The Other Journalist

The life and (hard) times of the news photographer
The Other Journalist
by Luz Rimban

IT IS impossible to imagine a newspaper today without pictures in this age of lightweight, high-tech photographic equipment.  The best photos occupy prominent places on the front pages of the dailies, sometimes eating up the entire upper half of Page One.  When well-composed, clear, and now colored, pictures highlight singular moments of joy, terror, action, or humor that would put that visual medium, television, to shame.
Thirty-five years ago, the editors of Time-Life Books put down in words exactly what these images mean to the reading public:
“Great photos distill the confused brew of human affairs. They extract from a war the one moment that speaks for all the horrors of all the battles; they snatch from a long political campaign the instant when a candidate most clearly reveals his character; they witness the extraordinary events—catastro-phes, victories, pioneering expedi-tions—that determine the flavor of an entire era.”
Pictures are also what editors use more of to reclaim the audience that the print medium is fast losing to the Internet and to television.  After all, great photos speak to people across all ages and economic classes, and transcend the niches that publications have built for themselves. As the writer Susan Sontag said:  “In contrast to a written account—which, depending on its complexity of thought, reference and vocabulary, is pitched at a larger or smaller readership—a photograph has only one language and is destined potentially for all.”
Through the years, great pictures have inspired people to wax lyrical about the human condition. But talk about the person who makes a living taking those pictures, the news photographer, and it’s a totally different subject matter altogether.

Second-class citizens
In the world of journalism— Philippine journalism at least— news photographers are often considered second-class citizens. They occupy the bottom rungs of a news organization, if they are there at all. They are also among the least paid, if they receive any regular compensation.  And yet unlike the reporter who can produce a news article without even leaving his or her desk, the photographer has to brave crowds, heat, rain, and even bullets to be at a news event at exactly the right place and the right time to produce anything worth using for tomorrow’s paper.
The low regard for news photographers is one of the many concerns that have been on the minds of photojournalists. In fact, there’s a small but growing group, which would like themselves recognized and respected not as mere picture-takers but rather as photojournalists, indispensable members of the journalism profession who report mainly with pictures.
For too long, they say, there has been deep-seated discrimination against news photographers by reporters, editors, their subjects, and even the public in general. This is evident in such things as the attitudes toward them, in the compensation they get, and in the lack of respect for ownership over their creative output.  These and other issues were on the agenda when Dr. Violet Valdez, executive director of the Ateneo de Manila University’s Asian Center for Journalism, gathered some of the country’s most seasoned photojournalists, among them Alex Baluyut, Gil Nartea, Jimmy Domingo, Luis Liwanag, and Mel Liwanag.  Intended as a focus group discussion on the state of Philippine photojournalism, it didn’t take long for the meeting to turn into a gripe session in which they poured out long-bottled-up grievances.

The line at the CR
One of the biggest issues raised by the photojournalists was the problem of low pay.  The standard monthly salary of a staff photographer for a major daily is P9,000, just about the entry-level rate for a  reporter.  Considering the amount of effort it takes to produce a picture good enough for publication, P9,000 is barely enough for a photographer to survive on, and definitely inadequate if he or she has a family to provide for.
“In 1987, the pay of a photographer per month was P5,000. After 10 years, in 1997, it became P7,000. In 2007, it will go up to P9,000.  Just imagine, every decade, we get only a P2,000 increase. How will we live decently on that kind of money?” asked one member of the group who used to work for one of the major dailies.
But then, not all news photographers are on the regular payroll of news organizations. Many are freelancers or contributors who are paid per photograph.
“How can you survive if you’re paid only P75 or even P125 per photo the way they do in the tabloids? And you’re supposed to pay for your own film?” asked one photographer.  The bigger news outfits might shell out as much as P200 to P250 per photo to freelancers but that barely covers transportation to and from a news event, film for those still not using digital cameras, and processing expenses.  And that’s only if a photo is published, which doesn’t happen everyday, and if the paper bothers to pay them on time.
“Paanong hindi yan pipila sa CR (How will they not line up at the comfort room)?” asked another photographer.
“Lining up at the comfort room” is a phrase used to refer to the practice of sources of handing out money to photographers after a press conference or some such news event. It is the bane of the profession, and is also known as “envelopmental journalism.” For photographers, the payoff often happens inside a restroom. Yet even this practice, they say, reeks blatantly of discrimination.
“You line up at the CR and you’re given P200, P300. The writers get thousands. We have to go line up at the CR while the money given to reporters is deposited straight into their ATM accounts or delivered to their homes. I lost whatever hope I had of ever being able to support my family on what I thought was a noble profession,” said a photojournalist during the discussion.
Ethics is something that photographers are trying to grapple with, especially when some of  them are so dirt poor they barely have money to go from home to coverage site, let alone eat lunch.
One staff photographer of a major broadsheet tells this story: “Sometimes I ask other photographers to join me for lunch. They refuse. They’ll say, ‘We’ll just eat at the DILG (Department of Interior and Local Government) because there’s free lunch there.’ So I kid them and say, ‘You sold your soul again today?’ When some of the tabloid photographers hitch a ride in our news vehicle and it happens to be lunchtime, we just keep our mouths shut. I can’t just say ‘Let’s have lunch’ because they wouldn’t be able to pay for even the cheapest meals. If there’s no luncheon presscon scheduled, then they don’t eat.”

