Picture Story Reading

This week’s readings covered several important aspects of photojournalism.

The Picture Essay by Hurn and Jay focused on exactly the purpose of this class: telling a story or point through a serious of pictures. They offered advice on how to edit and group the pictures. Putting them in categories of overall, medium distance, interaction and detail pictures is a great way to figure out what pictures you still need or organize what you have. They also reminded photographers that the visual cliché is not the entire event. Telling the story is more important that providing that one extravagant ‘publishable quality’ photo. This is why visual note taking is such an important part in an in-depth story.

In reading Langton’s ideas on the relationship between a photographer and subject, I realized the importance and help we are to them as well as they are to us. Yes, they give us the material for a story, but we often provide comfort, or a simple ear to listen. He gave the example of the Rocky Mountain Times “Final Salute” story of a photographer accompanying the wife when she picks up the body of her Marine husband killed in battle. At the end of the night when the editors and photographers went to talk to the wife, she thanked them for allowing her to talk about her husband. Without compromising the story, we can help our subjects get through the tough times in their lives.

Chapnik’s reading focused on prosing a story. One of his main arguments was to not propose a story on an area to which you’ve never been. Too often we want to go to areas and tell stories we are sure are there, but in reality, may not be. Proposing requires the gift of being able to take criticism and being flexible on your story.