Today archive hosting companies typically provide storage space, online galleries, search and client features, a user-friendly back-end management system, FTP, downloading, and hundreds of other functions that are incredibly useful if properly understood. All of this is usually bundled into a package that might cost roughly USD 50 per month. For a photographer like me, who is constantly moving, I find the service indispensable.

Today the main player in this game seems to be Photoshelter. After transferring my archive to their servers a year ago, I can say with some level of confidence that they provide a superior service, strong customer support, and a huge variety of functions (without trying to do too much, the most important thing in my opinion).

So how exactly do I manage my own archive? When I complete shoots for newspapers, magazines, and corporate clients, I upload the images to my archive, so that I can FTP the images to clients, share the work with friends and family using public light-boxes, display work to potential new clients, and allow regular clients to search for stock images to license. That might sound like a lot of work — and it is. But make no mistake, this hard work pays dividends.

I particularly find the online archive a useful tool when working on longer-term stories or projects, because as work is completed it can be uploaded and shared for client or peer review. For example I recently photographed the construction of one of Shanghai’s tallest buildings. The building owners wanted to see a monthly edit from my shoots, a progress report, as we went. During the more than two years the project lasted, I was able to bring them up to speed with new imagery, as well as service the download needs of their staff in Shanghai and Japan. My archive created a seamless delivery system — no more burning disks, no more Fedex. The online, hosted, and managed archive is here to stay.

A close friend of mine challenged my position on archive hosting by insisting that my agency should take care of all that “back-end” work for me. A lovely idea, but full-service agencies are pretty much a thing of the past. (In my experience anyway; if I’m missing some full-service agencies still out there, please let me know.) The new trend seems to be the fully functioning, independent photographer who manages his or her own pictures.

Although my photographic work is represented by Corbis, they are far from a full-service agency. They don’t have an assignment division and rely on photographers to upload on their own. They don’t scan film, they don’t do captioning and key-wording, and they edit as they see fit. This is all actually a good thing, because it allows them to focus on the most important part of the process, selling my images.

Of course, that means a lot of the work agencies used to do is now the photographer’s responsibility. While that may be a negative for some, it’s a positive for me, because I get to control the quality, layout, and organization of my own work, and then share it anyway I like. It allows me to have a closer relationship with my editors and — for a young photographer like me who sometimes feels overwhelmed with a rapidly changing industry — this offers a very rare sense of control. Plus I can link to my archive just about everywhere, post public light-boxes online using social media, and fully integrate my Photoshelter archive with my liveBooks website, in the hope that editors and image buyers can find what they are looking for with ease.

On a final note, in my particular situation, having an archive based in the U.S. is a crucial part of my business plan. Because I live behind The Great Fire Wall of China, FTP-ing work out of the country is a nightmare, so it’s best that I only have to do it once. Once I upload to my archive, it’s an easy click of the button to share work with multiple clients. Plus I never have to worry about missing a deadline because it takes 14 minutes to upload one image to a server outside of China!

Rebecca Norris Webb, Havana, Cuba, 2007

Alex Webb, Havana, Cuba, 2001

MIKI JOHNSON: What initially drew you both to Cuba? It has been photographed so much already…did you try to approach it in a new way that you hadn’t seen before?

ALEX WEBB: Like many projects, this one began somewhat serendipitously. We certainly did not plan it. I first went in to Cuba 1993 for Life magazine, and Rebecca traveled there around the same time separately. We were both intrigued by the island, but somehow didn’t manage to return until 2000, when we visited together to teach a workshop.

Returning to the country inspired both of us, and we embarked on two separate projects: my exploration of the streets of Cuba and Rebecca’s discovery of unique and sometimes mysterious collections of animals there –– from tiny zoos and pigeon societies to hand-painted natural history displays and quirky personal menageries. It was only eight years later, in 2008, that we hit upon the notion of putting our two very distinct bodies of work together to create a multi-layered portrait of Cuba.

