Sports Illustrated and Open Society Foundations, Day 5

On our last day we started off at Sports Illustrated where we met with Brad Smith, director of photography of Time Inc. He told us that with every publication there's a set way stories are executed: Somebody has an idea, someone approves the idea, a group of people work together to fulfill the idea, and then editors decide where the idea goes within the publication. He explained that the photo could be the best picture in the world, but if it doesn't go with the story it wont run. When you're shooting you have to think "how does the photo fit the idea?" The three main points of criteria for hiring are where you live, if you can do quality work, and if you are an easy person to work with.

After that we went to Open Society Foundation and met with Maggie Soladay who is a picture editor there. We went to see their Moving Walls exhibit on Wednesday night and when we came back Maggie walked us through each of the 5 photographers who were exhibited there. OSF is an organization that gives grants to further work being done in different human rights campaigns. They don't have any staff photographers, but they hire freelance photographers for assignments and feature them in the Moving Walls exhibit and their instagram. 

After that we had our alumni event where we were able to socialize with almost all of the people we met during the week.