Lecture Four

"A picture has no meaning at all if it can't tell a story."
Eetu Sillanpaa

School Shooting Aftermath - Finland - Eetu Sillanpaa

Yesterday I had my fourth journalism lecture and it was about "Picture Stories". People have used pictures to tell stories for tens of thousands of years, from cave paintings right up until the present day. Pictures are still highly relevant in journalism. The early 1860s newspapers used line drawings to illustrate their stories and the first halftone photo published in a newspaper was in 1879 in New York's "The Daily Graphic". Today we have photographs, cartoons, diagrams, moving footage etc in journalism. Since technology has become more widespread, citizen journalists have become more common. Citizen journalism can take forms such as the mobile phone footage in the news from the London Bombings or more recently the amateur footage from the Arab Spring.

"Gun Play" by William Klein and "The Louisville Flood" by Margaret Bourke White

Jodi Beiber's photograph of Bibi Aisha and Steve McCurry's photo "The Afghan Girl"/"Afghan Mona Lisa"

Still Pictures:

- Framing

- Focus

- Angle and Point of View

- Exposure/Lighting

- Timing/Shutter Speed

- Capturing "The Moment"

"Black Saturday" - Alex Coppel

Moving Pictures:

- Framing

- Focus

- Angle and Point of View

- Exposure

- Timing and Editing

- Capturing "The Scene"

- Inclusion of Sound Dimension

Since photography has become digital, manipulation of photos has become widespread in the media, particularly in advertising and magazines. Here are two photoshop examples. Personally I think Taylor Swift looks a lot better (and a lot more human) in the original picture.

We were also shown this short Youtube clip made by Dove showing the transformation of a model with make up, hair styling, lighting and most crucially: photoshop. As it says, "No wonder our perception of beauty is distorted."

I really enjoyed this lecture because I'm interested in photography (making no pretence to be anything but amateur) and also because of the fact that it touched upon the digital manipulation of images.
As you can see from my other blog posts, I'm also interested in fashion, so I see plenty of retouched images and models who are too thin if I'm reading magazines or browsing fashion websites. Even though I know that images of models are Photoshopped, I do forget just how much of a difference it can make. I definitely think that your perception of what is normal can be seriously warped if you are being bombarded with images of women who are ranked in the top fifty supermodels in the world, not to mention all the make up and Photoshop.

"If it makes you laugh,

if it makes you cry,

if it rips out your heart,

it's a good picture."

Eddie Adams, winner of the Pulitzer Prize in photojournalism

"Burst of Joy" - Slava Veder