tasks that he has to do.
Firstly, you should not ignore the business aspect of being self-employed. Starting a business on your own can be time-consuming and challenging. A self-employed photojournalist should cover the finances, taxes, and marketing of his or her solo show.
Particularly as the internet shakes things up, a photojournalist can also benefit from participating in social media and investing in his own website. Without funding to hire professional agencies to back him, he has to assure that all his websites are up-to-date and of a good quality level. They are the initial address that clients hire for his services, and if the website miss design or quality, customers probably be concerned if his photojournalist work is also inferior.
Table of Contents
Skills of a photojournalist
1- photography
A photojournalist should first of all be a good photographer and understand the basics of photography and how to create appealing visual images. As far as photography, he must be able to perform under pressure.
A photojournalist has to capture for the first time, and he has to be fast, because the moment may pass very quickly.
A photojournalist needs other skills for his profession besides photography.
Do not forget that a photojournalist is a visual storyteller, and photographs are just one part of the story.
2- Storytelling
A photojournalist must also be a good storyteller. It does not matter if he gets this skill via writing, or just through photography. But he must be able to take photos, which can tell a story, and also be able to arrange them so that the story is attractive to the viewer.
Though photojournalism, does not require entertainment, fiction can be told and used mostly to inform the viewer, but they must also be fascinating.
Photojournalistic stories should be appealing for the viewer, otherwise, the message the series carries, is not very effective.
A photojournalist must be able to tell an attractive story via his or her photographs, and storytelling is one of the most major skills to acquire.
3- Communication
The third essential aspect will be the photojournalist communication skills.
Though the images do not speak, the subjects do.
Creating a relationship based on trust is very crucial for people to hear stories that they are not wishing to tell anybody. A photojournalist must have perfect communication skills to be able to build trust so rapidly.
The communication is often not verbal, but rather based on body language and actions. A photojournalist should be calm in all circumstances and not threatening.
Particularly when going to conflict places, it is very important to build up trust with the people to access the front lines or places which should be unrevealed from the enemy.
Salary of a photojournalist
If an image is worth 1,000 words; thus a photojournalist has written a picture encyclopedia. With cameras in hand, photojournalist tell the world’s most important stories.
Photojournalist salary by Medium
The salary of a photojournalist varies depending on the type of medium. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, TV photographers received an average salary of $54,910 in 2020. Based on the Institute for Economic Policy, photojournalists working for newspapers, magazines or book publishers earned an average salary of 56,080, that is above the average annual salary of $40,000 for all U.S. jobs.
Anyway, the average income of photojournalists was lower than that of other photographers. Aerospace photographers made the most profit in 2020, with an average salary of $91,830. Motion-picture and video photographers earned $78,470. Photographers who photographed for science-related research and development companies got $460,050.
photojournalist salary by regions
The photographer’s income also varies by region. Among the states, the District of Columbia had the highest pay in 2020, with an average wage of $91,720. New York was in the top 5 with $73,110. Massachusetts at $66,120, Minnesota at $60,630 and California, at $60,150.
The lowest salaries were in Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, Tennessee, Alabama and West Virginia, where the average annual wage was between $29,270 to $37,760. Among the high-paying cities for photojournalists, Logan topped the UT-ID market with an average salary of $75,100. Bridgeport-Stamford-Norwalk, Connecticut came in second at $75,100. New York-New York-Jersey City, New York-NJ-PA came in third, at $72,690.
8 most well-known photojournalists
1- Anastasia Tylor-Lind
Anastasia is an English-Swedish photojournalist with decades of experience. She has spent years shooting subjects related to population, women and war.
Her analogue pictures are friendly and raw. Despite their outspoken nature, they are all usually emotional and bright. She writes powerful stories for the New York Times, Time and National Geographic.
All the pictures will be displayed in 2020 at the FotograFiska Museum in New York.
