When I started here at The Mount Airy News 25 years ago, I wasn’t much of a writer.
But I was way better at writing than I was at taking photos. Truth be told, I didn’t even know how to operate a 35mm camera.
My first editor, Peter Williams, gave me a camera and three rolls of film for practice. He gave me a couple of pointers, but since I had no background at all, the pointers were meaningless. It was like explaining half a calculus problem to someone who never made it past Algebra 1.
I made a mess of all three rolls of film. And I continued to mess up photos over and over for the next few weeks. Even after I figured out how to take a standard photo of two people standing still shaking hands, I had no ability to do much of anything else.
In the past 25 years I’ve come a long way, and yet, I watch educational photography videos on YouTube at night because I realize I still have much to learn.
Based on the subject of a story we’re working on, I know there are ideas and tricks of the trade that can help a photographer tell that story to readers.
If the story is about a child, don’t just stand over the kid and shoot downward. Have the child get up on something or sit yourself on the ground so that the camera is on the same level as the kid. Maybe even get a little lower so you have a slightly upward angle on the child.
On March 16 (the day before the governor closed restaurants and bars) I was up on Main Street when I noticed a good amount of traffic. I took some photos of the cars.
Now if I were some unscrupulous reporter writing a story about how there is no business downtown, I simply could have waited for a break in traffic and then fired off a couple of shots that would “prove” there was no one on Main Street.
I watched a YouTube video this week where a professional photographer called out some photojournalists for such misleading photos. Because of his skill level, this pro, named Tony Northrup, could see how the camera was used to tell a story.
One photo was taken of a New York City street that seemed to show no traffic and almost no one walking the sidewalks.
Ah, but here is the thing. If you get on a one-way street and wait for the traffic light to stop cars, you might find a break where there are no cars for 50-100 feet. Run out in the middle of the crosswalk and take a photo or two, then move on out of the way before the light changes again.
Also, as Tony pointed out, the photographer purposely used a short, wide-angle lens. This is the type of lens that gets a lot of space into the photo — similar to when you use your smart phone for a shot. It’s easy to get five or six of your buddies in one frame with a wide-angle lens.
But, the further you get away from your subjects, the smaller they get. And it happens quickly. With a fish-eye lens like in a door peephole, everyone looks tiny.
There were people on that NYC sidewalk, but the short, wide lens made them tiny and unnoticeable.
Tony also pulled up a photo from California where just the opposite was taking place.
The photo seemed to show how a certain beach was jam-packed with visitors.
So what was the trick?
Well, it was a boardwalk, so that’s where the people would be walking. Second, the people actually weren’t very close together, but the photographer made it look like they were on top of each other.
How do you do that?
Get your longest zoom lens, stay back a ways and point it down the boardwalk. If everyone is a distance off from the camera, then they all get flattened together.
And to ensure as many of them as possible are in focus, squeeze down the aperture that lets light into the camera body. More of a pencil-sized hole for the light to come through is way better than something as wide as a quarter.
Another pro tip? Empty space. If you want the scene to look more empty, but sure to ease that lens angle up a little so that you see the sky. If you want the scene to look more claustrophobic, keep the lens down and don’t let that big, open sky in your photo.
Now here is something important: there have been some photographers and news outlets who have been raked over the coals in the past year or two for tweaking photos in Photoshop.
And we’re not just talking about the typical airbrushing of some model’s skin. This is making someone disappear from a photo if that person isn’t who you want in the image. Or adding another missile to Iran’s missile test fire demo.
If the photo has been manipulated on the computer to become something other than what the camera saw, then this is a fake, and the public deservedly can raise an outcry.
However, if the photographer knows what he or she is doing, then the photo can be manipulated all sorts of ways in the field and never has to be Photoshopped. And most people think this is just fine.
The real kicker to Tony Northrup’s video? He says tricky photo work could be to blame for the toilet paper shortage.
What? That’s right.
He showed how some photos used one of those wide-angle lenses to make the empty spot on a shelf look much larger, giving the impression that all the toilet paper was being bought up at once.
Tony even pointed out in one example that in the distance (which isn’t really that far with that type of lens), a woman was buying toilet paper, and there was plenty left.
When you get desperate for TP, though, don’t look at me. It wasn’t one of my photos that sent people into a panic.
.neFileBlock {
margin-bottom: 20px;
}
.neFileBlock p {
margin: 0px 0px 0px 0px;
}
.neFileBlock .neFile {
border-bottom: 1px dotted #aaa;
padding-bottom: 5px;
padding-top: 10px;
}
.neFileBlock .neCaption {
font-size: 85%;
}
Source: https://www.mtairynews.com