Photojournalism wasn’t always the career field that Beverly Denny wanted to peruse in her lifetime.
“I was first interested in fine art photography, but through my study of anthropology in college and experience living in Japan for a year after college, it evolved into an interest in photojournalism.” Denny said. “In high school I was looking for visual representations of truth and beauty in an abstract sense; over time I focused more on documenting real life to tell stories in an artful way”
After a year working abroad in Japan, she came back and started preparing herself for her newfound interest in photojournalism.
“At first I took some photography classes and a journalism class at the community college to make sure it was what I wanted as a career while I worked full-time.” Denny said. “After a couple years, I decided to go to graduate school for photojournalism at the University of Missouri-Columbia. After I graduated, I free-lanced for a few newspapers for several months until there was an opening.”
Even though she did not immediately find a home for her blooming passion, she still had previous experience in other areas of work.
“I worked through college doing work study and over summers doing various jobs.” Denny said. “After I graduated I joined the Japan Exchange and Teaching (JET) program for a year as an English teacher. I worked as a substitute teacher and some office work for a while when I came back, as an administrative assistant at Lockheed Martin for a year, a research assistant at a Japanese automotive lobbying company for a year before going to grad school. For the past 2.5 years I’ve worked at Times Community Media as the photo editor and photographer for a weekly community newspaper and quarterly regional business magazine.”
Working on a paper isn’t all butterflies and rainbows either.
“Working at a small, understaffed paper, I am entrusted to manage my own time and projects without much oversight.” Denny said. “I use Google spreadsheets and calendars to keep track of what I am shooting, what my freelancers are shooting, what I need to plan and get done. I receive the plans for each page, called “dummies,” and generally get to decide which photos to use in each spot.”
Journalism is always going to be an interest and has been for a long time but being a photojournalist can sometimes be a challenge.
“Much of the content is moving to the web and the precedent has already been set for web content to be free for readers and cheap for advertisers.” Denny said. “News organizations need to redefine their business models in order to survive. For the past few years most have been laying off workers but that is not a long-term solution. Competition for staff jobs is very high, making it even harder to break into the field and remain a journalist for a lifetime.”