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.