Tag Archives: photojournalism

What Makes A Story Successful in Photojournalism? *Revision*

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Project Proposal

Topic: What Makes a Story Successful in Photojournalism?

By exploring photojournalism and visual storytelling, these two disciplines can potentially aid in how individuals share their stories in various new media platforms, which can offer insight in what makes a successful story. I intend to introduce three types of images from the blog Humans of New York and Storycorps that successfully captures the narrative of photojournalism and how it presents an opportunity to give individuals a voice. 

For this project, I will examine the blog Humans of New York by Brandon Stanton, a blog that shares stories while offering a new light on photojournalism and cultivating a new type of visual experience and StoryCorps, a nonprofit that provide Americans of all backgrounds and beliefs with the opportunity to record, share, and preserve the stories of our lives. I will view 3 photos from Humans of New York and 3 videos from StoryCorps that I find visually captivating and content that sheds light on the individual in an effort to chart what makes a successful story.

In this project, I will explain the following:

  1. How can you successfully tell your story?
  2. How does reading or watching a story transforms an individual?

Other elements to explore:

  1. Create a image similar to Humans of New York with a person and a quote about their life and post on Instagram and Twitter.
  2. Compare my attempt to try to create a image similar to Humans of New York with a success image from Human of New York, the image will be tracked on Instagram and Twitter via those networks analytics.
  3. A blog post on my personal blog to share the image and write a reflection piece.

 

Definition*

 

Photojournalism-is a particular form of journalism (the collecting, editing, and presenting of news material for publication or broadcast) that employs images in order to tell a news story.

Storytelling-is the conveying of events in words, sound and/or images, often by improvisation or embellishment

Visual storytelling-

Success-the accomplishment of an aim or purpose.

Image- a representation of the external form of a person or thing in art.

 

Multimodalities:

WordPress Blog, Instagram, Twitter, Prezi

Topics and Projected Timeline:

Week of the 15th 

Explain what is photojournalism and visual storytelling.

A.) History of photojournalism and visual storytelling, the new technologies within the world of new media and the platforms.

B.) Write out the history and mission of Humans of New York.

C.) Explain its best practices and strategies that are successful

D.) Select three images from Humans of New York

  • Examine the photos, critique the photos using the visual literacies guidelines
  • Discuss the process of this via online journal
  • How did the image and content successfully tell the story

Week of the 22nd

A.) History of photojournalism and visual storytelling, the new technologies within the world of new media and the platforms.

B.) Write out the history and mission of Storycorps.

C.) Explain its best practices and strategies that are successful

D.) Select three images from Storycorps

  • Examine the photos, critique the photos using the visual literacies guidelines
  • Discuss the process of this via online journal
  • How did the image and content successfully tell the story

Week of the 29th

A.) Create a comparative analysis of Humans of New York and Storycorps

B.) Pros and Cons

C.) Prospect

  • Find someone to try and successfully create a photo similar to Humans of New York and shared to Instagram and Twitter
  • The image will be tracked daily on Instagram, I will also use hashtags to help circulate the image on Instagram and on Twitter.
  • Perhaps embed this image and write a blog post on OpenLab

Week of the 6th

A.)Explain why it is important to create  successful story in photojournalism

B.) Write a reflection on the process of creating the image, was it successful or not?

  • What would I do different?
  • What other platforms should I have used?
  • How should I promote the image?
  • Reviews on the image from classmates
  • Was it hard to circulate the image?

 

Deliverables

  1. Analysis of Humans of New York and three images
  2. Analysis of Humans of Storycorps and three images
  3. A image created by me that mirrors Human of New York, this will be on Instagram on my personal account because I have a decent number of followers
  4. A comparative analysis between the two sites.
  5. A reflection of my success or failure with creating an images
  6. A recommended guideline TBD
  7. The end-result will be presented in the form of short short film/video of some sort which will be posted to Jodieann Stephenson’s e-portfolio site.

 

 

The Trend of Digital Journalism

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When I think of a journalist, I think of a person who stops at nothing to acquire as much information as possible to tell the facts about a story, without falsified information. When reading Photojournalism in the Age of New Media by Jared Keller, what he said that stood out to me was,  “a whole universe of photojournalists,  both amateur and professional, is made available to the public through social networks. ” Without social media, what would become of journalism itself today?

Journalism has sure made its advancements over the years but not without questioning its validity. Because anyone is allowed to report news coverage on their social accounts, doesn’t necessarily mean they are getting at the truth but maybe getting at the likes, retweets, and ultimately gaining an increasing base of followers. Without social media,  society wouldn’t be able to keep up with live reports, we’d still be waiting on the 6 o’clock news. As Keller states,  “social media, like so many other tools, isn’t inherently good or bad; it simply needs to be deployed in the appropriate manner to accurately tell a story. ” I completely agree with him in that sometimes, society loses sight of the truth behind a story in that people seek to carry on “the buzz” of a story long enough until it fizzles out and the next one comes along.

The speed and immediacy to share content on social media is great,  but how great is it if you put into question accuracy over time, the source that put it out there,  and video/picture content? As fast as it is to put content out on social media is as fast as falsifying the content or manipulating it to heighten the reaction of folks that could possibly feed into it. I’ll admit I get most of my news coverage/information from Facebook however, I tend not to immediately believe what I see and wait to see it on television and that’s just me. But others are very quick to read and spread the word without blinking an eye and I think that’s the downside to all this. I think social media is such a fad that’ll never go away that at this day and age,  anyone is considered a journalist or photojournalist.

A picture is worth a thousand words but what does it say when it’s being misread?  As Keller mentioned before, we have both amateur and professional photojournalists through social media and I believe Instagram is the number one social network for withholding them. You don’t need to own a Nixon or Sony professional camera because a simple camera phone,  much like an iPhone can do the exact same job. Keller points out in saying in his article that,  “new media is very significant in immediacy, but not totally in long term. It doesn’t matter if there are a thousand cameras, its the storytelling that’s important. A photojournalist with an artistic vision that transcends superficial coverage. It’s a different media space.” That media space is known as Instagram. Not that I’m saying everyone who owns an account is superficial but it isn’t difficult to find yourself putting up a front for your followers about how you live your life through pictures posted and 15 second videos.  This is precisely why I don’t have one. If anyone wanted to know who I am they can speak to me directly instead of formulating their own ideas through pictures and videos. People like to post #foodart,  #Godart,  and #ootd (none other than meaning outfit of the day) but how much thought goes into those posts other than how many likes you’ll get for it and how many followers will follow you on that particular day.  It’s all superficial storytelling really.  But who am I to judge? Social media is an ever growing movement and at this rate,  journalism can only get better or worse.