AHPR2033

PRODUCTION
Mr. WTKS
AND
PUBLICATION
WEEK 7: PHOTOGRAPHY
• Photographs tell stories and like
news and feature articles, they
must be clear and focused in both
content and technique.

• Photos convey both information

and emotion.

• Often more power than written

word.
 BASICS OF A GOOD
PHOTOGRAPH
• Like words and graphics, pictures in journalism must tell a
story or help explain a story they illustrate. To do so, the
photo must have a clear message, conveying information
and emotion.

• Photojournalist try to convey information quickly, relying

on the simple , compelling centers of interest and
uncluttered backgrounds that add power to
photojournalism.
FIVE PHOTOJOURNALISM FLUBS

Poor image quality

No center of interest
No people
No action
No identification
 Photos that are too dark or too light
won’t get any better hen published on
low-quality newsprint.

POOR Particularly bad are those that are dark

IMAGE – dot gain on halftone reproduction
turns dark photos into inky blobs in
QUALITY print.

Truly blurry pictures can’t be fixed and

must be discarded.
• This photo is dark and out of focus.
 NO CENTER OF INTEREST

Editors look for simple, compelling images that make strong

statements. Viewers should be able to draw meaning from the image in
two seconds.
Cropping may be necessary to establish this ‘poster effect’. In fact,
many photos need cropping to be suitable for publication.

Editors as well as photographers, should remember the rule of thirds

for composition.
• There is too much going on. The viewer's eye is not drawn to one
specific place.
 NO PEOPLE

• News is about people doing things.

• Most editors reject photos of objects, buildings,
streets, sunsets and scenery, occasionally making
exceptions for travel packages or cute animals.
 NO ACTION

• If journalism is about people doing things, then images ought to be

of people doing things.
 NO IDENTIFICATION

• Every recognizable person in a photo needs to be

identified in the caption using first and last name
and some kind of further identification, such as
tittle, address or hometown.
 CLUES THAT YOU’RE DEALING
WITH AMATEUR PHOTOGRAPHS

• People stand in the middle of the frame and stare at the camera.
• People look directly into the camera with red eye caused by direct
flash.
• People look directly into the camera while shaking hands and
passing a certificate or a check.
• Background distractions cause twigs or cords to grow out of a
person’s head.
Picture shows signs of obvious manipulation, with blotches showing efforts to
enhance areas of light, shadow and other elements.

Picture provides a confused message with no clear center of interest.

Subjects in the frame are too far away, obscuring faces and details.
 HOW TO WORK WITH
A PHOTOGRAPHER
1. Know who you’re working with.
• Wildlife vs Studio photographer
1. Always discuss the story with the photographer.
2. Discuss what you’d like to see.
3. Listen to the reactions and ideas of the
photographer.
4. Shoot lots of film.
5. Photographers like to be appreciated not just for
their compositional and technical skills but for
their ideas.
 ROLES OF PHOTO IN
PUBLICATION
• As a visual communication in
publication.
• Can inform, convince, evoke an
emotion.
• As a subsidiary element to a main text.
• We use it to document important
events or moment.
• Can perform functions that text simply
cannot. (e.g. it is virtually impossible
to describe a new fashion using just
words.)
 CHARACTERISTICS

i) Credibility
• Photographs are image of reality and not the real thing.
• We believe something when we see it with our eyes, and so we
believe photographs.
• Today-credibility is strained –photography is easily
manipulated.
• Photographs-can be altered overlaid.
• Cannot differentiate between the original and doctored imagery.
ii) Can be troublesome
• Images remain static over time.
• Viewers tend to bring their own interpretations to the
photographic image.
This woman used photoshop to convince her family that she went on A
six-week vacation in east asia
 PHOTOGRAPHIC APPROACHES

• Bleed: any portion of a printed image that extends beyond the

edge of trimmed sheet.

• Bleeds are most commonly used in advertising and on covers.

• Full bleed: a photography or artwork extends beyond all four
edges.
• Duotones
• Duotone images are like CMYK images, but instead of using four
pre-determined colors to reproduce your image, they use two colors of
your choice.
• CMYK refers to the four inks used in some color printing: cyan,
magenta, yellow, and key (black).
• High-contrast photography
• A high-contrast photograph purposefully includes strongly
contrasting elements.
• In black-and-white photography, a high-contrast shot will have
relatively few gray tones, but lots of strong blacks and whites.
• A high-contrast color photo might have bright, almost iridescent
elements cast against deep, dark shadows, or a single red tree in a
forest of green.
 THE LAST WORD –
WRITING CAPTIONS
• Keep it short: Concise and clear.
• In an informal manner: more
conversational.
• Tense is largely a matter of your
stylebook and the content of the
photo itself: present tense.
• Be clear: clear the doubt of the
content.
• Directional information is important, but if identification is obvious
without it, don’t use it.
• Mugshots get straight identification.
• When a caption is written singly, it is best to place it beneath the
image.
• Research shows that readers track first to the visual, then to the
head, then the caption and finally copy.
Avoid justified text alignment in the picture captions.
 Try to break lines by sense and meaning. Example on the right looks tidier but it is harder to read.

Sans serif type looks much better for picture captions, especially when placed directly on the picture.
Avoid positioning picture captions above the pictures.
 TUTORIAL TASK
• Form a group of 3
• Based on the FIVE (5)
Photojournalism Flubs, snap 5
different picture that avoid those
flubs.
• You may present it later during the
class.
THE END