Snapping at a runaway lion, rioters in Watts, and Cold War espionage figure Alger Hiss has been all in a day ‘s work for Herb Schwartz, whose photojournalism career began at the old New York Sun in the mid-1940s and continued at CBS. In addition to garnering many other honors, Mr. Schwartz will receive an award for his dedication and contributions to photojournalism for more than 50 years from the National Press Photographers Association this Saturday in Portland, Ore.

Mr. Schwartz was the Sun’s youngest photographer and earning about $96 a week when he snapped an exclusive shot of Hiss on the day he was arraigned on perjury charges stemming from accusations he had spied for the Soviet Union. On a rainy day in December 1948, Hiss pleaded not guilty to two counts of lying under oath in federal court in Manhattan and was freed on bail. A huge crowd of photographers was gathered in the pressroom at the courthouse waiting for Hiss. Mr. Schwartz wandered into the lobby and saw a marshal he knew, who told him the court appearance was over and that Hiss was headed to the subway.

With a couple of flashbulbs in his pocket, Mr. Schwartz jumped the turnstile to board the IRT train Hiss had just entered. As the lens of his camera began fogging up, having come from outside into the warmer air of the subway, Mr. Schwartz prepared his shot. Hiss stared ahead impassively. Seated next to Hiss was a man reading a newspaper with a large Hiss headline and photo. “It was like you weren’t even there,” Mr. Schwartz recalled of his well-known image.

In the 1950s, Mr. Schwartz went on to work at CBS, at first as a live television cameraman on “The Perry Como Show,” which featured such guests as Frank Sinatra. Since the later 1950s, he has covered stateside events, world leaders, and numerous presidents for CBS News; in 1962, he took cover from gunshots as a CBS news cameraman assigned to cover the war in Vietnam.

Not all his perilous assignments were overseas. Mr. Schwartz photographed riots in Watts and Harlem during the 1960s, as well as a lion, Ponto, that escaped on the opening night of a Ringling Bros. circus at Madison Square Garden. Mr. Schwartz climbed atop a phone booth in the lobby to photograph Ponto’s capture.

His memories from working at the old Sun include seeing Edwin Land come in to give a demonstration of his new Polaroid camera. But on January 3, 1950, Mr. Schwartz rode up a back elevator to the second floor to pick up the day’s photo assignments and did not see any. He was told to look in the composing room, adjacent to the newsroom, where he saw the following day’s headline: “The Sun is Sold.”