It is no secret in today’s economic climate newspapers are tight on money, but at the same time they still need the best news images to stay competitive with the other publications in their market. That is where a Stringer is valuable and most will buy breaking news images every day especially if it is of great quality. Knowing this, it is important to have all of your contacts made in advance before news breaks to avoid losing time and money.

Ok, let’s take a look at two scenarios that often happens the first time a photographer shoots a spot news scene:

Scenario 1: You are driving along a highway and see a major vehicle crash; a van full of people has rolled over at highway speeds ejecting passengers on the road. You immediately park your car and call 911, by that time other motorists have stopped to help. You pull out your camera and start shooting away, then the vehicle catches fire and there is a mad race to pull the last remaining passengers out of the van… you continue shooting. By the time the news stations arrive the fire is out, and the patients have been transported to the hospital. You have the only photos of the dramatic rescue and now it is time to find someone to buy the photos. A reporter with the television station asks if you have any photos to share, excited you give the reporter your memory card and she copies it into her laptop. She then files her story with video of the aftermath of the crash and your photos of the dramatic rescue. You will probably be interviewed and even become part of the story, but probably will not be paid a penny. The next morning you see your photo in the local newspaper but the credit reads: “Photo courtesy Local TV Station”  you then cry!

Now you were in the right place at the right time, you had the right equipment, had the skill but did not know who to call or what to do and that cost you money. Here is the next scenario.

Scenario 2: You witness the same incident but after you call 911 you send out an email alert to your mailing list of editors for TV and print media that you have saved in your phone. You tell them brief description of the incident and send them a phone cam shot of the scene for added wow factor. You then get to work shooting the story. After you have the photos you need, you open up your laptop, pop in the memory card and start importing pics. As the photos are importing you start calling newspapers and telling them what you have shot and due to the severity of the crash and the dramatic photos captured you try to negotiate higher rates or even an exclusive. You lock in your rates and made sales to the two daily papers in your city for $100 per photo. You then select the photos to be sold, write captions and send them to the newspaper. After a few minutes you start getting call backs from the TV assignment editors wanting to purchase photos of the dramatic rescue you negotiate a rate and agree to meet the crew  at the scene. The first TV crew arrives at the crash site and you give him a jump drive of only the photos that have agreed to have been purchased to be imported. You sell the photos to 3 of the 5 TV news stations for $100 per photo and sell 2 photos to the newspapers making you $500 in less than two hours of total work.  When you get home you email out your invoices and wait for the check to arrive!

None of this would be possible if you didn’t line up your contacts, contracts, and rates ahead of time. By proper pre planning you can make the most money in the shortest amount of time. I will get into more detail about contacting newsrooms and editors but other contacts that you should have saved to your phone are local public safety offices.

When gathering contacts an important relationship to build is that of local law enforcement and fire. Send a letter or email to the Public Information Officers (PIOs) of the local agencies in your area introduce yourself and ask to be put on their media mailing/fax list. If you happen to live in a major metropolitan city there may be state or federal agencies based in your town. Contacting the PIOs of the different agencies will allow you to receive press releases and news alerts from their agencies announcing photo opportunities and information about incidents in their jurisdiction.

Another often overlooked contact that could be made is to the district police offices and fire stations in your area. If you plan to stick to a certain high crime area or an area near your home it is smart to make friends with the cops and firefighters in that area. When it comes to cops it will only take one time to get on their bad side and it is usually unlikely that you will become a friend to them if you get on their naughty list. I attribute my relationship with law enforcement and my involvement as the photographer for a volunteer fire dept to my success as a stringer. I became close friends with the cops and firefighters in my area and often tipped off by them when a newsworthy incident happened in their area. I would then take a nice photo of them “at work” and email them a copy as a token of my appreciation. Doing this shows them you are on their side and are not out to make them look bad, trust me when I tell you that one of the most important things to do is make friends with cops.. period!

Me at a Brush Fire

Fire departments are much easier to deal with especially if you have advance planning and talk to the right people. Where I live and in most cities fire depts. are the ones that control fire scenes and traffic accidents as long as the patient is on the scene; once the patient is transported law enforcement take over with the investigation. Cops are there to help secure the scene and block traffic and bystanders but ultimately the fire dept. is the one in charge of the scene at that time. Making friends with Captains and Lieutenants and other firefighters can help you get the access you need even when the cops won’t let you through. You should visit your local station and the station that you plan to stage near and introduce yourself or even better bring gifts! No I’m not talking about a fruit basket or pie but bring a couple of 8×10 prints or some business cards with a link to your website with photos of their crew working or even a nice photo of their truck on a fire scene or major crash. Firefighters will love this and will possibly hang it up in their station. As a former firefighter I loved to have photos of me in action and still have some framed to this day! When you do this you are guaranteed to make new friends giving you the edge to the other stringers or staffers in your area.

Now firefighters in my town and in many other work a 1 day on 2 days off schedule breaking the crews into three different shifts A, B and C shift and it is smart to make friends with the chief’s and crews of each shift.  Law enforcement also have different shifts or cycles as they are called and the agencies in my town have two an A cycle and a B cycle with four 14 hour days on and 4 days off. Keep that in mind when you contact the supervisors from the different agencies. Now I’m not saying you should take photos of everyone on every shift but if you have really good photos of the particular truck or crew in action by all means share it with them for free. Don’t worry the return on your investment of the cost of printing those photos will pay off.

HCFR HR-11 at a traffic accident

I would also seek out the fire department’s specialty units and make friends with them also. For example most agencies will have a special operations unit that does major rescues or extrications, most likely these will be the units responding to the scenes that make the best photos. Our Special Ops HCFR Station 11 has the Urban Search and Rescue team, Swift Water Rescue Team, Extrication Specialists, Confined Space Resuce, Heavy Rescue truck and respond to pretty much any major incident you can think of. This is the crew you should pay the most attention to, these are the guys that will make you the most money.  I was the photographer for the fire dept and was invited to photograph many of their training exercises and deployments across the state of Florida which reinforced the bond between me and the crews. After you make friends with the crews and send them a couple of photos and/or newspaper clippings of them in action you should offer to shoot one of their trainings for free and give them copies of the photos for training purposes. If they say yes, then you are in, you have earned their trust which will give you an advantage over the competition.

Remember you yourself are not a newspaper or TV station so it is easier to build a personal friendship then the bigger companies. All of this comes down to having the best access and information giving you the advantage over the competition. You may be the only stringer in your town now but at any time someone else such as a laid off staff photographer may try to jump into the Stringer business giving you some competition. If you followed the steps laid out in this site and build the relationships and connections with the people you need to know the competition will not stand a chance! The last tip I will give you is to never forget the little people, I know of rookie deputies and firefighters that are now promoted to supervisors. If you are cool with them when they were rookies then most likely they will help you out when they get promoted.