What makes a great picture?- Week 4

“In a democracy, everyone is a journalist. This is because everyone has the right to communicate a fact or a point of view, however trivial, however hideous”.-Ian Hargreaves

William Klein “Gun Play – Broadway  and 103rd
Street” 1955

Pictures really do say a thousand words, that’s why I think I love them so much. When I was in high school I loved art, not just making art but writing about it. I loved analysing what the colours meant, what the positioning meant, the message behind it, all of it. To tell you the truth, I’d probably be an art journalist if there was more of a need for them and they paid you in money that wasn’t from Monopoly.  That’s why I got so excited when I discovered we were talking about pictures this week.

First we delved into the history of pictures and the beginning of photojournalism. How exciting would it have been to be alive in that era? People were just blown away by things we in the 21^st century take for granted, colour pictures and moving pictures were a big deal and 3D wasn’t ruining movies everywhere. Of course, being humans and all, we had to ruin this innocent and beautiful form of medium with Photoshop. These days it’s impossible to know what is real and what is manipulated, except if Taylor Swift looks like this...

Seems legit.

So what makes a great picture? I think it’s definitely if it can tell a story and evoke emotion. Sure you can have a picture of a fence that satisfies the criteria of framing, focus and point of view but it if you don’t feel something it’s a useless picture in my opinion.

Jodi Bieber- "Bibi Aish"


 This is the kind of picture that makes a difference. 

We also went on to discuss the advances in moving pictures and the impact it can have on whole nations. After the London bombings, anyone with a mobile phone became a citizen journalist. I thought this was an interesting concept and one that is both useful and redundant in the journalism realm. On one hand you have your amateur bloggers who write one-sided garbage about uni life (what a drain on society) and then on the other hand you have footage of a plane crash that you would never have witnessed had it not been for Billy Nobody and his camera phone. We need them as much as they need us.

So that was week 4, my favourite so far. I learnt valuable things about pictures and also learnt valuable things about uni. For example, if you use your uni diary vouchers on the days ice coffee is $2, you get it for free! [Insert success kid meme here]

Over and out from I’m-finally-understanding-uni.