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Handle Feature Material: In order to educate yourself as to what constitutes good feature material, take the newspapers as your text, but do not limit yourself to your local paper. Buy the Sunday editions of such papers as the New York Daily News, New York Mirror, Milwaukee Journal, Detroit Free Press, Des Moines Register, Minneapolis Star and Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle, and whatever other large newspapers circulate in your section of the country. These newspapers will give you concrete examples of how to handle feature material in pictures, as well as examples of subject matter which is highly acceptable.
That's one reason why the feature photography field remains comparatively uncrowded, despite its obvious advantages over spot news coverage. It's easier for the cameraman to come up to the standards of news photography than to those of feature photography. There are many photographers perfectly capable of doing features, and who would like to do them, who never get into the field for the simple reason that they don't ever see the opportunities all around them for feature pictures. They lack the knack, something akin to the "nose for news" mentioned in the previous chapter, to recognize feature picture material.
Goodwill is of tremendous importance in any service business, you know, and especially so in photography. Cultivation of goodwill is, in its essence, the making of friends. You can meet new people by joining organizations in your community, but you can make friends of them, friends for your business, only by serving them and serving them well.
There are several especially dangerous pitfalls which you should beware, lest you lose goodwill:
1. Never take assignments which you are not equipped, with tools and experience, to handle well. As for material equipment, you should naturally have the best you can afford, but no photographer is expected to be able to handle all types of pictures. It is no disgrace to you as a professional to say frankly that you are not equipped to do the best possible job on any picture request. To the contrary, your honesty will be appreciated and may land you future orders which you are able to handle well. |
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