Road Trip: Headed to Seattle

I have been ready to write this post since the day I found out I was going to be the photojournalism intern at the Seattle Times this summer. Things are packed and ready to go for our long drive. Where would I be without my Dad who helped me buy a new car for our 2600 mile drive from Bowling Green, Kentucky to Seattle, Washington.

It’s funny because this whole thing starts with a photograph. Last August 27th I got a postcard, like I often do from my mom on one of her trips. She is a flight attendant for Delta Air Lines and usually sends a postcard to the dorm from wherever she is most weeks.

The postcard was from Seattle, and the picture on the front was of the puget sound and the famous Public Market, where Starbucks got it’s start. I have been to Seattle a few times and really loved it. In fact, the first time I ever went to Seattle was less than 12 hours after returning home from South Africa. Talk about flying across the earth.

At first I just set the postcard on my desk and didn’t really think much about it. Eventually I put it up on my wall next to my desk just to look at. A few weeks later I was beginning to think about applying for summer internships. I didn’t have an internship after my sophomore year, I shot weddings and went to Peru for a month. I knew that I didn’t want to be at a newspaper that I wasn’t really excited about so I decided to shoot for the stars. The picture of Seattle got me thinking and it wasn’t long before I was on top of my bed where my world map is circling cities in the U.S. that I might want to work.

I started by circling Seattle, followed by New York, Los Angeles, Boston, Miami, Atlanta and I went on. I decided to send out applications to only those cities that I wanted to work in. The only problem was that most of the big newspapers didn’t have much information about an internship program. I did a lot of research on the internet and made some phone calls before I found out who I needed to be addressing my cover letters to. I was initially discouraged after constantly hearing the same answer: “We cancelled our program for this summer, we didn’t have the money.” Of course even if you have been hiding under a rock for the past year you would know that newspapers are in trouble. Some newspapers didn’t want to hear a thing I had to say. I quickly found out which newspapers I did not want to work for. One of the largest newspapers in the United States said they only wanted a girl intern. I though, OK, don’t want to work for them since I don’t qualify.

All jokes aside, I sat down and started editing my portfolio. I took a different approach than what I was used to in the past. I have always felt that 6-9 pictures to represent the work you do is not enough. I put together 15 singles, around 12 portraits, an event section that had three events that were essentially 6 picture packages, a photo story, and two multimedia pieces. It seemed like a lot but I was very careful not to have two of the same type of anything.

Countless phone calls and e-mails later, I was sure I had addressed everything correctly. I kept having nightmares of when my best friend handed me his cover letter to proofread before he sent it. His cover letter read: Dear sir Mr.

I kissed the large packages goodbye, complete with DVD case, caption book, portfolio, resume and cover letter to seven major newspapers across the U.S. The semester went on when one day a ray of hope arrived with a phone call from the Boston Globe. A 30 minute phone conversation later, I was convinced I was in the running. I probably was, but that was the last I heard from Boston. I was a little discouraged, as Boston was my number one choice. My dad is from Boston and I haven’t gotten to spend a lot of time there.

The semester came to an end and throughout the winter break I started getting rejection letters. You know how they go:

Dear Daniel,

Thank you for applying to The Boston Globe’s summer intern program; I
oversee the intern program. We are honored that you would consider the
Globe as a newspaper where you would want to work.

You were not selected for The Boston Globe’s summer internship
program in 2009. The accomplishments of the photo intern applicants made
the selection process an extremely difficult one. I encourage you to apply
again.

Best of luck in the coming year and beyond.

Sincerely,
AME Photo

Those are never fun to get. The New York Times even sent me a nice piece of hand stamped stationary only to tell me better luck next year. As more and more letters came to the dorm, it started to look like a summer of unemployment. It’s tough to do all that work and not get any bites.

When the phone call from Seattle came asking me if I would accept the offer I was in disbelief. My mom was excited of course but it was my dad who made me laugh. “Dad, I got the internship at the Seattle Times!” his response was simply “Oh, ok.” It took me a few minutes to realize that he couldn’t believe it and that his response was just shock.

Regardless if your a photojournalism student or just someone who ran across this page on your own I have a little advice that I’ll share with you.

It doesn’t matter if you send 5 or 50 applications to internships. If you got one this summer or if the phone never rang, keep doing what you love and you will go far. Hard work goes a long way. If you don’t think your portfolio is good enough it doesn’t matter, we are our own worst critics anyway. Remember that your opinion is the most important when editing your portfolio and that in the end you have to pick the pictures that feel right to you.

If your still reading, kudos to you and thanks for sticking with me for the most words you will probably ever seen on this photo site. I think this can best be summed up with a famous quote by one of my favorite photographers: “There are no rules for good photographs, there are only good photographs.” -Ansel Adams

Be sure to bookmark the Where am Ipage for keeping up with my location over the next few day’s.

This entry was posted on Friday, May 29th, 2009 at 11:37 am. It is filed under Featured Work, Travel and tagged with wide. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.