What is your current position and who is your employer?

I am a stringer, photographer/photojournalist for for OnScene TV, based in the high desert. OnScene TV is a video-based news provider which services network and local television, newspapers, law firms and world-wide clients.

Stringers are typically independent photojournalists, photographers and videographers doing overnight news. The job was made popular by the Netflix show “Shot in the Dark” and the negative film, Nightcrawler. Most stringers do well at capturing an honest report of overnight spot news. Typically, the raw video we upload is in ten second clips and 2-3 minutes.

However, this can vary widely depending on the type of story. I do this part time. Full time would require not only better leads, as The San Bernardino Sheriff’s Department encrypted radio broadcasts makes it difficult to know what and where events are occurring. Also, what’s relevant in the desert may not be relevant in the LA news market. Day turns, the complete story in one day, is wonderful work and I have great respect for those who do complete stories. Maybe someday.

When did you become a PPAGLA member?

Several years ago, I joined with the referral of another photographer.

How long have you been a photojournalist and how did you get started?

I started as a newspaper photographer during high school. From Friday night football games to charity events, a photo was occasionally needed for the local weekly paper, The La Canada Valley Sun.

A love for photography came early when my father taught me to develop film in 1968. It was from an off-brand instamatic camera with black and white cartridge film. Photojournalism became an interest in high school while I was working for the local weekly paper. I did clean-up, melted lead from the Linotype machine to make new pigs (lead bars), put away handset type into the California Job Cases and shot the occasional photograph, something like a bridge club playing for a bag of sugar. (I think there was a sugar crisis sometime in the mid-70’s.) One time when I had an opportunity to shoot breaking news, I made it to the scene, loaded a new roll of film in the camera, made my shots and rushed home to develop it only to find in my excitement the film never caught the winder. I went to work at the paper full time after high school when the position of process cameraman became available. Utilizing 85-line dot screens, continuous tone photographs were converted to halftones for the offset printing process.

Monday through Wednesday was dedicated to production of the weekly paper and Thursday and Friday were utilized to do some commercial offset printing on an 11x 17 Multilith 1250 printing press. The paper paid $3.00 per photo, and I had to travel, shoot, process (paper and chemicals), and deliver prints for that. In 1978, I applied and received a Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Press Pass. Unlike Live-Scan today, it took three sets of handmade ink and paper fingerprint cards. Photography school and Brooks Institute of photography were my dreams, but life had other plans.

Managing printing stores in downtown Los Angeles, then Novell Networks at a school after a move to the High Desert, and a career in Labor Relations would consume the next thirty years. By 2000, I had begun to dabble with digital photography, and in 2009 I began submitting breaking news photos to the local paper. I was given a contributor agreement for $30 a picture. I did not quit my day job.

The same year, the need arose to tell a story, a position piece in video to post on YouTube. I bought the cheapest video camera and sound recorder, downloaded a non-liner editing application and made a three-minute movie. It was the first of several that became the beginning of the end. Seems they had a full-time videographer at corporate and YouTube movies were not in my job description. I retired in late 2013.

In 2017, I kept seeing a PP plated car (specialized license plates in California for Press Photographers) around town. Over the course of several weeks, I was able to befriend a stringer photographer for OnScene TV. Shortly after, I became a part of their team, shooting overnight news. However, it was not without challenges. Over the last seven years, the task of capturing breaking news has changed incredibly. The High Desert, from the top of the Cajon Pass to the Nevada State line, north of the San Bernardino Mountains has seen a loss news reporting and journalism.

Currently there is no television station and the newspapers have been reduced to the bare minimum. Much of the “breaking” news is captured by cell phones and posted to Facebook groups. Only extremely major news stories are picked up by the networks.

One challenge shooting video in the desert was the darkness. Absent the light pollution of the inner-city, new-moon nights in the desert are extremely dark. The connection to the internet has varied over the years making uploading challenging,and the encryption of police frequencies has hampered reporters’ and photographers’ ability to be aware of spot news, denying the public of an on scene, independent, visual record of events. Furthermore, the news cycle, for which I am not an expert, seems to renew about three times a day depending on the major stories. One-sided press releases from public agencies, twenty-four hours later, provide the public notice of an event, but lack the transparency of breaking news images and interviews of parties from both sides of a conflict or event.

Please share some career highlights: 

David Ford

I am a stringer, photographer/photojournalist for OnScene TV, based in the high desert.

What advice do you have for students and those hoping to become photojournalists?

Integrity. This is going to become a huge challenge in the future. While digital editing of news photos seems to have remained limited to picture quality as we would have done in a darkroom years ago, the advent of AI and “digital art” will tease at the lines of ethics. Additionally, though, I don’t write much, I think that the ability to shoot content that shows both sides of the story is going to become increasingly challenging as agencies advocate their own version of the story without transparency.

What is something you know now that you wish someone had told you when you were starting out?

Follow your dream at all cost. Sleep in your car, eat noodles, but don’t give up. Take the time to perfect your knowledge without distraction. It is a thousand times more complicated, and there are more distractions today than 50 years ago.

What is your favorite part of being a PPAGLA member?

I am grateful for the knowledge, camaraderie, and uplifting members that can become friends. While 90 miles outside Los Angeles proper, I miss the culture, but not the traffic.