photojournalism.
As strange as it seems, I barely knew how to hold a camera when I first began journalism. I’d been used to relying on my computer or pen and paper to create a story instead of pressing a button. However, it is so important to be able to branch out, so that’s what I’ve done. Photojournalism isn’t necessarily my strong suit, but I am committed to improving every part of my craft. To be gifted in journalism is to be gifted in both telling stories with many words or none at all; photojournalism is essential to journalism. Here are some photo galleries that showcase my development as a photographer.
photos for stories.
around parkway.
around west.
other photography.
When I take pictures, I usually have the photography principles of leading lines and emphasis in mind. Though there are many other photography principles that pop up in my photography, I think the most about lines and emphasis; these are powerful elements that draw the viewer’s eye into certain elements of the photo, which can create a lasting impact.
For certain landscape pictures, I look for angles where I can properly and effectively utilize lines in a picture. For example, in the picture of an alleyway in St. Louis that appears in my “Beyond the statistics” multimedia, I used the winding alleyway as my focus and let that serve as the line that brings the viewer’s eye along the various buildings. In another picture, I use the lines behind my main subject to ease the viewers’ line of sight toward the main subject of the picture.
I also strategically use emphasis, especially in contrasting colors or creating a focus on a specific subject. For example, in the feature image of “Miseducation,” I surrounded the phone with pencils that looked alike in order to make the phone’s image starkly stand out against the background.
Color is a significant element of design and photography in general. When I take pictures, I like to use colors from the same palette and then a very different color to emphasize the main subjects in the picture.
Captions are very important to photography as well. Most stories — particularly News and Features — require three-sentence captions: the first sentence with the active description (what’s happening in the picture); the second sentence with the context of the picture; and the third sentence being the quote. Of course, I play around with this structure, especially when it comes to A&E stories when there aren’t always quotes, but the three-sentence caption is the hard-and-fast rule. In addition to making sure that I always utilize it correctly, I encourage my staff members to memorize and use it as well.
caption writing.
Click on the picture to see the caption that I wrote for each feature image.
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The Pathfinder also offers the opportunity for photo assignments. Way back when (more like two years ago, but it really does feel like forever ago!), photo assignments were requirements for every journalism student, no matter if they were yearbook or newspaper students. Last year, they became optional for photographers. This year, we decided to bring back photo assignments as optional, though this time, we would offer points for each photo assignment so that a staff member could potentially bring up their grade while continuing to contribute to the Pathfinder’s arsenal of photos. I’ve found that this encourages our staff members to go out and take more pictures in our school community, and grows not only our Pathfinder pictures, but the entire journalism program’s gallery of pictures as a whole.
There have been many feature images in the past where I’ve asked the writer(s) to change and instead implement photos into the story.
For example, I worked with two staff writers in changing a graphic to a collage of photos of Black students at our school in a great, in-depth Opinions on how stereotypes of Black students must be dismantled. During the editing process, they presented me with a graphic. Over the next few days, I worked with them in curating new ideas for feature images that would accurately capture the message they wanted to send in the story.
- Photo Assignments -
This new feature image shows a lot of diversity (not in race, which would probably be the first thing a person might think of, but when I look at this picture, I consider each of the subject’s faces and see how different they are from each other, yet complement each other) in thought, and gives so much more of an impact to both the title and the story, achieving this impact even with a simple composition of portraits.