All right, fine. I concede. Most of those are just completely random and meaningless. Some of them aren't even about pictures! These just serve to prove that a picture really can't have a value, per se. Two different people can look at the same picture and see it in a completely unique way. Most importantly, a picture can convey meaning. It may even be capable of telling a whole story to those who see it. In this way, pictures are vital to a good journalism story. This is what photojournalism involves; capturing a single moment that, in itself, contains exactly what the story is about. It's all about capturing "the moment", which some journalists will fly around the world to try and achieve. "The moment" is, in a sense, that single hit-or-miss opportunity that encapsulates the perfect vision of one's story. Photojournalists don't just want that, however; a good image has to have perfect framework, focus, angle, point of view, lighting and timing (shutter speed). That's not easy to do, but it really pays off when it hits the mark. Below are a collection of images I found that I feel brilliantly demonstrate these qualities that make a brilliant journalistic photograph.
Image Source: prisonphotography.wordpress.com
This photo is exemplary as an example of "capturing the moment". This is really not a shot you can get without an almost unnatural stroke of luck.
Image Source: timporter.com
Image Source: blog.photoshelter.com
Image Source: msubretort.org
This photo really captures a great solemnity. The raw emotion of this shot helps explain a great deal about the obvious story focus of war.
Another aspect of this lecture that really had me intrigued was the concept of fauxtography. What exactly is fauxtography? Essentially, it's fraudulent photography; photographs that aren't "real". This can be caused by a variety of things, ranging from simple "photoshopping" of an image to actually staging photographs for public use. A particularly thought-evoking example of this was shown in the lecture.
"No wonder our perception of beauty is distorted."
It's really quite difficult to attempt to find out the original source of this sort of editing. After all, this video makes it clear that there is indeed a solid definition of beauty out there. That said, it also conveys the message that the easiest way to replicate this definition of beauty, for whatever purpose, is literally to edit somebody into it. Evidently, it's more difficult to find somebody who fits the mould of beauty than it is to "make" somebody fit into the mould. Given how obvious that is, where did this interpretation of beauty start out? No matter the answer, an individual's beauty is determined by society. Society is not the source; it's the enforcer.
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