What is photojournalism and what it the difference with other kind of photography?
Photojournalism is a type of photography that has purpose to report an event or moment. Photojournalism focus on telling the story truthfully and the content of the photography can not staged, altered or directed by the photographer.
They are several kind of photojournalism: News and events, features and portraits and sports.
Several characteristic of photojournalism are:
1. The photo would elicit emotional responses from the viewers.
2. It tells the story.
3. It draws attention and curiosity of viewers to read more.
4. It is not post processed in anyway except cropping, resizing and minor color correction.
Visual check list for photojournalism by Larry Nighswander (director of Ohio University School of Visual Communication)
Does the photograph have technical excellence?
- Sharp focus – Good Contrast – Correct color balance
Does the photograph have compositional creativity? (any of below)
- Dominant foreground, contributing background
- Introducing disorder to ordered situation
- Introducing color into a monochromatic scene
- Rule of thirds composition
- Framing
- Selective focus
- Reflection
- Panning
- Juxtaposition
- Decisive moment
- Linear perspective
- Silhouette
Does the photograph have any editorial relevance or merit?
- Is the photo active or passive?
- Is the photograph of something no one has ever seen before or unique?
- Is the photo style and the writing style consistent?
- Does the photo communicate quicker, stronger, better or more eloquently than a simple sentence could describe?
- Does the photo have visual content, or stop short at story elevation?
- Does the photo go beyond the trite and the obvious?
- Does the photo contain essential information to help the reader understand the story?
- Does the photo have enough impact to move the reader?
- Is the photo clean, interesting, and well-composed enough to stand on its own?
- Does the caption information answer who, what, when, where and why along with other required information (e.g. age and hometown)?
- Are both the photo and the caption information objective and accurate accounts of what happened?
- Is the photo mindless documentation?
- Does the photo communicate effectively? Photos should either move, excite, entertain, inform or help the reader understand a story.
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