"A picture has no meaning at all if it can't tell a story" (Eetu Sillanpää)
The fourth lecture focussed on factual storytelling with pictures, directly extending upon last week's 'text' theme to address the text's pictorial accompaniments.
Picture stories are everywhere; in newspapers, magazines, movies, television, online, advertising, smartphones - they surround us. From Indigenous cave stories to digital photographs, the history of the picture is long and involved. The idea behind images has changed substantially throughout their history - from a tool for communication for the illiterate to a visual device purely for aesthetics.
Pictures in journalism have evolved from painstaking line drawings in early newspapers and newsletters to the modern photograph or video, which can be uploaded online just as quickly as it can be shot. Along with speed has come quality, with images now so clear and realistic. And, alongside photography has come the process of editing. Photoshop and other digital manipulation programs have given a distorted perception of controversial subjects like body image and beauty. In the lecture we watched "Evolution", a video made by Dove that shows this shocking process:
Images are quite simple to use in online journalism. The editing process is eased by the use of online galleries where more than one picture can be used to help the storytelling process, unlike in print journalism where editors must spend endless hours finding that single perfect image to meet their tight space restrictions.
So, what makes a good picture?
Fundamentally there are seven or eight elements that make a photo great - framing, focus, angle & point of view, exposure (light), timing, capturing "the moment", the rule of thirds, and secondarily the act of editing which applies more to moving pictures or video than still raw photography. Moving images also have the sound dimension to consider.
Journalistically, images have manifested themselves in the form of newsreels, propaganda films, 24/7 newscycles, mobile phones and social networking, as well as the basic mediums of print and online.
Like the last lecture on text, my love of photography made this session extremely interesting. I love how one moment, one millisecond, can have such an enormous effect on a person, a community or the world. A picture tells a thousand words. The power of imagery is unequalled by any other medium.
"If it makes you laugh, if it makes you cry, if it rips out your heart, it's a good picture."
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