Alex Webb, Cienfuegos, Cuba, 2007

Rebecca Norris Webb, Havana, Cuba, 2008

MJ: How many trips to Cuba did you take while making photos for this book, and what places and parts of the culture were you specifically trying to capture?

AW: We made 11 trips to Cuba. Besides our first trips that we took separately, we made six trips together from 2000 to 2005 and then four long trips in 2007 and 2008, when I was fortunate enough to have a Guggenheim Fellowship to continue photographing the island. I initially called my project Esperando because in Spanish the term means both “waiting” and “hoping,” a title that starts to get at my impression of the streets of Cuba.

REBECCA NORRIS WEBB: I originally called my project Three Rooms after the following quote by a Habanero whom I met, a gentle and soft-spoken man who raises cockatiels, love birds, and parakeets: “I have three rooms in my house –– two are for my birds, and one is for my wife and me.”

For the past decade, I’ve been exploring the complicated relationship between people and the natural world. In the 25 cities I visited for my first book The Glass Between Us, I never witnessed anything quite like what I’ve seen on “the violet isle,” a little known nickname for Cuba inspired by the rich color of its soil. Nearly 700 miles across, Cuba is easily the largest island in the Caribbean and has its own endemic species, including the world’s smallest bat and the world’s smallest bird. Alex and I traveled nearly the entire length of the island in pursuit of our separate obsessions.

MJ: Why did it appeal to you to combine your two bodies of work into one book about Cuba? How are the images grouped in the book?

AW: Even though early on I envisioned making my own Cuba book, I also wanted to do something different –– something different from my past books and something different from the many Cuba books already published. The notion of combining our work resolved these concerns for me.

RNW: Combining our work created a more complicated portrait of the violet isle, one that explores not only the streets of this Caribbean island, but also Cubans and their relationship with the natural world.

As far as the sequence of the book is concerned, Alex’s and my images are interwoven into a kind of “duet” of images, often with a sense of point and counterpoint. We like to think of our photographs as speaking to one another, or, as Pico Iyer suggests in the afterword to the book, sometimes our photographs even “rhyme.”

Rebecca Norris Webb, Havana, Cuba, 2008

Alex Webb, Sancti Spiritus, Cuba, 1993

MJ: Was the editing process more difficult or more dynamic because you were integrating two sets of images?

RNW: The challenge of interweaving our work was initially daunting and ultimately exciting. Our edit of Violet Isle was probably the most dynamic, challenging, and surprising one we’ve ever attempted. In the process, we discovered that by interweaving our Cuba photographs –– with their echoes and tensions and cracks and contradictions –– we were able to create a more complex portrait of the violet isle, a place prone to both political and romantic cliches, than either of our bodies of work could have done separately. That’s what we found so fascinating and mysterious and humbling about collaborating on this project. “Cracks are a given between one collaborator and another,” the poet C.D. Wright once wrote about her collaboration with the photographer Deborah Luster, “that’s how the light gets in.”

MJ: What do you hope the book captures or conveys? What does the book say about Cuba?

RNW: We hope that the book gives a sense of the Cuba that we found: a complicated, paradoxical, enigmatic island; an island in an economic, political, cultural, and even ecological bubble — since scientists now say that because the island is comparatively free of plastics and other pollutants, Cuba may be protected environmentally.

AW: I’d also like to add that, thanks to the vagaries of history and politics, Cuba has now existed for some 50 years outside of the world of globalization, outside the vast currents dramatically transforming the face of our world today. How many 21st Century countries have almost no commercial advertising? How many countries have, for better or worse –– indeed, for both –– resisted so adamantly the incursion of U.S.-inspired culture?

RNW: All of this, we hope, is the Cuba of Violet Isle, the Cuba that Pico Iyer calls “the ambiguous island.”

“This book has freed me up to be more open-minded about my own photography and to see new connections within my work.”

I recently had an exhibition of my work from Chinese Turkistan, or Xinjiang, China, in Toronto, Canada. It was my first solo exhibition, but similar shows will happen in Europe and China next year. Putting on a gallery show can be a very trying experience for any photographer, emerging or established. But as I learned, the rewards outweigh all the hard work that goes into it.

