Photojournalism advice in the Digital Age

2. Introduction
Whether you are using a DSLR, a point-and-shoot
camera or a smart phone, the
fundamentals of good photography remain the
same. Sure, a high-end camera makes it a lot
easier, but always have these basics in mind
whenever you’re on a shoot and you’ll have a
greater chance at photographic success.

3. The Rule of Thirds

4. Natural inclination for the beginning
photographer is to put the subject smack in the
center of the frame – but resist that urge.
Instead, imagine a 3×3 grid laid over your image
(or if you have certain cameras, you can actually
turn on the grid in the viewfinder and turn off
your imagination). Place your subject’s head at
one of the “thirds points” – the parts of the 3×3
grid where the lines intersect. You’ll have a
much more dynamic image than if the subject
was sitting in the center of the frame.

5. Of course, in the heat of the moment, you may
not always be able to get that perfect rule-of-thirds
composition going. That’s where the
“crop” tool in Photoshop comes in handy (it
looks like the graphic below). You can crop the
image to meet the rule of thirds, and with the
high resolution images produced by today’s
cameras, you won’t take a huge hit in quality.

7. Watch Out for Hotspots

8. • Bright lights or lightsources in a photo can
distract the viewer. What’s the first thing your
eyes are drawn to in the above images? Those
bright lights, right?
• This isn’t only the case for bright lights, but
brightly-colored objects in your photos as well
(how many times have you taken what you
thought was the perfect photo of you and
your friend, only to see the tourist with the
hot pink shirt in the background?).

9. • It means that when you’re shooting, you have
to be keenly aware of your surroundings. In
the previous cases, it’s very easy to crop the
lights out of the picture and still have a usable
photo.
• But there are times where that’s simply not
enough. In many cases, you have to maneuver
yourself out of the way of these light sources
to make a picture. On the next slide is an
example where your only real option is to
move…

11. Backlighting
Another common error that can happen in the
field is backlighting. Ideally you want your light
source, weather it’s the sun or a lamp, at your
back so that it doesn’t A) create a hotspot in
your picture or B) trick your camera’s meter into
underexposing the picture (making it too dark).
See what I mean on the next slide…

13. So what do you do? Move around. Move your
subject around. Find a spot where you can work
with the light, rather than having the light work
against you. The sun can be your greatest friend
or your worst enemy.

14. The Dreaded Polehead:
Control your background

15. • Watch for things growing out of people's
heads when you shoot.
• Always make sure you have all the relevant
body parts in the frame, watch for polehead,
and never trust your friends and family on
Facebook when it comes to critiquing your
photos.
• Watch out for polehead’s evil cousins:
lamphead, microphonehead and
windmillhead (pictured above). Radiohead is
OK though.

16. • So what do you do when you’re shooting and
you encounter a foreign object growing out of
someone’s head? Simple – change the angle
you are shooting at. Even a slight step left or
right in any of these situations with an
appropriate re-framing of the picture would
have countered this problem.

17. • On the note of controlling your background,
another great analogy for composing your
shots is to think of your photos as if you were
a painter. You wouldn’t paint a stray poll in
the corner of a shot, or growing out of
someone’s head – so why would you make a
picture that way?

18. Shoot way more than you need to –
and shoot a variety of shots

19. • The photographer of the previous photo took
110 shots before he got that one, which he
published.
• When you shoot, don’t just give yourself a few
shots and move on. Work every angle. Shoot the
same subject in every way possible. Zoom in,
zoom out. Shoot a tight shot of their face. Then
shoot one where you can see their entire body.
And oh yeah, don’t forget you can turn the
camera on its side for vertical shots. Those work
too.

20. • While you’re at it – don’t forget the basics –
make sure you get a wide shot of the scene, in
addition to medium and tight shots. Always
make sure you have a few different wide-medium-
tight choices, as the viewer needs
context for what their looking at. See the next
slide example for a shoot on the unusually
warm weather Syracuse was having in
November…

21. Wide-Medium-Tight shots for one story.

22. Framing and unusual perspectives
• There’s always the obvious and the not-so-obvious
shot. You should get both in every
situation.
• Look around at the environment. Keep an eye
out for interesting architecture or objects that
you can use to frame your shot. Look for
things you can “shoot through” such as
fences, curtains, flowers, etc. All of these will
help for more interesting composition

23. Two examples of using the environment around you to get a shot.

24. • Speaking of interesting composition, don’t
forget – everyone sees the world at eye-level.
When you’re shooting, look to give us
something that you don’t see every day. Get
down low, stand on a chair – anything to help
us see the world differently. Try to get access
to places that others can’t. People are used to
seeing things at 4-6 feet in front of them – get
outside that range.

25. • Get down on
your subject's
level for a
more dynamic
shot.
• Take that extra
step and get
that shot you
don’t see
everyday.

26. Waiting for the decisive moment
• It’s all about anticipation.
• Anticipate what’s going to happen and get set up
in the right location for that moment to hopefully
happen.
• Sometimes, you find the perfect frame up for a
picture. Don’t waste that frame – sit there and
wait for the right moment. Patience will go a long
way to this end. It’s probably going to take you
longer than five minutes to make that perfect
image.

27. A word
on
photo
captions
 caption

28. • One of the most common mistakes I see
beginning photojournalists make is that they
forget the “journalist” part of the equation.
Just because you can safely hide behind a
camera to get your images doesn’t mean you
don’t have to walk up and talk to people. You
do. That’s what journalism is all about.

29. • If there’s a prominent subject in your photo,
get their name. If there are a few prominent
subjects, get their names. If there’s an entire
stadium of subjects, than you can probably
get away without a name. But where you can,
err on the side of getting names and
identifying information.

30. • Captions should do more than merely inform
us of what’s going on in the photo. “John
Smith shakes hands with President Barack
Obama on Sunday, March 3, 2013″ won’t tell
us much. Why not tell us why John Smith is
shaking hands with the President? Give us
context to the photo in your caption. Flesh it
out. Use a quote in there if it helps. Just don’t
state the obvious and leave it at that.

31. Rules are meant to be broken

32. • At the end of the day, what I’ve given you here is
a set of basic guidelines to follow to get generally
good photos. But that doesn’t mean you should
experiment on your own – and sometimes that
experimentation means bending or breaking
some of the “rules” I’ve set forth here. Go for it.
Sometimes you will want that silhouette that you
get from shooting into a light source. Sometimes
a centered composition works. Don’t feel limited
by what you read here. Feel empowered to know
what works most of the time, but that some of
the time it doesn’t.

33. Final Advice
• Above all – don’t forget that you’re supposed
to be having fun. The day photography ceases
to be fun for you is the day you should
probably go try something else.