cadet reporter flashback

My first job in journalism was as a cadet reporter in the Hawera branch office of Taranaki's morning paper, The Daily News. The nearest photographers were in the main office at New Plymouth, so we took our own snaps. I might have been shown how to load film and which way to point the camera but essentially you learned on the job. We sent the films up to New Plymouth for processing and the picture editor decided what got used. This was all long before desktop publishing or digital cameras, so the first time I get to see the results of my efforts was when it appeared in the paper the next day!

I had about 250 photos published in the 15 or so months I spent at Hawera, most of them pretty diabolical. But I remember being chuffed with the way this house fire shot came out. In truth, I was shooting blindly and it was the photographers who picked this particular image from my roll of film. But I love the billowing smoke and the exhaustion on the volunteer fireman's face.

Apologies for the picture quality, this is actually a photo of the published newspaper clipping from nearly 30 years ago - I never had a copy of the print itself.