In the early days of my time in China, I realized that I had a strong connection to the province of Xinjiang, the mainly Muslim region in northwest China. The Chinese portion of the Silk Road, once known as Chinese Turkistan, is changing before our eyes. Ancient mud brick homes and labyrinth-like towns are being torn down in the name of “progress.” I had traveled in the region often and felt an immediate passion to tell the stories of its people, but I didn’t actually make images there until some years later, in 2005, when I visited the region on assignment.

I’d made the images for myself, but wanted to share them with the world. I like to contact the galleries I’m familiar with by email and set up face-to-face meetings to show prints. Some galleries are very open minded and want to meet emerging photographers. Most galleries don’t even reply. It’s a competitive, in some cases cut-throat, industry — and the economic crisis has made it that much more difficult to get started.

The galleries that were interested in my work and wanted to collaborate believed that the topic is important and that the pictures were strong. But perhaps more importantly, they believed that my work, over the next few decades, would provide an important historical reference to the change taking place throughout China. They wanted to begin what could be a very long-term relationship earlier rather than later.

Contracts with different galleries can vary, but usually it’s a 50/50 split on sales, and the gallery is responsible for publicity and marketing. Photographers who are good at promoting themselves shouldn’t sit back and explect the gallery manage the entire process, though. The contacts a photographer can call on are often totally outside those of the gallery, so photographer-led marketing is just as important as what the gallery does.

Editing is obviously a huge part of this process, too. When I was creating an edit to send to galleries I was interested in working with, I chose to highlight the culture, the religion, and the beauty of this region. I have such a long-term view for documenting this area, so I didn’t try to make my edit the final say on the topic. My edit for a publication, on the other hand, would include fewer images and would not have the luxury of such a long-term view. Each image I show to a magazine has to convey the conflict and the emotion of this historical moment.

For this exhibition in Toronto, the curator and I discussed what we wanted to show. We decided that this first show shouldn’t try and do “too much,” meaning tell the entire story of Chinese Turkistan in 20 or 30 prints. Instead we simply wanted to introduce people to the region. Our edit was a celebration of the region’s culture and less about the ideological conflict. Ultimately we want to look closely at the change the region is going through — but you can’t show people how a region is changing without showing them the region and culture first. The next show will be more of a mix of culture and change.

Once the images for the show were chosen, I moved on to printing, framing, and shipping. My Kodak TriX 400 negatives were sent to my printer in Toronto, who hand-printed the show in a wet dark room — yes, just like back in the old days. What Bob Carnie can do with a 35mm negative is remarkable and inspiring. Once the print is dried and flattened, it’s mounted, signed, and framed. Because my printer was in the same city as the exhibition, he managed the entire process for me, but often prints have to be shipped internationally, and the gallery will sometimes help with framing and other details.

During this long process, all while watching costs and collaborating with the gallery on a guest list, there were a few times I wanted to scream: “I just want to take pictures, not deal with all of this other crap!” But just about at that moment, it was time for the opening. So I put on my suit, remembered to shave, and talked with the audience at the gallery about my passion, my dedication to my subject and documentary photography. Because my work is from a remote and often misunderstood place, I try always try to give a 20-30 minute lecture prior to each show for those who are interested.

I was very touched during this most recent show when a couple, both Uygur refugee’s living in Toronto, thanked me for caring and educating people about their homeland. The couple had not been in touch with either of their parents or their two teenage children, who are still in Urumqi, the city which experienced ethnic riots in early July.

• What did you do to build awareness of your photography and your new availability?

Stuart Thurlkill
I talked with everyone I knew and then went and talked to everyone I didn’t know. I found out what each person’s greatest need was and tried to find a way to fill that need. I made it a point to go everywhere with advertising and marketing material. I worked with some great photographers here in Arizona who gave me a chance to cut my teeth while I built a portfolio. I also built my own flash website. I don’t recommend this unless you have a lot of time on your hands. I also put together a print portfolio and started to shop it around to as many people in my community as I could get an appointment with.

