Lecture Reflection: Lecture 5

Lecture 5: Picture Stories

“A picture is worth a thousand words”

A powerful picture is an idea that resinates with me as I’m sure it does many others. Think about how one might read a tragic news story with compelling images; does it tug on our heart strings as it would without a picture? This by no means lowers our capacity for understanding, empathising or relating through news, but we now live within the capacity that technology has given us to embrace story telling through pictures.

Through the lecture we were taken through a history of picture stories. From cave paintings that share the stories of a culture and their history, to the first photos and movies that brought picture storytelling to life. Of course this story telling has been swept up in the unique attributes of social media. Some statistics representing just how much social media plays in our visual story telling are as follows:

1.       14 million Instagram accounts created

2.       On average 60 pictures uploaded onto Instagram every second

3.       100 billion photos estimated to be on Facebook by mid-2011

4.       4.5 million photos uploaded onto Flickr daily

5.       6 billion photos on flickr (August 2011)

6.       Apple IPhone 4 is the most popular camera used on Flickr

Of course there is plenty of ‘rubbish’ that goes up in picture form on the internet but with how easy it is to take a photo, upload it, and watch it go viral, some real gems have swept through news and social media.  An example that comes to mind of just how powerful photo story telling can be, is the outrage that followed photos being released of American Soldiers at Abu Ghraib Prison.

WARNING: DISTURBING IMAGE

Lynndie England holding a leash attached to a prisoner, known to the guards as "Gus", who is lying on the floor.

Although news of what was happening at the prison was circulating well before the photos emerged, the public disgust did not reach full force until suddenly these photos were in our living rooms and spreading through social media. These photos were taken by the guards on their amateur cameras or phones but are very profound in the story they tell. When we look at what makes a ‘great photo’ from a photo journalist point of view, this picture has power in its story but does not necessarily holds characteristics that make it a fantastic shot. It is certainly true that “A picture has no meaning at all if it can’t tell a story” but power in visual story telling comes from both meaning and a well put together shot. 

Shown below is the winner of the 2012 Pulitzer Prize Breaking News Photography category. This photo was taken by Massoud Hossaini moments after a suicide bomber detonated a bomb at the Abul Fazel shrine in Kabul on December 6th, 2011. Tarana Akbari, 12, stands among her family and screams at the realization a bomb has gone off.



Pulitzer Prize Winner 2012, taken by Massoud Hossaini

What makes this a powerful photo? We can know the story behind this picture as it shows raw human emotion as Hossaini captured this horrific scene moments after it occurred. The ‘timing’ in place here makes for a very real photo.  The framing also centralizes the young girl, focusing the audience’s attention on her emotion.

After I travelled through India and Nepal last year I was very aware that I was seeing and taking part in a culture that has immense learning value and is worth sharing with ‘my world’. I also knew that the most powerful way to share it with my generation particularly was to visually capture their attention.  Therefore photos featured heavily in my travel blog to convey the message I endeavored to share.





The four youngest children at the Buddhist Children Home, Nepal

This is one of my favourite photos of some of the children I was working with in Nepal. For me, along with the stories I shared in my travel blog, it shows their environment, in all its bareness, but importantly how much they are a family and how well they look after each other. I took this photo on my IPhone, as I did will all of my photos from my trip, and I was able to frame and angle to photo well and not even have to think about good exposure or quality of photo.  I was also able to post the photo to my blog and Facebook on the day. This transfer between technologies is something that has transformed the photo journalism world, and it is ever expanding with not only phones but tablets, Ipads and more.

This new dimension of photo journalism is also impacted by its collaboration with online media. For example the idea that with an online news story, an entire gallery of photos can be added to enhance the story; perhaps even to tell it more effectively.  This also allows for photo’s to be used in a sequence so that they inform each other. Prior recognition of one photo can become a platform for explanation of the ‘story’ behind another, a good example of this is the Afghan Mona Lisa portraits, of Sharbat Gula taken by Steve McCurry.

We have previously looked at how news breaks in different mediums, the most newly found being social media. So how does social media affect visual story telling? It comes back to the concept of simultaneously uploading a photo as news breaks and often times it is pedestrians who see it first. It is not uncommon at all for news outlets to use photos and video footage taken on the camera phone of the average Joe, to back up their news coverage. When citizens are there when the new breaks, most all of them now have the tools to be citizen journalists and document the story visually.

Moving on from the power of still shots, we can look at video and the moving image to tell a story. Video, film and documentary have been utilised in many ways to tells stories both fictional and factual, personally one way that I find particularly interesting is film propaganda. I believe this has been especially powerful, whether for better or worse, in situations where a message is being sent out to the masses via this medium that in recent history is very new, strange and captivating.

The way video is used now in journalism has also transformed in recent history with technology progressing, becoming more accessible and movable, a Video Journalist can report, record and send back to ‘headquarters’ their story with pretty much a one man crew. And this is something to keep your eye on as, according to our School of Journalism, the video journalist program and how the industry is utilising this skill set; it is the way visual story telling is heading.

“If it makes you laugh, if it makes you cry, if it rips out your heart, that’s a good picture.”