When I have time off from work, I really enjoy entertaining all the nuances of my stock & personal editorial work. Moving and archiving personal image files, troubleshooting external hard drives, editing and re-captioning older material for delivery to my agency, THE IMAGE WORKS and their newly launched division PRESSTOCK, representing the work of contributing newspapers and newspaper photographers. I cherish the good morning light and actually get out early some days to just make pictures for pictures sake. Well, not exactly. There’s much more to it than that. Just about all of my photographs are made with the intention of potential editorial usage or resale at some point. My agency has been good to me the last few years and I’m working hard to continue contributing images whenever I can. That means even the simplest landscapes and seascapes made while on holiday in Bermuda to the few abandoned buildings and even an empty car dealership photographed this morning all have possible resale value.
Keeping in mind the current economic climate and state of affairs in this country, imagery like this can appear in any number of publications and uses. One can easily see images like these illustrating a business / economy / real estate story in publications like BusinessWeek & Fortune magazines, as well as the business section of the leading newspapers, trade publications and web editions. On these simple self-assigned “mini-projects”, I try to challenge myself and think like a photo-editor down the road who might actually have a need for images like these. The files must obviously be publication quality, exposed properly, captioned correctly and the like. Seeking out these type of simple photographs becomes the self-assignment in itself. Whether I shoot for an hour or half a day, and spend another hour or two editing the take – it’s usually rewarding to have accomplished even this simplest of assignments.
“When the light is good – I want to be out there making pictures, no matter who they’re for…” -cg.
Chet Gordon resides in the lower Hudson Valley region of New York. A photojournalist for more than 25 years, he recently worked as Westchester Magazine's first photo editor, and previously was a staff photographer at four NYC metro area newspapers. He was also a photo editor at the NY Daily News for 5 years. His work has appeared in The New York Times, International Herald-Tribune, USA Today, MailOnline (UK), Army Times, Wall Street Journal, BusinessWeek, and Popular Photography magazines, among others. He is a career member of the National Press Photographer’s Association (NPPA), and a former board member of the NY Press Photographer’s Association (NYPPA). He served honorably as a U.S. Marine in the mid-1980's, including 2+ years stationed on Okinawa, Japan, and throughout Southeast Asia. A longtime volunteer and travel enthusiast, he accompanies several humanitarian aid clients on their international disaster relief and medical missions. Since 1997, he's worked in several African countries, the Middle East, Central and South America, Eastern Europe, as well as Afghanistan, Haiti, the Russian Federation, and Thailand. He routinely mentors young photographers looking to break into the industry and vacations in Bermuda and Kenya.
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