Photo Journalism recce's and risk assessments

Photo Journalism Evaluation

Final Product – Photo Journalism

To start of the assignment we were asked to explore and take pictures and get used to using an SLR, we then had lessons on how to use the cameras and set them up correctly for different environments we was also taught how to frame a picture with the use of lines, this helped a great deal for our final project. When the time came to start our final project we had to research 3 different photographers both contemporary and classic to get a real understanding of every style of photography. Doing the research meant you could use inspiration from a photographer and also gain further knowledge on the techniques used to take the best possible picture.

Photojournalism was the hardest style I had chosen although its simply taking photos to tell a story. The photographers I had researched were a lot more explicit and crossed the line. They make issues aware that people don’t know about. In my opinion the photos are disturbing but I think they’re a great way to open peoples eyes to problems within the world. Whilst researching this style of photography I knew I couldn’t cross the lines that photographers like Eddie Adams had done, he documented photos to make a difference I decided I wanted to take pictures and let the viewer decide the story.

Like any other photography style I was capturing the moment. I headed to Manchester to find things that interested me and things that would interest other people. When taking the photos I had to consider things like lighting, I was using natural lighting so making sure the aperture, ISO and shutter speed are at matched with the lighting to create a natural photo. I intended to get a natural lit photo as I wanted everything natural, I wanted the actions of people to be natural and not set up so I felt having natural lighting would have been appropriate and if I wasn’t happy with the lighting I could later edit it in Adobe Photoshop. When taking the photos I had to consider being in people’s faces and invading privacy so I used a zoom lens so I didn’t bother anyone.  I didn’t like using the zoom I would of much preferred the original lens but because it was colleges property I could only take one lens. I felt the zoom was much harder to focus and the camera was heavier so keeping the camera steady was an issue.

Once I was happy with the photos I had taken I began to edit them in Adobe Photoshop CS6, I didn’t edit them because I wasn’t happy with the lighting, I edited them because I felt they needed a filter to help tell a story. I added a black and white filter and then put certain objects in colour on the image, I wanted people to create their own interpretation of the images. I found using Photoshop was easy and I have been using it for 3 years now but there’s always new things to learn on the software so doing these types of edits helps me gain more knowledge on Photoshop as well as photography.

To mount these photos I used 6 photos and put them in twos in a stairs kind of layout, this was a basic design for the layout.

I feel I didn’t put much time and effort into this style of photography because it wasn’t my preferred style. This style was a downfall to this assignment but I still managed to hand it in on time with paperwork up to the required standard and more.