The Great Picture Hunt

At the core of every good photograph is a story, a fact to which LaBelle enlightened to me. Yes photos in many cases can speak volumes more than words but in day to day pieces, I always tended to view photos as supplements to a greater story. So many qualities that apply to being a good journalist overlap with capturing powerful moments on film. As a journalistic community we should always be prepared and interact with the moment while maintaining a sense of separation from what we are reporting. What I am also quickly learning is that taking a picture is easy, encasing an entire being within one small film cell is an entirely different story.

Within the mediums of print or video, there is plenty of play room. Information can be gathered in large quantities and edited appropriately for size and content. When discussing composition, I was particularly struck by LaBelle's statement that "your individuality as a photographer is expressed by the decisions you make about the arrangement in the viewfinder". Not even snapshots of life are independent of bias. The perspective you choose can reflect one's own worldview. The lay-men's terms used have given me a great sense of ease concerning my upcoming task. For the first time I will have to be silent and interact with the subject in an entirely new way. To be compelling (though with my lack of expertise, I’ll settle for just being effective) you must in many cases present old information in a new way, just as in other forms of news. By remembering that what you publish will be viewed by real people who want to see themselves, or at least how what is presented is relevant to them.