Photographers

Photographers

Photographers must take photos of people and events for student publications. Remember: People want to see other people, not a bunch of buildings. Photographs should give an accurate picture of an event and not highlight a minor incident out of context.

Any student using equipment supplied by Student Publications must carry a press pass. Have the adviser, Dr. Sitton, make a press pass for you during the first week of classes. It's your responsibility to make sure you have a press pass.

Requirements

Photographers must submit 10 publishable photos each week, i.e. high-quality pictures with proper cutline information (see below), including people, etc. If it takes 20-30 pictures to get 10 good ones, so be it. You will keep copies on a personal disk for your portfolio. Any student using a Student Publications camera must keep every photo taken or be subject to being banned from using Student Publications equipment. You will learn from a critique of both good and bad photos.

Photographers perform some or all of the following duties:

Determine picture composition, make technical adjustments to equipment and photograph subject

Frames subject matter and background in lens to capture desired image.

Focuses camera and adjusts settings based on lighting, subject material, distance, and film speed.

Selects and assembles equipment and required background properties, according to subject, materials, and conditions.

Directs activities of workers assisting in setting up photographic .

Arranges subject material in desired position.

Estimates or measures light level, distance, and number of exposures needed, using measuring devices and formulas.

May operate scanners to transfer photographic images to computers
May operate computers to manipulate photographic images
May adapt existing photographic images and create new digitized images to be included in multimedia/newmedia products

Chief Photographer
Chief photographers will get first shot at all photo assignments. They should have extensive experience in photography and knowledge of photojournalistic principles. Chief photographers will report to work the Friday prior to each semester's beginning.
The chief photographer duties include:

Be available to shoot photo assignments as assigned by editor.
Be consistent and reliable in ability to shoot quality photographs.
Check e-mail three-to-five times daily and be available to shoot last-minute assignments on assigned feature day.
Be available and willing to shoot last-minute assignments.

Staff Photographer
Staff photographers will get assignments as they are declined by the chief photographer. In general, staff photographers won't be as experienced as the chief photographer. Staff photographers will report to work the Friday prior to each semester's beginning.
The staff photographer's duties include:

Be available to shoot photo assignments as assigned by editor.
Be consistent and reliable in ability to shoot quality photographs.
Check e-mail three-to-five times daily and be available to shoot last-minute assignments on assigned feature day.

Photographers must attend workshops and staff meetings (3:45 p.m. Tuesdays). Photographers should suggest photos to go along with the story ideas. The Chief Photographer will organize and maintain a photography staff and coordinate relations with each publication as necessary. The Chief Photographer is not vested with editorial authority over which photos are and are not published.

Cutline information:

Courtesy of Media Services

Listening — Students meet with North Central team members Dr. Esther Fahm and Dr. Elizabeth Sullivan in the Fine Arts Center Oct. 4 to discuss current student issues on campus. The information discussed will be used by the accrediting team to develop a complete report for UAM.

Notice the picture at right. The bold-faced type provides a mini-headline for the picture, while the caption tells who, what, where, when, why and how, i.e. the caption describes what's happening in the picture.

You must make sure you give us enough information to provide the picture information for the caption/cutline. You should have a reporter's notebook to track such information. If you don't have one, contact Sitton a.s.a.p.

Equipment

In order to take a true likeness of an individual, you must have proper physical equipment. You are encouraged to use your own camera as you're probably comfortable with it. If you don't have a camera, you can sign one out from the journalism lab.

You will also learn to use Adobe Photoshop to save pictures in two formats:

Original - used for the yearbook, the original picture should be cropped, then saved in the highest quality possible for yearbook reproduction.
Web form - used for the newspaper, this picture should be saved as low quality (4 on PCs) to quicken the time it takes for pictures to snap into the Web page.

Picture composition

Pictures should show diverse angles, distances (e.g. close-ups for individuals, wide shots for groups) and composition (follow rules of thirds and movement). Look for different angles while shooting pictures, e.g. while photographing a parade, get up high to take a shot of the entire processional; get down on the grass (or concrete) to take a shot from a worm's view. Try to get as many different angles as possible.

Photographers should always strive to take candid photographs. If a photograph is staged, say so. Photographers should operate ethically, i.e. don't alter photographs without permission or without indicating they've been altered. While we'd prefer not to have "grip and grin" pictures, sometimes that's all that's available. :(

Using Photoshop

Open Adobe Photoshop
Goto File: Open. Browse for the picture you want to view, then select it and press open. It should appear on your screen.

