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What is Community Photojournalism?
Our community is where we are and who we're attempting to communicate information.
Our community can be as small as our family or as large as the globe. I am a small regional journalist. I cover a county and the spill over. I would be considered a general assignment photojournalist capable of covering a variety of topics ranging a teacher making good on a bet having to kiss a horse to covering a family that just received word their child was killed in a war. And everything in between and sometimes on the same day. But a community photojournalist can be more specific and focus solely on sports. Or arts. Or fashion/trendy stuff. We can be more regional and cover an area for the Associated Press or Reuters etc.. We can be a political photojournalist working in the statehouse or in DC. Or someone that travels across the country to document the comunity of a country. Or all over the world telling the community of the earth's story - finding connection through our similarities and growing our culture by introducing our differences. Our community could be humankind and dealing with the issues of globalization, climate change, war etc.. What does community photojournalism show us?
What are the tools of a community Photojournalist?
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What makes a good photojournalist?
Knowledge of equipment's ability, curiosity and passion. Being enough of an egomaniac that you're embarrassed if your pictures suck.
Warning below may be a few disturbing images.
So in teaching photojournalism there is not a way to do it, and do it right, without showing really difficult images. Part of why we do this is to correct the ills of mankind by observing and documenting those ills firsthand.
We have become squeamish and even defiant that it is s unnecessary to show the inhumanity of day to day tragedies in our community - like fires and accidents. But Images of war shown regularly tend to make us strive harder towards peace. Images of fatal fires or accidents tend to make us check smoke detectors and put on seatbelts.
Without seeing we become blind.
And we have a war in Ukraine,.
A war in Israel.
Those are making the U.S. headlines.
But there are over 30 countries either engaged in civil war or with some other country right now.
Add insurgencies and drug cartels and terrorism and the numbers go through the roof.
All wars affect our communities no matter where we are. Whether it is through economics, goods, travel, family or countless other reasons, hamankind's inhumanity to each other affects our global being.
Photojournalists put themselves in harms way... to show that people, not all that different from us are embroiled in these conflicts. Most as innocent.
Images like this made their way onto our front pages and led to action because they showed us, that though this was not in our back yards, that we have a vested interest in stopping the level of inhumanity.
We no longer have excuses, because thanks to technology we are living in a global community. This image appeared on my hometown paper's front page in the 1980s. It had an affect.
We no longer have excuses, because thanks to technology we are living in a global community. This image appeared on my hometown paper's front page in the 1980s. It had an affect.
There are joyous events as well that have global importance to us.
We learned more about our own racism in America learning the story of South African Nelson Mandela's struggle against aparthied and injustice.
- Most photojournalism here in this country falls into a few categories:Event coverage
- Meetings
- In depth features about topics such as battling cancer, drug abuse, poverty etc
- Slices of life photos to remind us who we are
- Sports
- Portraits
- Business spotlights
- News - spot and general.
The types of photos are usually broken down into these categories. The below images are all mine.
Spot news
General News
Feature
sports
Meetings
Portraits
Feature multiple/Picture story