Aric Mayer, Photojournalist

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Digital Railroad member Aric Mayer recently came back from a three-week assignment shooting the flood tragedy in New Orleans for The Wall Street Journal. He was the only photographer in New Orleans working exclusively for them.

"When the call to go down came in I was working with my Leicas and a Hasselblad," said Mayer. "I stopped in Baton Rouge on the way in and bought one of the last Canon digital SLRs in the city. I borrowed a laptop and headed in.

Mayer helped to break stories on the oil spill in Meraux, getting in to see it and delivering some of the first images of it for publication. In the end, he delivered images through Digital Railroad for seven stories in the Journal. "For a photojournalist working alone in very difficult conditions with little outside support, Digital Railroad made everything possible," he said. Communication was very difficult, with little cell phone signal and spotty Internet connection.

"Once I had entered my caption and metadata info in Photoshop," said Mayer, "I knew that the images would be handled completely on the other end. After the upload I was able to disappear again on another story, knowing that the Journal had what they needed. I'm still learning how to fine-tune working with it, but it was absolutely essential for the success of my assignments."

See samples of Aric’s Hurricane Katrina images here.