WWE SMACKDOWN - Photojournalism

What follows is a photojournalistic account of a "day at work." What you will see, if I might so slightly influence your objective view, is a "nude & crude" view of what is left over "at the end of the day" as a photographer. These photos are the complete collection of photos that I have archived for one various reasons, with an emphasis on photojournalism. After previewing 4 memory cards of 1GB capacity each - 4 Gigabites of photojournalistic images through the camera, into the computer, from RAW to TIFF, through PHOTOSHOP 7, resizing, copyrighting, and building a web page to post my photos on. All this took me 7 days, I work alone. This result is what I would call the "impressionistic end." Seven days of arduous work that ended late into the morning hours of 4AM. A presentation, for those who are not familiar with photojournalism of "how many shots you must take to get that great one" as they say in the business.

These photos were all taken from the same position under defined guidelines by WWE public relations representatives. I was approximately 25-30 meters from the ring, and to the right side of the exit/entrance gate of the athletes. Therefore the "angle of shot" is repetative but, not lacking in creativity. Again, "another day's work" in photography with "you can't always shoot from where you want." The best lens for this position, in my possesion, was a Canon 70-200mm f/2.8, IS EF "L" series lens coupled with a Canon EOS 20D digital body. HAND HELD, MANUAL FOCUS, MANUAL EXPOSURE, ISO 1600, MANUAL FLASH FILLS, & LOTS OF PATIENCE TO TRY TO GET AT LEAST ONE GREAT SHOT.

If for just once I can get from you one honest "that's a great shot" out of all the pages you visited, then, I will feel rewarded. Hopefully, there will also be some who would want to reward me with currecncy. Well, from an artist point of view, money is more than welcomed and appreciated! I always hear the many stories about "the poor artist until he died" story. For once, I would like to be the artist that lived and made a decent life for himself while alive. For once, what do ya say? Can we break this cliche`, or what?

To do our job we need digital equipment. Not just digital camera equipment like multiple lenses costing close to $2000.00 each, camera body $2000.00, flash unit $500.00, 5 memory cards $350.00 and so on. My usual camera bag has approximately $8000.00 of equipment in it every event! Then, there's the other part of "digital." You need a computer with lots of memmory (1 GB recommended), special software and hardware for digital photography to include PHOTOSHO, digital negative scanners, CD burners, CD's for storage of image files, extra large hard disks, the internet, web page building, and so on. A photographer invests a lot of money and time without having a guaranteed income, only to be insulted by "can we have this free?" Yea, right, Not even he air we breath is free anymore!" I just don't for the likes of me understand how people can take advantage of others even for the most cheapest of things. Don't get me started.

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