"This Isn't A Job At Starbucks, Where You Have A Beating Heart And Can Get It" Day 2

Our second day started bright and early at The Wall Street Journal with photo editor Jack Van Antwerp. I really appreciated him being a completely open book with us, telling us all of the highs and lows of his career. He joked about being "broke in Cleveland" where he was living at home but constantly shooting and pushing his portfolio any place that he could get his hands on. I've heard this from several professional photographers - once you really start working on getting your portfolio out there, people will eventually start calling you and then the work will pick up. Not knowing where your paycheck is coming from each day sound scary but once you get the ball rolling, from what i've heard, work will come in relatively steady. Jack made me feel at such ease with how worried I am about my background being all over the place in terms of shooting, editing, video, stills etc. His talk was very inspiring; and getting the inside tour of the WSJ was so cool. I thought technology was moving fast out here, in that office its ten times ahead of what I've ever seen or heard of, really amazing stuff.
We also heard from several other very talented individuals - all in different stages of their life and career which was really interesting to hear. Brian, Alanna, Lisa and Joe all touched on some really interesting points about a career in photography: you never know where it's going to take you! If your heart says shoot, go and shoot!

We also visited Bloomberg to speak with Mike Graham and Natasha Cholerton Brown. That company operates on such a high level of efficiency  demanding close to perfection from their photographers, and have an amazing reputation to show from it. Mike talked about needing photographers to shoot images with a long shelf life (and that can relate to several different stories) with interesting composition because it will reach literally millions of viewers. He gave us a hint for applying to jobs, making a password protected lightbox account with work tailored to that company (amazing idea!) Natasha stressed the importance of metadata and capture information - you need to be transparent with that information! Spelling, accuracy, grammar: more information is better than less.