Michael Mulvey
I instantly jumped on getting my website together and I happened to use liveBooks. I also started a blog. This allows me to routinely update a photo area with what I am immediately doing at the moment. I joined several associations and jumped into the business end of photography concerning branding, copyright law, marketing, etc. I also started networking and using the various social media sites to get the word out, build new relationships, and keep the ones I always had.

Heather Hughes
I invested more in advertising with the more commonly known wedding websites like WPJA and The Knot. I also got to know the coordinators at the popular wedding venues in my area and gave a couple of them wedding albums to show prospective couples along with a stack of business cards. I decided to invest more in my website this year by getting the liveBooks site so I could have the look and feel I wanted. Now I have my work and my husband’s work represented in a way that it presented us, our personalities, and our style better than a template can. So far I have heard rave reviews from everyone that has seen the new site, and although it’s only been live for three weeks, I’ve already gotten more inquires from the contact form than I got from my old site over the course of the whole year.

My meetings with clients are still the same as when I started, we meet at a coffee shop and I always wear a suit and arrive early so I can lay out the albums. They arrive to see a nice visual presentation — which helps make up for not having a studio. I have gotten a lot of compliments from couples on my professional presentation, so besides having more albums to show now than I did in the beginning, I haven’t changed anything.

Barry Gutierrez
The first thing I did was interview ten photographers that were photojournalists and had moved into the world of freelance. I picked their brains and asked a lot of questions. I have always respectfully learned from those who have gone before me.

The one thing I had done long ago was build a website. So that was in place. Then I 1) I made a business plan. 2) Realized that my name had value because of my service at the Rocky so I named my business Barry Gutierrez Photography. 3) Set up an LLC 4) Opened a checking account 5) Contacted all the people I have worked for and told them I was available. That started a chain reaction (a.k.a. word of mouth). MISTAKE: I paid $2,300 for an ad on a website and I have not gotten one call from it. It was a mistake I made while I was in a frantic rush to get jobs going as the Rocky closed. Word of mouth will serve you best.

Gary Gardiner
I had a great phone list, many old friends who now were in responsible editor positions, and a few saved dollars for marketing. Built the SmallTown Stock site, beefed up my Web presence, used e-mail newsletter utilizing paid subscription lists such as Agency Access, and personal contact via phone for some possible new clients.

Once I had a solid body of work I was able to return to NYC and visit with editors. I also had a website at a time when most photographers were only showing a book around. The website made it easy for editors to find me. Now it seems like it’s the opposite – everyone has a website and fewer and fewer photographers are printing books. It’s still important to have a book. Andy Curtraro likes to say the website lets editors know where you’re at but the visit and the printed book let’s them know you’re serious. I totally agree.

Pouya Dianat
This being my first year on my own, having a professional sports team as a client allows me to have my schedule set and concentrate on growth, establishing a new business and getting settled. In the future I might dedicate more time to freelance, but for the time being I’m only doing freelance when somebody reaches out to me. I’m actually not promoting myself all that much, and I’m not killing myself to get work. I think in the long run this will pay off, I’ll end up with a more varied skill set, a stable business, proper accounting, and I won’t burn myself out in the first year.

I was starting to feel a bit cramped creatively by the end of my time on staff. Already having time to grow and expand my boundaries has made me a more versatile visual artist. I work on video if I want to — I don’t have to have a meeting to get permission first. If I want to mess around with macro studio photography (currently doing so), I have the time to do it. Moreso than anything else, I’m making sure that in 2009 and early 2010 I revive my creative side a little bit. It’s not so much about deadlines for me right now, and I’m taking full advantage of that luxury.

A long time ago at a college interview, I was rejected by an Ivy League interviewer…he said my numbers weren’t there. But he also looked me straight in the eye and said that I was the only person he’s interviewed that knew where I was going to be in ten years and that the people who know that are usually the most successful. He also said I was probably wrong about where I would end up, but having an eye on where I’m headed is what mattered. Since then, I’ve always set up a 10-year outlook for myself and worked toward it. As he predicted, that outlook has changed several times, but I’ve never lost sight of the road ahead. I really think taking a little bit of time to plot out where you want to be, what’s important to you, and how you’re going to achieve these goals is really important for the next phase of photography.

