My first work to run big was Kodak’s bankruptcy. Hearing on a radio I was listening to over my shoulder that Kodak then was likely to file bankruptcy within weeks, I prepared to do a photo package on the story..
I got a group of Kodak products with Kodak’s logo, name, or color scheme on them to shoot. One was an old cartridge of 35mm film - which I shot on a background, held in exactly the correct position by a powerful magnet under the background, with the film itself coming out of the cartridge. That photo was symbolic of how Kodak had gone broke - a dependence on repeat resale of consumable products that had worked great in the film era, but was hopeless in the digital-photo era in which memory cards are reused over and over. I then uploaded the package to a news photo agency.
The day Kodak filed bankruptcy, my photo of the 35mm film cartridge (below) ran in the New York Post - both accompanying the story and as a thumbnail on the front page of the paper’s Web edition. It also would run in the Web edition of California television station KSEE-TV.

It was my first work to run in a top-market daily.