Monday, June 15, 2009

Pictures and Photojournalism

According to the article entitle “the power of the photograph” by Media Report (2007), it mentioned about the experiences and difficulties of the photojournalists in wars and how the war pictures have been view by people involved in war and other foreigners.

Kress and Leeuwen (2006) stated that, graphics have variety role such as illustration, decoration and information. Furthermore, graphic plays a dominant role in communication especially in journalism as it able to summarize an event, person or inspire a place; and it able to motivate human’s feeling (Buckholder, 2009).

Based on Buckholder (2009), photojournalism had been described as “the craft of employing photographic storytelling to document life” by Kenneth F.Irby. Photojournalism helps people to experiences, feel and observe the world in ways and captured the moment that helps people to learn and grow from the moments (Dunleavy, 2006).For instance, Antony Funnel indicated that, the photographic gallery will help the locals to keep the memory of wars alive (Media Report, 2007).
(Picture from Deep Jive Interest, 2008)
However, readers may have different understanding of the same picture or text because different people may have different experience, knowledge, social awareness and culture Schriver (1997),. Moreover, during the interpretation of text, the reader’s mood and interest will influence the reader’s concentration to the text.

The enhance of media had cause the photojournalism become more complicated technologically and ethically as pictures that simply reflect the incidents are no longer likely, the photojournalists have face hard ethical decision during capturing and choosing picture (Buckholder, 2009).

Furthermore, Buckholder (2009) had mentioned the three main ethical issues of photojournalism, such as manipulation of digital images where people are able to change the “truth” by edited the picture with software such as Adobe Photo Shop; intrusion into privacy and shocking images. The second ethical issue will be intrusion into privacy where the photojournalist tend to captured and published the pictures of popular people such as celebrities or politician without notify and ask for their permission. Furthermore, due to create newsworthiness and dramatic impact to the audiences, the photojournalists tend to published shocking images.

In conclusion, the interpretation of picture or text can be influenced by many reasons. As a professional photojournalist or normal graphic user, one should use the technology wisely but not scheming as pictures is supposed to show the reality and facts.

References:
Media Report 2007, The power of photograph, ABC Radio National, viewed 13 June 2009,http://www.abc.net.au/rn/mediareport/stories/2007/2051819.htm



Buckholder, C 2009, Online Journalism Ethics:Photojournalism, Journalism Ethics, University of Wisconsin-Madison, viewed 13 June 2009, http://www.journalismethics.ca/online_journalism_ethics/photojournalism.htm

Dunleavy , D 2006, Photojournalism’s Future Leaves a lot to Consider, TypePad, viewed 13 June 2009, http://ddunleavy.typepad.com/the_big_picture/2006/12/photojournalism.html

Schriver, KA 1997, Chapter 6 in Dynamic in Document Design, Hoboken, New Jersey.
Kress, GR & Leeuwen, VT 2006, Reading images: The Grammar of Visual Design ,Routledge, United Kingdom.

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