A love of photography enticed the Free Lance’s newest member,
Nick Lovejoy, to accept the position of staff photographer.
Lovejoy, who had his first photograph published in the Santa
Cruz Sentinel when he was 9 years old, recently graduated with a
degree in journalism from Chico State University.
A love of photography enticed the Free Lance’s newest member, Nick Lovejoy, to accept the position of staff photographer.
Lovejoy, who had his first photograph published in the Santa Cruz Sentinel when he was 9 years old, recently graduated with a degree in journalism from Chico State University.
Between working at Chico State’s award-winning newspaper The Orion, the Chico Enterprise-Record, the Paradise Post and the Santa Cruz Sentinel, the 23-year-old is now applying his ample ability to making sure the Free Lance is laden with innovative, eye-catching pictures.
“Photography gives me the ability to be creative,” Lovejoy said. “And it gives people the chance to see things they might not have seen otherwise.”
He became interested in photography through his father, who has been the photo editor at the Santa Cruz Sentinel for 17 years.
“I definitely strive to be as good as my dad,” he said.
“Nick moving to Hollister and joining our newsroom team is a huge plus for the Free Lance,” said Executive Editor Mike Fitzgerald. “He has tremendous talent as a photographer and is one of the nicest guys you will ever meet.”
One of the best parts of being a photographer is the chance to meet a lot of different people, and capture the small nuances of everyday life that people would otherwise not notice and take for granted, he said.
His experience has given him the opportunity to learn how to deal with people, which is one of the most important parts of the job.
“You befriend them, you try to fall into the background,” he said. “That’s when you get your best picture, but it’s kind of hard when you’re 6’5″. People tend to notice you.”
Besides photography, his other love is sports, which is his favorite thing to cover. He knows what to be ready for and how to get the best shot, he said.
“If I could, I’d work for Sports Illustrated, because I know sports,” he said.
The biggest difference he’s experienced in moving to Hollister is the lack of things to do, especially for someone straight out of college. The jump into the work force has been a good one, though, because it gives him the chance to hone his skills more than at some of the other papers he worked at.
“You do the same kind of assignments for any small newspaper,” he said, “but here it’s better because I get to do all of them. In Chico I got aced out of the good (assignments) because the other guys took them.”
Lovejoy is passionate about his job and feels photography is imperative to making any newspaper good, he said.
Using creative angles and giving a different perspective in a photograph is what makes people want to read the paper. The visual element is one of the most important aspects of a newspaper, he said.
While he takes a great amount of pride in the pictures he takes, there is one aspect of photography he dislikes.
“I really hate being on the other side of the camera.”
