Photojournalism

While the vast majority of footage I’ve captured for InFocus has been video, many of the techniques and rules I’ve garnered while learning and teaching photojournalism are easily transferable. As a counselor for Camp MAC, I taught a lesson on the fundamentals of using cameras and the purpose of photography in journalism. The next year, on the camp’s leadership team, we made sure to incorporate photojournalism as a lesson. This was supplemented by an engaging activity where campers were able to demonstrate what they learned, such as depth of field, composition, and perspective.

My understanding of photography greatly increased when I took Photo 1, an introductory course, in my junior year. We learned about different tools that photographers equip, namely color theory, leading lines, light and shadows, and reflections. For one of our projects, we were tasked with exploring the work of an influential photojournalist. I chose to look into the life of Dorothea Lange, a 20th Century American documentary photographer and photojournalist. In her most famous photographs, Lange utilized many of the techniques we discussed in class to convey the plight of Americans throughout the Dust Bowl and Great Depression. Now that I have more knowledge about how photojournalists are able to communicate news and tell stories through images, I've been able to employ some of these techniques in my own video work, most notably when shooting my b-roll.