Lecture 4 - Picture Stories

Hello everyone! We are now onto the fourth lecture that was done today. The topic that was introduced was picture stories and what they represent. Picture stories are everywhere and can mean a thousand words. Firstly, we discussed the selected history of picture stories, starting with cave paintings found France and Australia. Plato described these as “shadows on the cave wall” and other examples of early picture stories were the holy books, stained glass, book of Kells, Diamond Sutra, Illuminated Letters and biblical scenes. The very first illustrated line drawings within newspapers were during the 1860's and the first published news photo was in 1880 in “Shanty Town”. The first Colour Reproduction in Newspaper was in 1936. Other developments in Photo-journalism were talked about such as Digital capture and upload.

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      Many interesting videos and photos were used as examples for digital manipulation and the question was          asked where it was good or evil? Faux-tography is basically photoshop to enhance or make a photo appear better than it originally was. Digital Publishing is access to pictures through media devices such as tablets and iphones etc and photo galleries have a number of pictures to tell a particular story.

·         The  question must be asked then, what makes a great photo? The Case Study Jonathon Thurston Uncle’s funeral, was analysed. What makes a great photo are the components of: Framing, Focus, Angle and Point of View (POV), Exposure (or Light), Timing (shutter speed) and Capturing “the moment”. One quote I particularly enjoyed was: “A picture has no meaning at all if it can’t tell a story.” Perfect examples of this saying are pictures such as the school shooting, Afghan Mona Lisa, Afghan woman with no nose and bull fighting. Photo framing contains the rule of thirds (Golden Mean), in order to frame and capture a good photo.

      Moving photos also encompass framing, focus, POV, Exposure (or light), Capturing “the scene”, Timing and Editing and Inclusion of sound dimension. Editing is involved with moving photos (eg. Battleship Potemkin, 1925), Newsreel at the cinema and propaganda films were also discussed and how news has always been a part of TV and is on a 24/7 newscycle. The first time seeing videos from phones was during the London Bombings and these days the new TV Journalist must also be a Video Journalist. To end in a quote from this lecture:

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     “If it makes you laugh, if it makes you cry, if it rips out your heart, that’s a good picture.”