What is photojournalism?
No question is a dumb question! Photojournalism is a story-telling medium, mostly; one that combines images and writing to more thoroughly explore a given subject. There has always been hot debate about what is right and what is wrong at the interface of news reporting and photography, but that is a special case of photojournalism. Not all photojournalism falls into that category by any stretch. The debate, of course, is how ‘true’ to the scene are the photographs in question. I, personally, think that the debate is a silly one because any shooter, whether he or she digitally enhances an image or not, they clearly select out a scene to project to readers which is already baised by the act of selecting one scene over another. Each of the following images projects a very real part of the Rainbow River Aquatic Preserve in Dunnellon, FL. Both are ‘true’ reflections of the river; one shows the physical impact of large development, while the other shows the river in a more pristine state. In
Photojournalism is a particular form of journalism (the collecting, editing, and presenting of news material for publication or broadcast) that creates images in order to tell a news story. It is now usually understood to refer only to still images, but in some cases the term also refers to video used in broadcast journalism. Photojournalism is distinguished from other close branches of photography (such as documentary photography, social documentary photography, street photography or celebrity photography) by the qualities of
Timeliness — the images have meaning in the context of a recently published record of events.
Objectivity — the situation implied by the images is a fair and accurate representation of the events they depict in both content and tone.
Narrative — the images combine with other news elements to make facts relatable to the viewer or reader on a cultural level.
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Photojournalism is a branch of the field of journalism characterized by the use of images to tell a story. The images in a photojournalism piece may be accompanied with explanatory text, or shown independently, with the images themselves narrating the events they depict. Photojournalists can be found working all over the world, from the halls of the White House to the steppes of Asia, and they deal with a broad assortment of situations on a daily basis. Many major newspapers have a photojournalism staff, and others rely on photographs included in a press pool by freelance photojournalists. People have been using images to depict events for centuries, from rock paintings to engravings in major newspapers. The first big event to be captured in photography was the Crimean War, establishing the groundwork for the professional field of photojournalism. Initially, photographs were often used to accompany text stories to provide some variation and visual interest, but over time, images began
Simply put, it is telling a story with photographs. But its beyond that, like our writing brothers who tell stories with words, its conveying the truth. Its providing information, and its entertaining. A photojournalist isn t someone who just goes to an event and snaps a few photos from it, they give insight to the reader. Photojournalism became an integral part of our lives during World War II, when photos taken at the battle front came home to give the families at home a feel for what was happening. From National Geographic to your home town news paper, we all depend on photos to add a part to the story that connects us to the story. Why is Photojournalism important? We depend on photojournalists every day. More and more that photojournalist is a videographer instead of a photographer, but either involves telling the story visually instead of with words. Even though news sources like CNN get the news to us quicker, we still pick up the daily news and read the details. Photos make or
