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, and in some cases to video used in broadcast journalism. Photojournalism can fall under all subjects’ of photography but the image needs to be news wordy to end up being published.
Photojournalism is the process of story telling using the medium of photography as your main story telling device. While a journalist will use their pen and paper to tell stories, a photojournalist will use their camera to capture the visual representation of a story.
Most of us are familiar with the old adage “a picture is worth a thousand words”. Well this is the theory behind photojournalism. News publications are willing to pay top dollar to those photojournalists who can capture the most dramatic images on film or their CCD chip.
Pictures of Photojournalism should have a meaning to the viewer. The meaning can be further explained by relevant captions and a description of the general context.
Nonetheless, there is the saying that a picture is worth more than a thousand words.
This is especially true for great pictures that are not only drawing in the attention of the viewer but are able to encourage to see the story behind the picture.
The story is what “sells” the photograph and conveys the emotion. It helps the viewer to connect with the protagonists and see further than what is clearly visible.
There are different styles when it comes to telling a story in Photojournalism. Some photojournalists prefer to work on complete series and projects. Rather than having a single image that tells the story, they like to develop a story throughout the series of their pictures.
Sometimes, photojournalists also write the accompanying text themselves.
As You can see, a photojournalist is more than a photographer. He is not only there to picture the scene, he is a storyteller. Not only through the picture itself, but also with the help of written text.
Purpose of Photojournalism
The goal of photojournalism is to show the world and its stories to the average person in this world. Long before rolling film and the television as a medium where established, it was very difficult to find information on current events or stories about other parts of the world.
There were newspapers, but written text alone isn’t that engaging and in a way not as easily accessible as pictures. When reading about these stories, there is a lot of room up for interpretation and it demands a heavy involvement of the reader.
A photograph, on the other hand, can be understood by everyone. The best photojournalistic photographs take people to different places and the viewer is able to relive the events, that unfolded in front of the photographer.
Though its original purpose has very good intentions in showing an unfiltered world, to the persons that are not able to travel themselves, we also have to account, that from its very beginning, photojournalism has been used to propagate certain opinions or views.
There are two types of photojournalism:
The first type is where an image is used to illustrate a story. Many feature journalists work closely with photographers and commission them to produce images that will be published with their articles. There is no limit to how many images used. This is usually the photo editor decision. The second is where an image is used to tell a story without any words. One single image may be used or as many as ten images are often used in magazines. If you can write – do so; it will be an advantage when you submit some images.
Ethics in Photojournalism:
Photojournalists often travel to conflict zones, disasters or other areas that are struck by misery and misfortune. Traveling to these areas with the purpose of taking pictures opens up a lot of questions regarding the ethics of photojournalism.
Often times, photojournalists are accused to exploit the distress of others, to benefit for themselves, rather than helping them directly. Although the photojournalists may not be directly helping the individual, I strongly believe that the photographs are still one of the most powerful mediums to raise awareness and indirectly help the people in need.
It does seem a bit harsh, but without these pictures and the impact they are enforcing, the rest of the world would never hear their stories. Without being aware of the suffering, there would be little interest in changing their situation and helping them.
News articles also don’t have the same impact without some accomplishing photographs. To be really affected by the suffering of others, we need to see the immediate situation. Emotions are the strongest instrument in addressing people that are able to help.
To address politicians that are able to intervene and the population to raise money. Putting the people that are suffering on a display might not be the most ethical thing, but it is the most effective way to bring attention to their dire situation.
Working in an emergency area requires the photographers to be aware of the ethical conflicts they are facing. They need to have a strong mindset to not be let down by their own emotions, when in the middle of a conflict zone and to be able to deliver great photographs. In addition, they need to be aware of the backlash that they might be facing, either by the public opinion or by some political groups, that disagree with the image that the photojournalist is sharing.
Rules in Photojournalism:
Photojournalism can have a real impact on politics and the public view. Therefore it comes with a lot of responsibilities.
There are a lot of rules attached to photojournalism when it comes to the best practice. Apart from the typical rules in photography to create compelling pictures, photojournalism has its own set of rules, to enforce their legitimacy and establish trust.