2- Marcus Yam
Marcus Yum is a Los Angeles Times staff photojournalist. Born and grown up in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, he left the aerospace engineering profession and became a photographer. He aims to bring viewers to the forefront of conflict, struggle and intimacy.
In 2019, Marcus received the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Journalism Award for his collection of intimate and heartfelt work documenting the daily suffering of Gaza during the deadly conflict in the Gaza Strip. In addition, his short feature film, The Home Front, won an Emmy award.
3- William Daniels
William is a French documentary photographer and contributor to National Geographic. His pictures concentrate on social issues in powerless communities.
William has captured the effects of disease and disasters around the world. Regardless of where and when he takes photos, he never compromises the quality of his photos. All of his pictures are completely clear and composed.
He has been featured by Time, Newsweek, and Le Monde, among others. He has achieved the World Press Photo Awards, the International Photo of the Year Awards, and the Golden Visa.
4- Daniella Zalcman
Danila Zalkman is a well- known photojournalist. She was born on October 20, 1986 in the United States. Daniela is also known as a photographer and photojournalist, thanks to the founder of Women’s Photography, who works as a catalog of various independent female photographers. She specializes as an imperial journalist and cultural documentary filmmaker, sharing her photos via Instagram with more than 60,000 followers.
Daniela is originally from the United States. She worked as a photojournalist during the 2012 Republican National Convention, photographing Mitt Romney and Clint Eastwood.
5- krisanne Johnson
This photojournalist was born 1976 and grew up in Xenia, Ohio. She graduated with a degree in journalism from the University of Colorado and pursued a master’s degree in visual communication at Ohio State University. She is currently based in Brooklyn, New York.
Since 2006, Krisanne has been working on long-term personal projects about young women and HIV / AIDS in Swaziland and post-apartheid youth culture in South Africa. Krisanne’s work has been featured internationally and has published in many magazines and newspapers, such ad The New Yorker, Time, The New York Times, Fader, The Wall Street Journal,CNN, American News and World Report, L’Espresso (Italy), Vanity Fair (Italy), D la Repubblica (Italy).
6- Acacia Johnson
Acacia Johnson is a photojournalist, writer and artist from Alaska, concentrated on human relationships to the Earth’s polar regions. She has been investigating anthropological subjects in the Arctic and Antarctica since 2014, when a Fulbright grant to Canada enabled her to spend a winter documenting the Inuit’s relating relationship with their environment on Baffin Island. Johnson’s work has been featured by many publications, like digital stories for National Geographic about the Inuit community on Baffin Island, snow algae and sea ice in polar environments, wildlife on Antarctica’s Deception Island caldera, and coastal brown bears of Alaska.
7- Gabriele Galimberti
Gabriele Galimberti, born in 1977, is an Italian photojournalist who often lives on airplanes, and sometimes in Val di Chiana (Tuscany), where he was born and grown up. Over the past few years he has worked on long-term documentary photography projects around the world, some of which have been turned into books, like Toy Stories, In the Kitchen, My Couch Is Your Couch, and The Heavens.
Gabriele’s job is mainly to tell stories, via portraits and short stories, to people around the world, to tell their features and differences, what they are proud of, and the belongings that surround them. Social media, in all its forms, is an essential part of the research needed to communicate, discover and produce those stories.
8- Rena Effendi
Rena Effendi was born and raised in Baku, Azerbaijan. She received her linguistic education there. She became a social documentary photographer in 2001 after attending drawing classes. This photojournalist early work focused on the impact of the oil industry on the lives of the people in her country. Thus, she followed a 1,700 km oil pipeline through Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Turkey, collecting stories along the way. This six-year work, which depicts the human cost of oil, was published in 2009 in her first book, “Pipe Dreams: A History of Life Along the Pipeline.” In 2012, Rena Effendi published her second book, Liquid Land, a lyrical visual narrative, in which her photographs are paired with images of the murderous butterflies hunted by her father, a Soviet entomologist, who collected around 30,000 butterflies in the Soviet Union. Liquid Land permeates the theme of fragility and environmental degradation.