David Walter Banks
I strongly believe that there is no one key to marketing yourself, that it’s a conglomerate of lots of things that gets your work in front of the right people. I did build a strong portfolio and have my website in place before I quit the newspaper. I then proceeded to contact certain clients directly to introduce myself and let them know of my availability and where I was based to make sure I had some work to start off. I send HTML emails to a large list of magazine editors and art buyers on a monthly basis to let them know what new projects, assignments, and travel I have been up to recently.

I head up to New York to meet with editors and art buyers to show my print portfolio book and spend time face-to-face on close to a quarterly basis. I also mail out print promotional campaigns to a smaller audience. These are just the start of a long list of things that I believe work as a whole. This list also includes paying for different online portals where my portfolio can be found with links to more work, entering contests, attending conferences, and even more, smaller elements. One of the most important pieces for me has been working on collaborative marketing with the photographers of Luceo Images. With the industry in such a time of evolution and upheaval, I find it important to work with fellow photographers to benefit each other, instead of clinging to the lone wolf syndrome that seems to plague so many creatives.

John Kaplan, who wrote Photo Portfolio Success and has had impressive success with his own portfolio over the years, is here to answer your questions. Leave a question in the comments section, along with your website if you have one, and he’ll respond asap, also in the comments, so others can benefit from the good advice.

John Kaplan

www.johnkaplan.com
John Kaplan is one of America’s most accomplished narrative photographers, having been awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Photography, POY National Newspaper Photographer of the Year, the Overseas Press Club Award, two Robert F. Kennedy Awards, and the Nikon Documentary Sabbatical Grant. He is also the author of Photo Portfolio Success, which helps photographers edit to their strengths and prepare stunning portfolios that eliminate doubt in the minds of editors, buyers and contest judges.

A full professor at the University of Florida and a Fulbright Scholar, John teaches throughout the world and has twice been named a juror for the Pulitzer Prizes. His work has appeared in LIFE, The New York Times, American Photo and numerous book annuals.

John’s work is exhibited at museums and galleries worldwide including solo exhibitions in the United States, Peru, Bolivia and Korea as well as shows in the United Kingdom, France, Japan, Korea, Canada, South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand. His project on survivors of torture in West Africa was awarded the Overseas Press Club Award for Feature Photography and the Harry Chapin Media Award; the United Nations used the work to help facilitate contact with the victims.

Presently, John is directing and producing his first feature length film, the autobiographical Not As I Pictured: A Pulitzer Prize-winning Photographer’s Journey Through Lymphoma.

Click here for a list of all other “After Staff” posts.

• What advice can you give for developing a personal brand? What are the important elements that go into a brand? How and where should that branding be used once it’s developed?

Jade Albert's website, which is branded to complement her "whimsical, airy" style.

Suzanne Sease

www.suzannesease.com

I have so many clients who have found themselves in this position — who were in another industry and realized they were not living their dream. The safety net of the bi-monthly paycheck is gone and now you must create your own identity. Luckily you won’t have to start from scratch.

Visit the websites of photographers you admire and see how they are presenting themselves. Now look at your images. Are there special topics you gravitate toward or are often assigned to? And how do your images convey information? What about them got people to read the stories next to them?

Become an astute observer of the images around you, too. Make mental notes of magazine ads, billboards, store signs, direct mail, even family portraits done for friends. A photographer was paid to make all of these — notice how they did it and decide if the photographer could be you next time.

Maybe most importantly, ask yourself what you really love about this business. Do you want to continue shooting what you have been, or is now the time to re-invent yourself and shoot what you love, not your former employer? You don’t have to build a brand on the photographer you are — this is your chance to build the brand of the photographer you want to be.

