PhotoJournalistic : An Introduction

Firstly I would like to announce on the new labels - PhotoJournalistic - will be added to this blog. As an introduction, let me explain on the title itself, the photojournalism.

According to Wikipedia,

Photojournalism is a particular form of journalism (the collecting, editing, and presenting of news material for publication or broadcast) that creates images in order to tell a news story. It is now usually understood to refer only to still images, and in some cases to video used in broadcast journalism or for personal use. Photojournalism is distinguished from other close branches of photography (such as documentary photography, street photography or celebrity photography) by the qualities of:

• Timeliness — the images have meaning in the context of a recently published record of events.

• Objectivity — the situation implied by the images is a fair and accurate representation of the events they depict in both content and tone.

• Narrative — the images combine with other news elements to make facts relatable to the viewer or reader on a cultural level.

Like a writer, a photojournalist is a reporter but he or she must often make decisions instantly and carry photographic equipment, often while exposed to significant obstacles (physical danger, weather, crowds).

So, I hope that I will able to produce a journal (with photo of course in any event that I involved later on) and also a picture everyday in 'A Pic A Day Keep Girls Nearer' for all my blog readers

update (got this from DCM)

Some misconceptions about what constitutes as photojournalism here.

Photojournalism has nothing to do with articles with tons of text. It is just a story as told/shown via pictures with minimal text, mostly captions.

When NAT GEO (or the defunct Life Magazine) is often refers to as photojournalistic work, it means the photos as shot by the photographers assigned to the assignments, and has nothing to do with the accompanying stories written by the Nat Geo staff writers or freelance writers. Such photos are categorised as photo essays. The writers concentrated on the text articles, and theg photographers take care of the photos. And many people who bought/subscribed to Nat Geo usually don't bother to read the stories but are amazed with the photographs published, and the captions themselves would tell the readers what they ought to know anyway.

The term "journalist" refers to people who contribute/write articles but adding "photo" to it doesn't mean a photojournalist is someone who has to shoot the photos and write the article as well. It basically means a person who tells the story via the images he/she shoots.

The next time anyone of you come across someone who calls himself/herself a "photojournalist" and states that the profession includes "writing tons of articles and shooting the images" by himself/herself, you are basically meeting a writer or a journalist who shoots some photos just to accompany the written articles, and is not a true photojournalist at all. Never is and never was.

Here is a truth story that took place in 1985, KL.
Every year, Reuters awarded scholarships to working photographers/photojournalists in Asia to study photojournalism for a year at the famed Missouri School of Journalism in USA. Each Asian country that took part can have only 1 winner to represent his/her country to enter the prestigious college. A total of 15 press photographers from M'sia took part in order to win that 1985 scholarship from Reuters. The winner who secured it won it hands down... over the other 14 contenders.

The requirement needed to secure the scholarship was to present a photo essay of a news worthy event or a news feature depicted via photos/captions. Those 14 other contenders all submitted articles with tons of text accompanied by a few images, leaving only 1 of them who sent in an actual photo essay depicting a day in the life of a local drug addict. The rest is history.