Building Blocks in Visual Storytelling
Currently listening to: Irina by thelovesong
During the first week of June, I spent time shooting Gene Boyle’s final week as principal at St. Matthews School. 
Boyle has been in eduction for over forty years, with a dozen of those at St. Matts (CLICK HERE to view the audio slideshow). Here’s a few of the best images from the week along with my take on how I did and why it’s critical for me (and other photojournalists) to excel in telling stories with multiple images.
To put it plainly, I spent the week shooting and not looking analytically enough at my takes. I need to pick out what images emphasized certain points better and go into the next day looking for something else to support the story’s “thesis” in a more compelling, intimate manner (not to mention with more visual variety). In the case of this story, Boyle’s way of connecting with kids and bringing out their best quality stood out from interviews with parents, teachers, and students. While I have the image of Boyle playing basketball and talking with a student, I needed him in other settings, such as in the classroom or in his office. I also needed to mix up the visual variety more. Pretty much all of these images would constitute a “medium” shot. They only show Boyle from one perspective but needed to show him in multiple ways doing different things as a way of connecting the audience more with the story. Shooting things the same way in the same places makes everything static.
With the advent of multimedia, I’ve used collections of images with audio working as a guiding narrative rather than looking for stories to spend more time on. When shooting multimedia, I try to make sure I get a good introductory image and a closing image. While that’s important, I forget about getting images that work in between – images that build upon one another to visually communicate a concept. Looking back, the ideal first few images would give the audience of an understanding of who Boyle is, which would be how well he interacts with kids and how much love and respect they have for him. Toward the end of the story, it would of been good to show Boyle doing familiar duties for the last time and end with him saying goodbye to his students. Of course, that’s all in the ideal world. This story was shot during my week as the only staffer at the paper, so I give myself a tad bit of slack. Besides, I can only plan out part of the story, that’s part of what journalism is – playing things by ear but having some type of outline to frame the story and images around. In my mind, further developing and refining this skill in the age of the inter
net is of great importance to visual journalists.
The web is far more of a visual medium than print newspapers, making quality visual communication even more important. And with everyone taking and sharing individual images, the idea is that anyone can take a good picture. Sadly, to an extent that is true with how cheap “good cameras” are now. However, it takes a photojournalist to understand the story and capture a moment that reflects the story. The availability of using various mediums has allowed for the creation of deeper and more intimate levels of storytelling. For myself, using one medium to tell more of the story and have another part just look or sound cool isn’t enough. Photos should feed off of the audio and vice versa. Each sound bite and image should posses an element of the story that can be built upon by the next portion of audio of visuals. By understanding the process of being in the moment and capturing it along with how the moment translates into the other portions of media contributes to awesome storytelling. Need proof? Check out the links on the side of the page, particularly MediaStorm and the New York Times Photo Blog, “LENS”.
Anyway, I of course hope to refine the idea of using portions of media as building blocks in stories I assemble, whether they are a quick few images from an event or a story I’ve spent a good amount of time on. I do have a few ideas at the moment for long-term photo projects. Once I get started on one of them, I’ll be sure to blog a bit about my progress. Look for another entry next week with some images from the past week. Nothing overly interesting has happened yet but there is a Gay Pride parade in town on Saturday. As for now, I’m off to shoot another baseball game. Adios.