Dire straits
Because of the dire economic straits news photographers are likely to find themselves in, many resort to commercial photography on the side. It is not unusual for them to dabble in portrait or wedding photo-graphy. This enables some of them to earn enough to buy equipment needed for the demanding and competitive field of photojournalism. Most of the time, though, they have to resort to borrowing from relatives and friends to buy their cameras and accessories.
With most news organi-zations now online, the demand for photographs has to be met “in real time.”  The taking and sending of pictures is done digitally and the photographer with his own digital camera, and preferably his own laptop, has the advantage.  So despite what they called their “romantic attachment to film,” most of them had to quickly adapt to digital times.
Again, the group brought up examples of what to them is a double standard. “When we apply to join a news organiza-tion, we are asked to bring all our gear,” said one participant. “Why is it that when reporters apply, they are not asked to show their typewriters and all they have to bring is a ballpen or  a pencil?”
This again raises another problem. Not all news photo-graphers have digital cameras. And not all news organizations have enough cameras for photo-graphers. So some photographers resort to renting equipment.
And when the equipment breaks down, the photographers complained, rarely does a news organization pay for repairs. This is why in the roughest of assignments, news photo-graphers have to make sure their equipment is protected, even if they themselves are not. “Ang panangga mo roon,  mukha mo. Magkano lang ’yung band-aid?Pero ’yung perang pagpapagawa ng camera, hundred thousand (You use your face to shield the camera. That will  cost you only a band-aid, but you’ll have to pay a hundred thousand if your camera gets hit).”

Copyright issues
The question of copyright is also a thorny issue. When a staff photographer submits the day’s work to the photo chief, it is understood that he or she relinquishes copyright to the news organization.  The photographer loses any additional income that could be made out of the photographs, which now become the property of the newspaper or magazine.
The news photographers believe this practice is exploitative and open to abuse. It has happened, they said, that “your pictures are being disseminated without your knowing it.”  Photographers lose out when they don’t even get a share of profits in cases when the library of a news organization sells the pictures taken by its photo staff.
Such a setup could only be counter-productive. “What happened then was that some photographers resorted to deleting their photos rather than turning them over to the organization,” one of them recalled.
The more enterprising among them, however, take plenty of shots while on assignment and distribute them to interested news outfits other than their own. For staff photographers in news organizations, this is prohibited. But it hasn’t stopped some of them who justify it with the low salaries they are paid.
And then there’s also the reality in the beat that some old timers let the younger and more hard-working ones do the work. “There are those photographers who don’t work at all. They stay in the beat and play tong-its (a card game). When the others return from coverage, they just ask for a photo from their colleagues. It’s the culture,” one of them said.
After many years in the business, some photojournalists  now realize the value of keeping tabs on their work and preserving them. They talk of many colleagues who used to be employed  in print media and whose life work disappeared when their newspapers shut down.

Getting together
Being aware of copyright issues and knowing how to manage their images are things these photojournalists are helping each other out with.  Their main support group is the 10-year-old Philippine Center for Photojournalism (PCP), to which most of the Ateneo discussion members belong.
PCP’s motto is “Professio-nalism in photojournalism” and it is working for the protection of the rights and welfare of news photographers and photo-journalists. It also has a number of advocacies, including press freedom and the campaign to stop the killing of journalists, especially since one of its members, Gene Boyd Lumauag, perished in the rash of journalist killings while on assignment in Jolo, Sulu three years ago.
A major activity of the PCP is its venture into training and the academe. The group encourages its members to either teach or enroll in relevant courses, the faster way to spread the word. “We are thrilled whenever we hear of a journalism graduate who wants to be a photojournalist. We give him or her our full support. This way, we have more people on our side,” one PCP member said.
PCP members active in the academe include Nartea, erstwhile chief photographer of the now defunct Manila Chronicle, who has been teaching photojournalism at the Uni-versity of the Philippines College of Mass Communication for the past 15 years.  The PCP also helped develop, with the Netherlands-based World Press Photo, a certificate course on photojournalism now being offered at the Ateneo Communication Department. Among those who handle subjects in the six-month certificate course, which   was launched last year, are veteran photojournalists Baluyut, Domingo, Romy Gacad, Bullit Marquez, Bahaghari de Guzman, and Ernie Sarmiento.
This group of photojournalists believes news photographers need training or retraining in the basics of journalism, including ethics, to gain an edge in a world where success comes to those who seek and create opportunities for themselves.  Many of them are in fact now into self-publication, the easiest way being through their own websites or blogs, which become virtual exhibits to showcase their work and hone their writing skills.

An endangered species
Some are inclined to believe that the news photographer is an endangered species, what with news organizations now finding it cheaper to send a reporter out with a camera, rather than hire a news photographer. And as cameras, cell phone cameras included,  become more acce-ssible to ordinary people, it seems that anyone can be a news photographer.
Indeed, as Sontag points out, “Photography is the only major art in which professional training and years of experience do not confer an insuperable advantage over the untrained and in-experienced—this for many reasons, among them the large role that chance (or luck) plays in the taking of pictures, and the bias toward the spontaneous, the rough, the imperfect.”
But then again, what a trained and experienced news photo-grapher offers the public is the nose for news, the eye for a visual story, the sense of adventure to go where the action is, the courage to run towards danger when others are fleeing it, and a way with people that only years on the job can give.

Luz Rimban, a freelance journalist, taught reporting and news writing for the Ateneo de Manila University’s Certificate Course on Photojournalism, and has taught journalism courses at the University of the Philippines.  She is one of only three members of the Hall of Fame of the Jaime V. Ongpin Awards for Excellence in Journalism.

Comments are closed.