Brief intro into Photojournalism

I guess you've gathered that this blog really doesn't have much structure (after all I've written part 2 of flash work, and still haven't created images to illustrate part 1 yet, which is why it isn't out). I now jump to the topic of photojournalism, an area where I'm rather active with.

The joy of being involved in a part-time journalism/photojournalism role is that the burden of deadlines isn't always looming. I've been exposed to this field for the last two years and it has been a good experience, assisting my self-development in photography.

However a distinction should be made between being a photographer and a photojournalist. The difference is subtle, but distinguishable. Let's use a parallel in terms of grammar. A photographer looks for shapes, textures, colour, the subject – essentially the capturing of nouns. The photojournalist looks to capture actions, a story – verbs. And this difference between nouns and verbs is that subtle feature between the two.

Capturing verbs isn't easy; some moments are spontaneous and could be missed if under- or unprepared. This of course adds to the pressure on delivering images that the editors can use for their stories. So what can be done to increase the chance of capturing these brief moments and also a narrative? I guess it comes back to one of my basic philosophies (and it was heavily repeated in the past post on Weddings): preparation.

Preparation here has to be meticulous if the event is of high significance. Let's take a protest as an example. The location has to be sourced and if there's going to be a march, then the planned route should be researched and then scouted for potentially good viewpoints. As with outdoor events, the weather will play a factor, and so the forecast should be looked up and that may determine what gear could be in your kit bag. Other things to consider is police presence. Major protests will of course have police presence, and if you're aiming to cover the events for publication then seeking a press pass will assist greatly. On early arrival for the event, make your presence known to the police and see if they have any pointers on potential spots for trouble – this could provide further opportunities for images.

The last part is liasing with the writer of the story (unless it happens to be yourself as well). If there is a particular take on the story, this may influence what types of images the editors might want to fit in with the writing. However this doesn't mean that the photographs have to all fit this particular angle. There may be an image that you capture that opens an entirely new direction for the article.

Once the images are captured, they then need a short descriptive line, known as a cutline. This essentially can be structured as follows:

[noun] [verb] [direct object] during [event] at [venue] in [city/ geographical location] on [day of the week], [date], [month], [year]. Reason for why or how this happened.

The images once captioned are either fed through an FTP, emailed or dropped into the office. Very little editing is ever done to the images (for the fear of misrepresention). The turn round time here varies from publication to publication from hours to days.

And there we have a glimpse into photojournalism.