The Power of Photographs

(Source: flickr.com)

“Photography is a way of feeling, of touching, of loving. What you have caught on film is captured forever…It remembers little things long after you have forgotten everything…”

-Aaron Siskind-

Photojournalism in the world today is a fun and exciting job nevertheless at one point it is a demanding and dangerous profession that one can have. One may endanger his or her life mainly to those who were appointed to the war country. This is because they constantly risk their lives bringing the most up-to-date news to the country.

Then again the drawback of photojournalist is reported in the article. It is said that majority of the stories were modified by the editors. From stories to even pictures would be revised and amended by the editors because they are the ones who have the authority to show the readers what they want them to know and see. After all the hard work of photojournalist, their story may not turn out exactly the same in the newspaper or magazine articles.

‘’...It's him that I trust. Whereas in the media, we have editors, publishers, who are sitting at their desks with their own political or ideological views of telling the story’’ (Wade Goddard 2007).

Schirato and Yell (1996) points out that a narrative is a way of arranging meanings in the form of a story. Even though reports and/or story appear ostensibly nice and understandable at times, but not all information has the narrative that was written by the journalist. Stories were changed here and there because editor’s expectations are at times too high and the stories were not what they were expecting for.

Let’s take a minute to discuss about photography. Photojournalists are the people with incredible originality and creativity. According to Reep (2006), balance is a comparable visual ‘weight’ on both sides of a page or on opposing pages. This means that an ideal picture has its own balance hence as a photographer; setting up a spot and composition to capture one perfect picture is not as easy as you think. Furthermore, every picture taken has its own meaning and story behind it.

(Source: getselfhelp.co.uk)

The picture shown above is an example of how pictures could be interpreted differently and it is up to the viewers to create their imaginary. Therefore, it is said that photographs has the power to suggest diverse meanings.

References

Reep, DC 2006, ‘Technical Writing, Pearson’, NY, Ch. 6, pp. 133-172.

Schirato, T and Yell, S 1996, ‘Communication and cultural literacy: an introduction’, St. Leonards, NSW, Ch. 5, pp. 90-117.