In Dharamsala, India, almost three years ago, I was working with an American photographer on assignment for Elle magazine. We were doing a story on Tibetan refugees and that required us to visit refugee centers, homes of people we were interviewing, and temples.

Our last stop, though, was a Tibetan school, something we thought at the time would be integral to our story. We spent several hours at the school, interviewing and shooting, but it was toward the end of the day when walking by the window of a classroom, we heard sounds of children singing a Tibetan song.

Immediately, my photographer whipped out an audio recorder, held up a finger to her lips, and moved closer to the window.

“What was that about?” I asked her later. “Collecting audio,” she replied. That should have been a sign of what was coming, but I missed it.

Now, of course, journalists– no matter photo or text– are learning to add audio or video to their work, and are doing what my friend was practicing all those years ago.

I’m very appreciative of photographers, and I’ll almost never travel for a feature assignment unless the publication assigns a dedicated photographer to me. A great story can be absolutely worthless, sometimes, without good photographs.

I’ve always been a big believer in presenting a story in the best way possible. Until recently, that meant accompanying photography. But today, that can mean any number of things– it can mean audio slideshows, it can mean simple audio interviews, it can mean video, it can mean entire multimedia packages.

This doesn’t mean you have to be proficient in all those things. It simply means you have to think about them. I’ve been pitching my editors photography for years, even though I have little interest in professional photography. These days, I’ve started asking about multimedia elements too. If they need it, even if I can’t do it, I can always find someone who can.

Right now, no one really knows how much or even if freelancers are going to be called upon to brainstorm on these projects, but it’s a good time to start thinking about your work in terms of the bigger picture and how it fits in.