VISUAL REPORTING
The photojournalist uses the camera to give us pictures that provide information and insight about people, events and ideas. The photojournalist sees and portrays the world in visual terms. Good news and feature photos are truthful, informative, interesting and have significance or impact. They may be educational or entertaining.
The Picture Is Universal
Pictures tell our stories. They are universal language. Pictures extend our reach. They allow us to see events that have passed into history, to travel to places we will never visit, to experience the emotions of others. They communicate feeling, set moods.
Today’s picture-storytellers work for newspapers, magazines and television stations. Called photojournalists, they combine the skills of journalist and photographer. The news writer seeks to capture the essence of the event in words: the photojournalist uses the camera to capture the essence of the event in visual terms.
The photojournalist’s picture enables us to understand and emotionally identify with the event. By using scene or setting and the expression, gesture and body language of those in the picture, the photojournalist communicates with us at a personal level. Sometimes, a news photograph comes to symbolize the issues and the problems of a period in history. The good photograph can be described as interesting, informative, educational. It may be entertaining. The good photograph has impact; it has a message.
Reporting Visually
Clearly, the photojournalist has to be able to recognize the news and to freeze in visual form the news point. The photojournalist must have the talent and ability to portray events and ideas in “unusual visual terms.” Most important is the knowledge of human beings and how the live, work and play. That knowledge must be built on sensitivity, the capacity to identify with what is being photographed.
Helping the Reader
Every photo incorporates at least two aspects: content and pictorial treatment. For newspaper, the content must be significant. Pictorial treatment involves “training the eye and mastering the technical side of the medium in order to organize reality into a visually interesting photograph.” This process involves the photojournalist in selection – choosing what is significant, paring away the extraneous. Using light composition, camera angle and space, the photojournalist is able to help the reader to recognize the significant.
Concentrate on Subject
The starting point is internal – thinking, feeling and looking before the shutter is snapped. Know what it is your want to show, the experts say, and then examine what you have done with that in mind. Ask yourself, what do I want to print to say?
The Process
As does the news writer, the photojournalist moves through four steps in handling a story:
- Idea generation
- Planning, preparation
- Observation
- Writing
The photographer develops an idea or concept; decides on the appropriate lenses, speed, and aperture and selects locations from which to shoot; decides when to shoot, and then does the darkroom work that will enhance the story’s point. For a feature, the photojournalist moves carefully and deliberately through these stages. On a breaking news event, the thinking and the decisions come quickly, seemingly instinctively.
The Camera
Most photojournalist use the 35mm camera, a single-lens reflex (SLR) with a fast lens. The same lens is used for viewing the scene and exposing the film; what you see in the viewfinder is what you will see in the print. The camera usually has a built-in exposure meter that measures the light on the scene and allows the photographer to determine how to expose the film. Some cameras are automated so that the proper amount of light is a automatically let in.
Technology Rampant
Faster and faster film. Point and shoot camera. New cameras, new lens come every month. There seems no end to the advance in photography. Some of the most memorable pictures were taken with the simplest equipment, even with a shoebox with a pinhole. Some early equipment was so bulky and heavy it had to be carried by pack animals when early photographers went into the countryside to photograph.
The key element is obvious, the photographer. No mechanism has yet replaced the man or woman who is able to see clearly the faces and events of the times and who can transfer these insights to film. The photographer records the happenings of the day – accidents, fires, wars, birth and death.
Social Document
Some pictures do more than supplement the news story. They provide news insight, new ways of looking at the world. The photograph can capture a face or a scene with arresting impact.
Photo Essay
The photo essay or picture story is a series of pictures with a common theme that documents an event or tells a story about a person or a place. While single photo are effective, the series can reveal subtleties and make distinctions that one photograph cannot.
Usually, the picture story is built around the strongest single photo, the picture that describes or defines the theme. The photographer keeps this in mind while shooting, as well as the necessity to take pictures that will make the display interesting and exciting. Pictures are taken from a variety of positions. Close-ups that focus a single aspect of the subject vary the perspective. Called detailing, these close-in shots give the viewer an intimate relationship with the subject, and in some cases provide a view that would be difficult if not impossible otherwise.
The film is printed and the pictures cropped according to a layout that emphasize the theme and presents the photos in varying sizes and shapes. The theme photo is placed in a dominant area and is surrounded by supporting photographs.
