Life = Work

I wish I could come up with some kind of flashy title for this blog, or even think of something witty to say to all those readers out there who will look at this, but that just won’t happen. You see, I am the Photo Editor of the DM, so hopefully that excuses me from my over use of commas and slight grammatical errors.

Taking the job at the DM was a great opportunity; however, completely the opposite of what I thought it was going to be. I thought this would be a great part time job, just a few hours a night, weekends off, excellent resume builder. Well, it certainly is a good resume builder, but the part time job with weekends and nights off went through the window on my very first day of work.

On a typical day, I wake up around 8 a.m. to a text message about work. Usually it is about a feature photo idea, or what did and didn’t run in today’s paper. In fact, my 8 am work text message is so regular I depend on it to get to my 9 am classes. I usually get phone calls and text messages about breaking news or photo ideas all day. Even though my work day ‘starts’ at 4:30 pm with our daily budget meetings, I have been on the prowl for pictures and in contact with photographers all day.

After 4:30 is when the paper starts to get a face. I do my part by keeping up with what stories are going in the upcoming week’s paper, and brainstorm feature ideas with the help of Sally, the Assistant Photo Editor. Sally and I then take in the photos from the photographers, format them and give them cut lines.

The photographers help immensely by having cut lines already written so Sally and I can simply type them into a single document and put them on the server. We shoot all digitally, which makes it easier for us load the photos onto the computer. Thank goodness the days of cutting and pasting photos onto each page are gone.

After all the proper formatting is done, and all cut lines and photos are in the correct folder and placed on the server, I assign things for the coming days. Even though it certainly is a lot of work; it is all done with a smile because of the great people that I work with every day.