Behind the camera with Kris Craig

He didn’t start out in journalism, but Kris Craig has made his mark in the field, doing everything from covering The Station nightclub fire to shooting high school sports. Here’s a little more about him, including his surprising hobby.

This interview was edited for length and clarity.

How long have you been at The Providence Journal?

I’ve been here since August of ‘85. So it’s been a long time. But this was not my first paper. Or my second, or third, or fourth, or fifth.

Wow!

I worked at my college paper (The Daily Collegian at UMass Amherst) only because they had free film. It was an amazing group of people. Some of them were journalists, but a lot of us weren’t. It was a weird collection, and was just a nice time to be there in that way. I wasn’t a journalism major or anything that resembled it, but it was nice to see how it all worked.

So I worked at The Collegian and interned at the Greenfield Recorder. I officially was hired at the Middlesex News for a very short time. And then The Valley News (in Lebanon, New Hampshire). Then Springfield newspapers. And then here.

But you didn’t start in journalism?

My degree is in animal science. I’d never been in journalism. I liked the photo aspect of things. And that group of people at The Collegian.

My first newspaper, The Valley News — I mean you think your college newspaper can’t be like this, but it really was. It was the exact same thing. Coming to The Journal was almost like trying to get back to The Valley News, which was like trying to get back to The Collegian.

How does someone who didn’t study journalism, and wasn’t necessarily interested in journalism, end up at so many papers?

I always want to know how things work. One thing about journalism is, you’re always behind the scenes, so you always see how things work. And you’re always meeting so many people and you see how they work. It’s how people work, it’s how their minds work. You meet someone who is doing good and you think, “Wow, how did you come up with that?” Or they’re doing bad and you think, “How could they do that?”

How does it work? That’s a big part of journalism, and I just happened to like that. It happens to correlate very well with science, which is how things work and how things get from here to there. I didn’t really shift that much.

Speaking of how things work, you also spend a lot of time, and put a lot of creativity into, making things. Talk to me a little about that.

I like to make stuff. Sometimes it turns into a toy. Other times I don’t know what it is. Something pops in your head and you just want to take it from there. It manifests itself in wood or in metal. This area, and one of the greatest things about coming to Rhode Island is there’s so much art here, and so much art supplies here. And over the years I’ve been able to tap into it.

We did a story on the guy who used to be the designer for Tupperware, who now does prototypes. We hit it off and he showed me how to cast molds. There’s a guy whose family used to work in jewelry and pewter … and other times you wake up with this really stupid idea and you think, “I’m going to make that.”

Is there anything in particular you really enjoy shooting? Maybe a certain subject or event?

One of the selling points of newspapers, and newspapers of this size — with traveling, and fashion, and food, and sports, and little tiny newspaper stuff like mom-and-pop stuff — was the variety that you get out of newspapers. I shot fashion and I loved shooting fashion, but I don’t love it all the time. There wasn’t one thing, because I like a lot of things, but the aspect of the business was that you didn’t just do one thing.

What would you want people to know about the work that’s being done at The Providence Journal?

There are still incredible journalists here. There are very, very talented and dedicated journalists that work here.

— edion@gatehousemedia.com On Twitter: @GHErynDion