Switching Sides

We were surprised and flattered to hear CNN's anchor Miles O'Brien, of American Morning, tell us that Popular Photography & Imaging was his very first magazine subscription. Turns out that the broadcast journalist has also been shooting since the age of 14, and once even seriously considered photography as a career.

Coming at it "strictly from a journalist's point of view," O'Brien now brings his equipment around with him at all times, catching behind-the-scenes footage of his work for CNN and capturing the story, as he puts it, "of getting the story."

How long have you been shooting?

I have been taking pictures since around 8 th grade. I found an old Argus C44 that my dad had used and became instantly fascinated by it and taking pictures. I had a good friend who had a similar interest. Before too long his dad was upgrading to the Honeywell Pentax, and I got interested in the SLR. So I saved my money and bought a Ricoh Singlex. Back in the day when we shot with kerosene lanterns…

Then I got the darkroom bug and got all that equipment. And, eventually, I got into business. I started taking family portraits and weddings. I made quite a bit of money because I was 16, 17 years old. I also would shoot a golf tournament, stay up all night and have processed pictures of all the foursomes on the board. I made a killing on that!

And I never stopped. Later, when I went to college, I was a news editor at Georgetown and would take a lot of pictures for that as well. And it was good preparation for doing what I'm doing now.