Louisa Curtis

www.chatterboxenterprises.com

First decide which markets to pursue and which images to present. Rather than showing work you think people want to see, I think you should show the images you love to shoot, since those are likely to be your best work. Then, once the image selection is clear, consider presentation. For instance, if I were to put your website alongside your business card, your postcard, your e-promo, and your print book — would I know that they all belong to the same photographer?

Make sure the basic designs for each of your marketing components match — whether it’s a logo, a particular type font, or a color palette. This creates “brand recognition,” so that when a buyer or an editor receives something from you, it is immediately recognizable as yours.

Then make sure the design elements you choose work well with your photography. If you shoot whimsical and airy images, such as my client Jade Albert, then you probably won’t have a black background on your website.

My client Chris Crisman is a good example of how to do this. Once we figured out the image selection and how to organize his work, we created a new website that matched the visual aesthetic of his business cards. Then we built an email template that matched both the website and cards. And all the branding complemented the visual style of his work. Now, with regular promotions, a good work ethic, and a positive attitude, Chris is landing advertising jobs, not just editorial ones. Having moved into a new market, Chris has gone on to re-brand his brand!

Amanda Sosa Stone

www.sosastone.com

When a photographer is looking to develop a brand, they need to start with two questions: What kinds of clients do I want to attract and how do I want those clients to see me? For example, if a photographer wants to attract young, hip clients, his or her brand has to say that.

How you view yourself is not always how others view you, of course. Try sitting down with a trusted industry person (preferably not another photographer) and asking them to give it to you straight. It also helps to review your work, find two or three hero shots, and see if you can find a connection between them that speaks to who you are as a photographer.

The most important element of a brand is the message it sends. Many elements create that message: type treatment, color, size, spacing, icons, etc. The type treatment (a.k.a. the font) says a lot about a person. A font can tell me if you are a man or woman and sometimes how you approach people and your subject matter.

Color can create a mood and can also show how current you are. Spacing and size set a pace. And finally there is an icon. I personally prefer not to see an icon, unless it’s pure genius — as in Nike swoosh genius.

Remember that branding is more than a logo or color palette though, it’s the way every element works together. For instance, on a website, even the toolbar type and the font used on their about page has to be taken into consideration.

And don’t forget that you yourself are part of the brand. Your websited, cards, emails, and mailers should reflect your style so people get to know you before they even meet you. Ideally even the clothes you wear should make sense with your overall brand. Imagine if your brand had a Harley Davidson style but you show up to a job in Tommy Bahama shorts and deck shoes…I would be confused.

My advice for anyone who wants to create a great brand is HIRE A DESIGNER. I know times are tough – but a good brand will definitely be worth the investment. I’m not shallow, but if I’m honest, I admit that I do judge a lot of books by their cover (at first) — and so do most of my colleagues.

Click here for a list of all other “After Staff” posts.

Images from a search for “Las Vegas, Atlantic City, luck, risk, chance, chances” on iStockPhoto.com

Detail Your Descriptors

Most photographers know that properly captioning and keywording their photographs is crucial if it’s going to show up in an image search, either on a stock site, on their own site, or, increasingly, on a Google Image search. What may come as a surprise is just how detailed those descriptors need to be — down to the color of the model’s shirt.

For example: Smiling brown-haired Caucasian woman drinking coffee, sitting at the kitchen table. Now go even deeper for the keywords. The woman is smiling, so be sure to include “happy” as a keyword. What does the kitchen look like? Is it modern? Traditional? What is she wearing? If she is wearing a turtleneck, include that since it suggests a specific season. In fact, include the season. All of these details could be important to the person looking for the photo.

Think Like an Editor

Another concept to consider when keywording is atmosphere and mood. A lot of photo editors are looking for an image to illustrate a specific concept. In addition to describing the scene, imagine what ideas your photograph could be used to convey.

For example, if you have a close-up of a pair of dice, think about what that could represent — Las Vegas, Atlantic City, luck, risk, chance, chances, (include singular and plural; photo editors have different searching “styles”).  Or a road sign, those can also be used to illustrate other concepts such as “choice,” “fork in the road,” “decision.” All of these should be included in the keywords.

