What Does a Photojournalist Do?
Photojournalism is the communication of news through photographs. These images tend to appear in print newspapers and magazines as well as online media sites and microblogging platforms. A picture is worth 1,000 words and can instantly enhance the story that a news article communicates to its readers.
However, photojournalism is more diverse than that. It’s going to city council meetings week after week, snapping pictures of a community’s new construction project, capturing a farmers market, or doing street photography in the middle of a protest. It’s a rewarding and challenging field. Use these tips to survive and thrive in photojournalism, whether you’re a freelancer submitting to Reuters or on staff for the Washington Post. Photojournalism still plays a very important role in documenting stories that need to be told, and despite more and more publishers and broadcasters using user submitted photos, many of the photos you see in news stories were taken by a professional. As technology changes and the consumption of media changes, photojournalists will find ways to support through their careers in new and interesting ways. Why is photojournalism such an important part of the media? Whether you know his name or not, when you think of the American Civil War, you think of Mathew Brady’s images of battlefields. Dorothea Lange’s photo Migrant Mother is the iconic image of the Great Depression. War photographers like Robert Capa witnessed some of the worst conflicts of the 20th century, and when you imagine the end of World War II, the first image that comes to mind is often Alfred Eisenstaedt’s image V-J Day in Times Square. |
Additional Resources about Photojournalism
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Journals
During Digital Photography we will be analyzing and writing about current photography used in photojournalism.