Comparing Photography to Writing... It's all journalism

Gretchen Pressley

The first thing David LaBelle mentions as crucial for a photographer to have is curiosity. Later on, he mentions needing a story-telling ability. In this way, I think that all journalism is alike. You can’t be a good writer or reporter without being curious, or without wanting to share stories with the world. Whether it’s searching for the story by taking a picture or trying to answer questions by writing a story, journalism is about satisfying the curiosity of our audience. However, LaBelle goes on to compare photography to hunting – a semi-fathomable comparison since you should “stalk” your subjects in a way. However, I would hesitate to think of my subjects as victims, though I haven’t seen how much of a mess I, a writer not a photographer, could make of photographing someone.

I also liked LaBelle’s suggestion to stop and consider why we like the photographs that we do. Just as writers are encouraged to think about other’s stories and examine what made their articles so good, we should remember to look at photojournalism the same way. This can only improve what we take pictures of and the quality of those pictures. I only wish I’d been able to see the pictures he put in his article. They were kind of obscured and didn’t really copy very well. Luckily, we also got to browse through David Snider’s gallery.

Another point mentioned in the article was taking notes and jotting down when you have a story/photo idea. That’s a great way to preserve spur-of-the-moment creativity, but I also think that, as reporters, we need to begin building up our memory muscles as well. To write descriptive captions and stories, we need to be super observant and also clearly remember details that other probably would not.