Week 12: Photojournalism: The best of both worlds.

Question 1: Find a journalistic news story from any newspaper or magazine and answer the following questions:

For starters, a photojournalists main objective would have to be identified first. A photojournalists objective is to "uncover reality"- that is, to present truth to its viewers (Ratavaara, 2009). In relation to Week 10's topic (cyborgs), a camera for a photojournalist is like an extension of their vision, thus their main goal is to transfer what they see and disseminate that image to a wider audience.

Image taken from: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/in-pictures-20166740

 
a) Why did you choose this news over others?

I have chosen this news over others because just from observing this photojournalist image we are able to easily understand without the needs to read the description. The picture above showing the deprived environmental condition even the human (looking at the boy closing his nose) showing that he even barely able to withstand the situation. I have also chosen this particular news because it successfully captured my attention wanting to know more about this news in particular and anything to do with the environmental concern always intrigues me.

b) Is the narrative component of the story necessary or is the picture enough to express the intended message of the news?

Both are actually important this is because the audience assumption might not be certainly true so the narrative component of the story is necessary to support the intended message of the photographer.

For example one of the most widely known photographs, which is Kevin Carter's famous powerful images depicting the plight of a Sudanese child crawling towards a United Nations Food camp and the vulture that was eying it to be its next prey. Can you tell the message just through the picture? No right? As it could have been a scene from a movie or a photo-shoot? So a description is needed to know the message behind the image. Although a good photojournalistic should be able to portray a story in a single image, it is still impossible to know the whole 'truth' by just capturing an image without any narrative component.

 From the surface, it may seem like photograph has no right or wrongs. But, when you're dealing with an audience, adhering to the age long belief that unless its art, photographs are meant to depict reality (Ratavaara, 2009), it is a completely different issue. As there are a wide array of truths that people aren't aware of as some of them are too gory or seemingly doesn't fit in our world, brings about a set of codes, ethics that photojournalists are supposed to adhere to. "Supposed" is used here because like the saying, "all rules are meant to be broken"

According to Warbuton (1998), "typically the viewer does not have the detailed information about the conditions under which photojournalistic images were taken. Minimal information is usually carried in caption, accompanying text, or else implied by the context of presentation". In other words, clearly many photographs have the potential to be misleading about what was going on, so it is important that the context of presentation communicates directly through captions, accompanying stories, etc. So presenting photographic illustration is acceptable, provided that you make clear from the context, or explicit in the caption that is what you are doing.

c) Did the picture and writings capture the "truth" of the event?

In relation to the photojournalist image I have chosen above, the image was accompanied with a caption "With the end of the rainy season, Sierra Leone's worst outbreak of cholera in nearly 15 years has finally begun to recede. The crisis has focused attention on the dire living conditions in the slum areas of Freetown, where the disease hit hardest." Reading this caption has helped me to understand the news in more clear depth knowing the 'truth' from the caption itself.

To end this entry, I will end with a quote; According to Warburton (1998), but they (photographer) can carry a distinctive kind of evidence, and they can put us into a closer relationship with their subject-matter than any other kind of still pictures. This meaning what the photographer ‘eyewitness’ implies by virtue of its display through their photojournalist images accompanied with minimal information has evidently support their message which has guide us to their interpretation that they wished to convey to us as the audience.

References:

Chris, W. H. W. (2010). Analyzing Visual Communication. BA in Professional Communication Reader. Published by University Brunei Darussalam.

Ratavaara, N. (2009). Ethics in photojournalism. Finland: GRIN Verlag.

Warbuton, N. (1998). Electrical photojournalism in the age of the electronic darkroom. In Kieran, M. (ed), Media ethics (pp.123-134). London: Routledge. 

Week 11: Information Graphics: Who says data and graphs must be boring?

Question 1: Look at the following information graphic broken down into a series of 4 images and answer the following questions: 

The original photograph is called “Skull with cigarette, 2007” by Chris Jordan. It has a caption below the photogtaphs which reads: “Depicts 200,000 packs of cigarettes, equal to the number of Americans who die from cigarette smoking every six months”. Why didn’t the photographer just present the information in numbers? Why explain the statistics in graphical form?

First and foremost, information graphics, according to Lester (2006), is a “visual display” that comprises of data which is either tabulated or structured into diagrams aided by a text in order to tell a story to its audience (p. 176). Thus, according to this definition, an information graph has a narrative. Examples of information are line graphs, bar graphs, pie charts, etc.

According to Petterson (1993) “information graphics are informative and may be entertaining and attention-getters as they aid communication by enabling better understanding and comprehension; improving readability and increase retention in a way that they ‘provide the reader with a rapid and easily grasped overall view of a message and are therefore highly suitable as in introduction to and summary of a subject (p. 173)”.

In other words, presenting information just simply in numbers might not be as effective as if it is presented visually for example in this case graphical form. Explaining the statistics in graphical form has made us vision a clearer correlation/relationship between data’s. “Information graphics provide the reader with a rapid and easily grasped overall view of a message and are therefore highly suitable as an introduction to and summary of a subject (Petterson 1993, p.173)”. Therefore, graphical form is a simpler version and made us visualise of what the main clear information in a more efficient way.

In order for the viewer to understand the statistics or the main important message it is important to not neglect any information. In this case, referring to the photograph above it has a caption below the image that reads “Depicts 200,000 packs of cigarettes, equal to the number of Americans who die from cigarette smoking every six months”. This is the most important message that is trying to give to the reader of what the photograph is about.

Relating back to the entry post I have written on Week 4 lecture topic on Visual communication, (Lester, 2006) state “we are becoming a visually mediated society. For many, understanding of the world is being accomplished, not through words, but by reading images. Words are easily forgotten, but pictures stay in our minds.” Therefore by presenting the information just in numbers might not as effective as it is visually presented.

To sum up, the main answer why didn’t the photographer just present the information in numbers but chose to explain the statistics in graphical form because it is much easier to understand rather than to use texts or numbers in much more complicating way that may confuse us. Thefore it is much more preferable to use graph to help visualise in trying to explain a piece of information. Nowadays, with advancement technology graphs are able to present visually-attractive and attention grabbing through the use of colours, pictures, icons/or shapes to represent variables.

"Information graphs gives the best of both worlds: it uses words to describe important data and uses pictures to appeal so that readers could remember the information better." - (Chris Woo, Lecture Powerpoint presentation)

References:

Chris, W. H. W. (2010). Analyzing Visual Communication. BA in Professional Communication Reader. Published by University Brunei Darussalam.

Chris Woo Lecture Presentation

Lester, P.M. (2006). Visual communication: Images with messages (4th ed.). Belmont, CA: Thomson Wadsworth. 

Pettersson, R. (1993). Visual information (2^nded) (pp. 167-174). New Jersey: Educational Technology Publications.