You Witness News by Reuters is for Citizen Photojournalists

Returers Citizen Photojournalists

What do you do when a big hurricane barrels through your neighborhood? Or when two vehicles collide in front of you? Or you happen to be near the Dalai Lama, or Angelina Jolie?

You take pictures, of course. You’re in an extraordinary situation and Reuters calls them newsworthy events. When these events happen in your presence you take photos – lots of photos, with your camera phone, your point-and-shoot, your camcorder – and submit them to the news agency. If your news photos are good enough, Reuters pays you some money. And you get your name printed in the photo credit.

It gets even better. Reuters has this “You Witness News” running for a good while now and if you submit your pictures to them it also gets entered in the Sony Take Your Best Shot photo contest, where the top winner gets to win a Sony HDR-HC5 High Definition Handycam Camcorder and a day in New York City with a Reuters photojournalist. Two runners-up will receive Sony Alpha-100 DSLR cameras. The contest runs up to July 2. 2007.

So, the next time fire breaks out in your house, don’t panic. Take photos and submit them to Reuters. Congratulations, you are now a citizen photojournalist.

[Site: Reuters.com]

Published by Chris Malinao

Chris teaches Lightroom as workflow software to photography students at the FPPF, Federation of Philippine Photographers Foundation. He also teaches smartphone photography.