Photojournalism

Photographs support a story. Words + pictures. Photographs tell the story on their own. The best photojournalism captures a moment in time. Good photos make you feel something.

The best photojournalism tells a story

Gordon Parks, Harlem 1948

What’s the story?

Another way to tell the refugee story

A picture can last forever “The president has been shot,” November 1963

One more photo from the Kennedy assassination:

Migrant Mother, by Dorothea Lange, California, 1936 One photograph can tell the story of an entire part of history Migrant Mother, by Dorothea Lange, California, 1936

I saw and approached the hungry and desperate mother, as if drawn by a magnet. She told me her age, that she was thirty-two. She said that they had been living on frozen vegetables from the surrounding fields, and birds that the children killed. She had just sold the tires from her car to buy food. There she sat in that lean- to tent with her children huddled around her, and seemed to know that my pictures might help her, and so she helped me. There was a sort of equality about it. (From: Popular Photography, Feb. 1960).

Mexico City, 1968

Behind the photo: John Carlos and Tommie Smith were banned from further competition by Avery Brundage. Carlos had his tracksuit top unzipped to show solidarity with all blue collar workers in the U.S. and wore a necklace of beads which he described "were for those individuals that were lynched, or killed and that no-one said a prayer for, that were hung and tarred. It was for those thrown off the side of the boats in the middle passage.” Smith later said, "If I win, I am American, not a black American. But if I did something bad, then they would say I am a Negro. We are black and we are proud of being black. Black America will understand what we did tonight.”

1972. Won the Pulitzer for the NY Times

Kim Phuc, the Napalm girl, at 40

Sudan, 1993

Photo ran in NY Times in March 1993 by Kevin Carter of South Africa; won the Pulitzer Prize for photography.

Sometimes photos represent sheer EMOTION

Some photos evoke emotion and memory in the viewer.

You must be able to write and shoot photographs – and, at best, shoot and edit video, too!

Taking Good Photos

Don’t put the person or the object in the middle Don’t put the person or the object in the middle. Know the rule of “thirds”

Rule of thirds: Makes photo more interactive and interesting

The intersections: where you want the eye to go

Adds perspective

Brings focus to the eyes

Proper composition makes these photos interesting

Documentary filmmakers almost always use the “rule of thirds”

And even every-day TV shots

Good portraits add atmosphere to tell support the story

The environment counts in a photo

Here, too

Environment!

Emotion makes shots compelling

What does this photo say?

Close, closer, closest

Your photo! Add a photograph to your profile. File it on time with your article You MUST take the photo yourself. Do NOT use a googled image, selfie etc. Must be horizontal, in focus and use the rule of thirds. Otherwise, no credit