Moving to D.C.

While walking around downtown looking for a feature photo today I came across this page from our paper with my photo on it laying in the street near the melting snow. So much about this scene seemed fitting for this post.

It may seem strange to voluntarily leave my job as director of photography at a newspaper for a freelance career, especially in this economy, but I feel the time has come to move on to be able to work on personal projects.

My wife, Jenny, and I have been talking about this for some time now and we had decided that the best course of action was for her to find a job that she liked and that would challenge her in the Washington D.C. area, and then I would be able to freelance. We would rely on her employment for our benefits.

Jenny was offered a job at the American Society of Civil Engineers in Reston, Va. and she accepted it on Friday. We will be relocated at the end of the month.

I will always have a special place in my heart for the days of working for a newspaper, but the way the industry is changing these days, it is just not what it was in the past. Budget cuts, cuts in the news hole, and what seems to me to be a general disconnect from what the reader wants in their paper has made the work environment much different from what it was not too long ago.

Probably ninety percent of what I know as a photojournalist I learned on the job while working as a newspaper photographer. I always loved that every day would bring something different. I have met hundreds of great and interesting people and have been witness to some very cool event as well as some very tragic ones.

Hopefully the move will be a fruitful one for both of us.