Ty Oneil
Ty Oneil
Nov 5 · 4 min read

How I got there

I want to make it clear that I do not consider myself a successful photojournalist, after years and years of work I am still on the bottom rung but I hope this information could help other photographers at whatever level they may be.

A question I often get from my colleagues, friends and strangers is, “how did you get there” or “how did you know about that”. Referring to my knack for being in the right place at the right time, often without knowing the language. I often play it off as “lucky I guess” but the fact is I have never considered myself anything but dangerously unlucky. The real reason I have ended up where I was, is because I wanted to be there.

Bangkok, Thailand. 2013

When I travel, going to protests/riots/revolutions/disasters is on my must do list, even it if is a small one. I am a photojournalist and it is my greatest love, so what else would I want to do on vacation right?

On a recent trip to Poland, for a photojournalism workshop, I managed to photograph a sizeable protest by polish farmers that shut down a large section of Warsaw. I was early to the scene, even beating some of the local media. My fellow students, and some instructors asked me how I had gotten to the farmers protest at all. None the less in good time as the protest was a huge surprise.

Warsaw, Poland. 2019

Paranoia, Social Media, locals, and fear. Those are the elements that get me to the things I want to be at

Social Media: People always say use social media but not often in what capacity, so here’s what I do.

Facebook: Facebook events is great for finding marches, protests or special events that would be visually interesting. It’s fairly easy to use and I have found great stuff that I would have missed otherwise. Even if it’s in another language it’s pretty easy to figure out the gist of what is going on.

Athens, Greece. 2019

Twitter: Twitter is vast and really easy to miss stuff that isn’t huge news. My advice is search around until you find the profiles of a few active local journalists. Follow them and set it to get alerts. Even if they aren’t at something, they will usually tweet or retweet someone who is.

Instagram: Instagram hasn’t been that useful in my experience, other than making contacts with someone if you’re a social person, which I am not.

Locals: I’m supper broke so I have never even thought of getting a fixer or translator but locals can be a great source of info, even without talking to them. People know their cities and towns. They know it better than you and they know when something is out of the ordinary. If you see people behaving like something is going on down the street, go find out. This can be subtle maybe you get down there and its nothing but a drunkard on the street or maybe it’s something a lot more interesting.

Barcelona, Spain. 2019

Paranoia: I am a deeply paranoid person to my own detriment but it can sometimes be useful, kinda. What I mean is that I am hyper alert to noises, groups of people, anything that seems out of the norm, good or bad. In Bangkok I got worried because I saw to many individuals wearing yellow t-shirts. About 20 minutes later I was inside a Thai military facility that was being taken over by protesters.

Bangkok, Thailand. 2013

Fear: The fear of missing something of import is a drive that isn’t really something I can explain. When it comes down to it I guess you just have to think about what’s worse finding out you missed something, or risking going?

Warsaw, Poland. 2019
Bangkok, Thailand. 2013
Barcelona, Spain. 2019
Athens, Greece. 2019
Warsaw, Poland. 2019
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