Collaborate with Me!
Whether you want to collaborate with me from the initial story idea phase all the way through publishing or if you just need to partner with a photojournalist to bring your story to life, I can help.
Most importantly, collaborating is fun and promotes creativity. Collaboration is what makes me love journalism and telling stories!
I have experience in the following areas and would love to help no matter what phase your project is in:
Developing the Story
Finding a story, of course, is essential. With 15 years of media experience, I know a story when I see one. I've developed many story ideas throughout the years that have been published.
I'm open to collaborating with other journalists to develop story ideas from the ground-up. Or if you already have idea, I can help further develop that idea.
Photographing the Story
Compelling photos are essential to storytelling. If you need a photojournalist to team up with to handle the visual component of your story, I'm your dude.
I'm experienced in photographing a variety of situations and events, documenting life in action, portraits, and producing visually compelling stock images, such as building faces, which can be quite boring otherwise.
Pitching the Story
Leveraging my years of experience in journalism and media, I can help with planning the pitch for a story.
There are so many publications and outlets out there looking for quality works of journalism. Incorporating a visual component, such as photography, will increase the chance of an editor accepting a pitch.
Let's Get Started!
Whether you are a journalist just starting out or an experienced one, I am open to all collaborations (no commercial work).
Stories I'm interested in telling:
- Stories about local and regional issues and solutions
- Stories about environmental justice issues
- Stories that amplify diverse communities
- Stories that are often ignored and stories about people who are often left out of the mainstream narrative
- Stories about grass roots movements
If interested in collaborating, send me a brief message about who you are and the story I may be able to help you with!
LONG LIVE PHOTOJOURNALISM: Collaborate with and Hire Photographers
I believe in the power of the press, and live by the strength of journalistic storytelling. What strengthens storytelling?
Photography, custom photojournalism work.
As newsrooms continue cut newsrooms staff and must lean on stock images, courtesy photos, and digital illustrations to lead the visualization of stories, photojournalists must advocate for their work by body and unapologetically expressing the value of photography in journalism.
Stock images do not convey the story in any deeper way and can often misrepresent the story these images are often coupled with. Digital illustrations also have the potential to misrepresent a story and distort meaning.
According to the Associated Press on news values and principles, journalists should "avoid the use of generic photos or video that could be mistaken for imagery photographed for the specific story at hand, or that could unfairly link people in the images to illicit activity."
The use of stock images and digital illustrations walks this fine line of journalistic principles and ethics. For clarification, I am speaking on stock images pulled from stock photo sites, such as Adobe Stock, not custom stock images intended to be used longterm that is specific to a community. There are also strong uses of digital illustrations and graphic design that visualize a story that exist, but newsrooms need to be very careful while using graphics to convey meaning.
Photojournalism enables newsrooms to avoid these ethical conflicts, which is why they should incorporate photographic work into their budgets to hire freelancers at the very least if they cannot afford staff photographers.
Photojournalists are TRAINED to work within journalistic practices, principles, and ethics!
Photojournalism also allows the community to see themselves in stories building trust among local media and the public they are trying to serve.
"As the closing of newspapers leads to news deserts—and then image deserts, as photojournalists lose their jobs and outlets—it is not just visuals that are lost. Newspapers rely on connections with the communities they call home for support," writes Robert E. Gerhardt in the 2022 article "How Photography Can Help Restore Confidence in Journalism" published in Blind Magazine.
Photography has the ability to bring stories to life even further when coupled with text-based journalism.
TL;DR: Collaborate with and hire photojournalists, whose job it is to convey stories in a truthful and compelling way that copy cannot do.