Photojournalism should always be seen as the objective view. With the photographer having an active influence on the scene, it is obvious that there is always a subjective view to a degree.
To establish this objective view, there are a few rules that should be followed in photojournalism.
Here You can see some principles of photojournalism. To make it short, I filtered out the photography related ones and focus on the rules, that are more about the moral of photojournalism.
Identify Your subjects
In Street Photography, it doesn’t matter who Your subjects are or what their background is. What is more important is the single picture and which story it tells. It isn’t important if the story reflects the real situation or does tell something that hasn’t been there. Street Photography is not about the objective truth, it is about telling a story and the subjects are only anonymous props.
In Photojournalism, there is a different standard. The story that is told should be as close to the objective truth as possible. If a person becomes the main subject in a photojournalistic work, then it becomes increasingly important to know their name. The name does add some legitimacy to the picture and the story that it tells. In addition, the photojournalist should also ask for more background information. This helps to understand the context of the photograph and the people that are in it.
Be Candid
Photojournalism is about telling real stories. Those stories can be told the easiest when the photographer simply captures what is happening in front of him. Obvious posing or re-enacting is something that should be left to Hollywood.
A photojournalist should aim to get his pictures candidly and if he needs a posed portrait for a series, he should state that the photograph is not candid.
Have Guts
To get unique pictures, the photojournalist has to enter a world, that would leave most people too afraid to enter. He has to have the guts, to overcome his own fears and get close to his subjects. Not be afraid of any repercussions and be determined to tell an outstanding story.
Aside from these principles, there are also other rules of photojournalism that have been established to keep the credibility of the photographs.
Post-Processing in Photojournalism
One of the most important rules is that photo manipulation should absolutely be avoided. Since the pictures are meant to show real scenes, any manipulation does break this goal.
The more difficult part is to determine which kind of post-processing already can be coined as manipulation. No picture, whether today or even in the film era is 100% pure. They are all edited in some way or another. Sometimes it is just a different crop and other times there is a little dodge and burning. Those are very basic editing techniques and don’t really change the content of the image, but rather the appearance.
The line is clearly overstepped when the picture has been manipulated in a way that it does affect the content. For example, if You are using the clone & heal tool, even if it is just to brush away some dirt, or unpleasant objects in the background.
To not risk any manipulation allegations, keep the post-processing minimal and rather try to get the image perfectly in-camera.
Recent Tendencies
If You are following the news, there has been a change in how photojournalism is perceived and how it does reach the news. Although one could argue, that this has been going on since the beginning of photography, photojournalism is often misused and instead of trying to show the objective truth, it is often a booster to push one’s agenda.
This misuse and propaganda style spread of these pictures isn’t new. What is new is, that the content doesn’t even really matter and that the visuals of the images are more important than their message.
Instead of presenting a story, news outlets are out hunting for the most dramatic and emotional pictures. Again, this is not to say that this has been going on forever, but it has reached an extreme, that it is very difficult to take the news seriously nowadays.
They are more focused on creating the most buzz, instead of informing people.
The Internet and additional sources of information might have facilitated this trend, as it puts some added pressure on the established news outlets. On the other hand, the Internet also offers some other sources of photojournalism.
I doubt that this trend can be stopped and the news will always be going for the more extreme and emotional stories, rather than trying to portray some objective information.
Nonetheless, Photojournalism is still very alive. It is different and not so much positioned in the mass media as it was some decades ago. The purpose also has shifted slightly. Has photojournalism been more focused on spreading information, photographers are more focused on the story part when creating a complete series.
Final Remarks
Photojournalism might not be in the great spotlight anymore compared to the early 20th century, where there weren’t many sources of information. Photojournalism was a medium, that was able to convey the stories of the world much more directly than any written news article was able to.
Through Photojournalism, people got direct access to these events and didn’t rely on an author.
Photographs are a much more direct source and ideally, they are also more objective.
Although the recent trend for more sensational photographs in news doesn’t promote the true meaning of photojournalism, it doesn’t mean that this genre is less important or on a decline. It has changed and rather than presenting pure information, Photojournalists are becoming more like visual storytellers themselves.
I hope this answers Your question:”What is Photojournalism” and shows the importance of this genre.
