Briggs Ch. 6 – ‘Visual Storytelling with Photographs’

Photography has become much easier, with all the technology around. But, since everyone can pull out their phone or digital camera and snap a couple pictures, the quality of those photographs have gone down.

All journalists need to know how to work a camera and how to choose a  picture that will show more than anything they can put into words.

This chapter also went over Ownership, copyright, creative commons, and fair use.

I have the most common digital camera (a point-and-shoot) but there is also another type — DSLR.

DSLR camera

Some helpful definitions:

• Pixel — stands for PICTure ELement and is a visual representation of data in an image or graphic.
• Megapixel — represents one million pixels.
• Resolution — the number of pixels in an image. 72 is the number of ppi (pixels per inch) that photographs need to be when displayed on a computer because that is the same number of ppi that a computer screen displays. Photographs in newspapers and magazines are around 200-300 ppi and should be compressed when put online.
• Compressing — using a computer program to squeeze the image, omitting the pixels that aren’t necessary and making the files smaller (in bytes) without sacrificing the overall quality.

When taking pictures these elements are very important:

• Lighting
• Movement
• Proximity
• The subject’s comfort
• Take more photos than you think you need
• Editing
• How to present them for maximum benefit

Photoshop is one of the most commonly used photo editing software.