To help with this more conceptual keywording, look at magazines and see how images are used to illustrate different stories and concepts. Begin thinking like a photo editor, not only when shooting, but also when captioning and keywording.

Check and Copy Edit — Again

One thing you can do to help those photo editors looking for your images is to spell things correctly. There have been times when I purposely misspelled something in a search in order to find what I was looking for (after spending hours trying different keywords). Double, triple, even quadruple check your keywords and captions, then have someone else “copy edit” them. You never know what errors a fresh pair of eyes may find — and who might find your images because of your diligence.

An ad campaign for Target shot by Deanne Fitzmaurice, a Pultzer Prize-winning photographer who left the San Francisco Chronicle last year.

As we look around the photojournalism world today, it’s hard not to worry about one trend in particular: Newspapers, magazines, and wire services have been cutting pages, budgets, and staff positions, for years — and they’re not coming back. With fewer staff jobs to go around, more photographers than ever are deciding to work for themselves. Being the innovators that photographers are, they’re exploring new markets, new mediums, and new skill sets, especially those needed to run a business.

Some former staff photojournalists saw the writing on the wall long ago and now run their own thriving businesses. Many more have made strides in the last year or two, but still have a few questions — or they’re planning to make a move soon and have lots of questions.

Next week, August 10-14, RESOLVE will run five days of posts designed to answer these questions. Of course, no one person has the answer to all questions, especially the big ones about where the industry is going and how photography will continue to be profitable. But every photographer and editor and rep out there has the answer to one or two questions. That’s why we’ve asked as many as possible to share their experiences.

We’ve talked to dozens of former staff photographers working in a range of markets and will share their insights with you in daily posts next week. Each day we’ll also explore and explain an alternative market for photojournalists, including commercial assignments, wedding photojournalism, fine-art, and working with NGOs.

On top of that, an “expert of the day” will be available to answer questions in real-time as you ask them. They’re here to help, but we also need people will come together and help each other. We’ve heard about so much of this going on offline, we know you’ll have a lot to share here online as well.

If you are now or have ever been a staff photographer, please check in next week and join the discussion: ask a question, offer advice, and make some new contacts. If you’d like to contribute your thoughts about transitioning from a staff position, please email us this week: resolve [at] livebooks [dot] com. We’d love to hear from you and share your story (and website) with the community!

Miki Johnson: Tell me a little about the re-entry project, how you got interested in it, and why you wanted to tell the story.

Joe Rodriguez: I’m going to be very honest with you. This is a very personal story. It started when I was a young child. I watched my stepfather come in and out of prison over the years, about a decade or more, and a few of my uncles did the same thing. Then he was also an addict, so we had to watch this whole process, this up-and-down roller coaster ride with the family. And there wasn’t really much support for addicts back then in terms of re-entering society.

My stepdad died many years ago, and as a young boy growing up into a photographer, that story has always stayed with me. So this project was a personal journey. When I was working in Spanish Harlem and all around the country doing socially impacting stories, I started to see that this issue of incarceration was affecting many families. So I’ve been watching this growth of incarceration throughout the United States of America for some time. You know, I watched it go to 1 million, then 2 million over the years.

Then last year the Pew Research Center did a study called “One out of a hundred people in prison.” That was kind of the spark to seriously revisit this story and see what I could do about telling it in a different way. I did not want to repeat myself, and I didn’t want to repeat what other photographers have already done with work inside prisons. I wanted to challenge that story somewhat, because I think when you come out of prison, you’re still doing time in many different respects. You may be on parole, you may be an addict, you may have problems getting employment, and you can’t vote — all those different issues that affect many ex-offenders.

I thought it could be interesting to look at a non-profit organization like Walden House, which has been dealing with people coming from prison, specifically addicts, and working very intensely on changing their behavior. So a couple of years ago, in 2007, I connected with the people at Walden House. And a whole year went by talking about this possibility of working together or me coming to work inside some of their facilities in Los Angeles and San Francisco. And then last year they gave me a green light; I visited three of the facilities. One was dealing with mothers and children, one was dealing with just women, and one was just with men.

