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The types of Photographs?

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February 21, 2003

Photo-Journalism:
Sometimes also called "editorial" photography, these are the types of photographs commonly found in magazines and newspapers made to support a written story, although the photographs can sometimes stand on their own. Compared to photographs for advertising, studio, or portraiture, these are generally made with using less equipment (especially lighting), are intended to capture reality (people, places, things and activities). Available lighting should be used if at all possible. They also, in general, should *not* be posed and most definitely should not be "staged." I limit myself in this mode to stopping activity to freeze action at a decisive moment, and only when absolutely necessary. With newspapers and magazines, integrity of the imagery is paramount. Lose that, and the integrity of the story, its author and the publication that prints it is also lost. This is the stuff of great controversies and legends surrounding some famous photographs from some famous photo-journalists. If you crop one, do it very carefully so as not to eliminate anything that would change or shift a viewer's interpretation about the reality of the situation. It should only eliminate extraneous elements that would distract a viewer from the reality that was recorded. Accusations of cropping and retouching intended to tell a story different from what is actually happening are also the stuff of legend surrounding some famous photographs (a famous photo of Albert Schweizer comes to mind).

Now add "people" to the front of it, which I haven't seen done before, and my educated guess is that the principle subject material is humans to capture some or all of the following:
a. who they are,
b. what they do,
c. where they do it,
d. when they do it,
e. how they do it, and
f. why they are doing it.

If I were given this as an assignment with no further definition, my approach would be making photographs that capture as much as this list as possible in photographs that stand on their own and do not require a story line to go with it. It's not possible to show the "who" by name unless it is a well-known public personality, but the photograph can capture elements such as profession, pastime/hobby, social class, personality, etc.

-- John

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February 22, 2003