I love photojournalism, I might use that term broadly. It might not be always things that are a news item to others but the undisturbed documenting of an event, particularly involving people as subjects or sub-plots or situations raw and unscripted is a very powerful form of communicating language. Honestly I tire of those posed shots for the camera that merely document and say “I am here, because you can see me here smiling”, rather then “I am here, and this picture tells why without me having to say so in words or a text box below”.
I have a big camera and it goes “click” every time I take a picture, so it is a real challenge to get people in that “quite zone” where you see the picture later and say “I wonder what they were thinking”. I do not have a fancy mega zoom lens (only 28-80, for those that understand that) so I’m relatively close when shooting, with pocket cams with a 12x zoom used about half way might be comparable, it’s close, not as close as I used to be “in people’s face” when I had a small camera but that “click” startles the subject many times and so I only have one take to get it right. When people pose, as nice as it is sometimes to see everyone smiling it can come off in genuine or forced and just a documented shot at an event rather then the more art worthy photojournalism.
Some examples from carnival shoots I did that shows examples of each.
Same settings with the not posing (top) and subjects posing (bottom), which tells a better story without words?
Donors want to see conditions on the ground maybe even more then proof that their items were distributed. If you are willing to take the stuff up to a remote location in South America, Africa or a mountaintop village where you are they want to see what it is like, they are often busy people and do not have time to come along on such trips. These people will be impressed that you took the time and interest to take some pictures of the area and conditions the recipients are living in and tell a more genuine story or the trip then pages and pages of happy faces posing for the camera that honestly many donors are getting leery of as being “staged” photo-ops.
Conclusion: We need both, perhaps if you take a more journalistic one first i.e. a poor kid just received a Christmas gift package as he is in the element, click, and the moment is over then get one of them smiling showing you he’s happy for it to take to sponsors, putting a human face on the kid deed. Thus you have one spontaneous moment and one documented moment.
Journalism pictures at a rural village for a minority group. I had a old pocket cam for this trip, nothing fancy.
Documenting that we were there, and items got distributed.
Filed under: Basic, How To's, Intermediate