It was overwhelming and daunting because I profiled 40 to 45 people. And out of the 40 to 45 people, I focused on about 5 who we did these multimedia pieces on. I am hoping to reach a larger audience, because of the Internet and its long reach. I also just wanted to create a historical document of these people. And to be very honest, I don’t know what more I could do right now. I would love for it to change things, but I’m not that gullible.

MJ: Tell me about that decision to make this into a multimedia piece and, especially, to gather audio?

JR: The first trip was completely on my own, but I received a grant from the USC Annenburg Institute for Justice and Journalism for the second trip. That was specifically to do multimedia stories. The reason I wanted to do audio was because I can’t always get down everything the subjects are saying in a written interview. So the audio became a way to tell a more concise story and also to bring the audience in, in an emotional way. I want to grab the audience so hopefully they can feel Tracey’s story and Darlene’s story and John Vaughn’s.

MJ: And also they can’t ignore the words, right? I think a lot of people never get around to reading text with photos.

JR: We’re living in the age of interruption. I’m starting to look around and watch people when they’re reading on the web. It seems to be tricky for them to stay focused for pages and pages of text. I think audio really helps get the story in their head much faster. And then if they really want to learn more, they’ll be hungry enough to read. I think it’s a way to pull people in, not just into your immediate story, but to hopefully give them something more where they can go further with the issue or with this person’s life.

MJ: And when you were actually doing these interviews, how did you make the creative decisions, when to record and when to make images and how those work together?

JR: I just tried to keep myself calm knowing that what this person is saying while I’m photographing, I’m gonna hopefully be able to revisit in audio. One guy, Marko, was working in a bakery and I wanted to take pictures of him there. I photographed him working behind the counter, dealing with the public. Then the pictures slowed down and while I was waiting for him to go in the back with the ovens, I did some ambient audio of the store.

Then I knew I needed to do a portrait. I went into it thinking that if I could make a very engaging portrait, and I have a pretty engaging interview, I was gonna be happy with that. If I got anything extra, more reportage-type stuff, that would just help it even more. So I was actually multitasking with that particular interview. It really just depends on the subject and what’s happening.

What I like about the way I work is that it’s slow, so it enables me to revisit the person. And the more I revisit, the better story I get, either in audio or pictures. But I try, really, really earnestly to separate them — if I’m taking pictures, it’s gonna be about pictures. I try not to start thinking about what they’re saying or what’s going on, because then that just fractures me even more.

MJ: When you were planning the actual multimedia pieces, how did you think about how you wanted to put them together?JR: The first thing that was very important for us was just to listen to the audio. For an hour’s worth of audio, we could use maybe 5 or 10 minutes of workable audio from that. And after listening to the audio — and saying, is that important, that could be good, that could be good — then we laid out the proofs.

We feel that proofs are a more concise way for us to edit than on the monitor, because we can leave them down on the floor or leave them up on the wall and revisit them. That was the thing that we learned, the importance of revisiting. It took actually two or three months just to do the first multimedia piece. Now we know how to do it. I have to give major props to Benjamin Jarosch, our studio manager, who had never done this before, just like myself.

Revisiting is key because some days you think you’ve got it, and then you go back and you see it differently that time. Not to the point that you’re gonna pick it apart to death, but just making sure everything makes sense. When we laid the pictures out and looked at it with the audio, we’d say, ah that doesn’t really work there. Do we have a photo that kind of relates to this or can be a metaphor for this? Or can give us some atmosphere?

In the Darlene piece, she talks about her father passing away, and there is an image of a cemetery. That cemetery is not far from where she grew up, although that image was not taken at the same time the interview was. Because I know this culture so well, some of my images from other projects, even from East Side Stories, came into that story. And I would not have been able to do that if I didn’t allow myself the time to look and listen and then leave it alone and come back and revisit.