In the toolbar running down the left-hand side of the photoshop screen, you'll notice a square with perforated edges at the top left of the toolbar. Click on it. Place your cursor at the top left edge of the picture you want, and make a tight square around the area in the picture that you want to use. Give people a little head room. Be sure not to cut off heads or limbs as people get queasy when they see something like that.

Once you've made the square (which should be super-imposed on your picture), Goto Image: Crop. This will remove the excess.

Now, Goto Image:Adjustments>Levels. Move the arrows underneath the graph to the edge of the graph (i.e. where the flat line becomes a mountain). You should see some difference in the photo. Hit OK.

Goto Image:Image Size... A box will pop up with Pixel width and height. If you have a horizontal image, width=300; vertical image, width="250". (I can change it if it's too big). The photo on your screen will shrink. Don't worry. Goto View:Actual Pixels and it'll return to normal size.

Finally, Goto File:Save As. Name the picture something short (e.g. MUDO.jpg). Save as a jpg (gif if lineart) to the desktop or folder where you're working. If it asks you to replace, do so if it's not an original you're overriding. If you're working on the original photo, name the altered photo something else.

JPEG OPTIONS Screen: Save as a 4 for the Web; as a 10 for the YB.

Portfolio

At the end of the semester, you'll submit a portfolio of your work (120 pictures over 12 newspaper issues, plus any photos taken for the yearbook). Each picture should have cutline information, date taken and date of publication.

Cutlines

OUCH!: Lou Scott, an elementary Drug Abuse Resistance Education (DARE) officer, winces from receiving a Hepatitis B immunization shot from Paula Patton, a public health nurse of North Little Rock's Health Department. Sgt. Butch Swaim holds Scott's hand during the free clinic for the city's police officers.
According to Dr. Dorothy Bowles of the University of Tennessee, good picture stories or picture essays must both be planned. Great picture stories require a theme or central idea before the photographer starts working. A good picture story (or yearbook spread) is usually created by

choosing a dominant picture
avoiding cluttered look by using white space
facing pictures toward the text
avoiding "rivers of gray" caused by captions meeting irregularly near the same level
using a caption with each picture and a headline overall
arranging similar captions to have the same width, type and number of lines
focusing simultaneously on a subject or personality as well as a theme or mood.

When writing copy for yearbook, focus on both the individual pictures and continuity from photograph to photograph. Continuity can be achieved with a central block of copy that relates to all the pictures and echoes the spirit of the pictures as a group.

AP captions follow a simple formula:

The first sentence describes what the photo shows, in the present tense, and states where and when the photo was made.
The second sentence gives background on the news event or describes why the photo is significant.
Whenever possible, try to keep captions to no more than two concise sentences, while including the relevant information. Try to anticipate what information a reader will need.

Steady ... Employees of Lowell North Construction and Paramax lower a dome cover for the WSR-88D radar used by North Little Rock's division of the National Weather Service. The Doppler radar's dome measures 11 meters (35 feet) in diameter.

A caption should fully explain the moment in time in relation to the events preceding or following the image. It never leaves the reader wondering about ambiguous meanings. A good caption doesn't duplicate the photo, but explains it.

ALWAYS look at the picture before writing the caption. Count the number of names to make sure it corresponds to the number of people included. Use active voice. Eliminate references like is shown, is pictured and pictured above.

Avoid editorializing in a caption. Let the reader make the judgment from the picture and AVOID LIBEL. Above all, be honest with the reader.

While captions under one- and two-column photos usually are set the width of a photo, photos wider than two columns often have captions set in two columns. Try to have an equal number of lines in each column.

Stay within the same family of typefaces and point sizes when providing captions. Try to include a credit line for the source of the photo whenever possible.

Dr. Sitton took the following pictures while working for the North Little Rock Times. Note how the cutlines describe what's happening in the picture.

A brief lead-in, also called a tagline or legend, typically begins a caption in boldface or in capital letters. Think of it as the headline for the caption.

Leading the Parade: North Little Rock citizens took to the streets by the hundreds to support the National Night Out on Crime program. Sherman Park residents, accompanied by city leaders and police, march in protest of drugs and crime.

Even when you have to pose a picture (not the best circumstances), make it look interesting by having people do something. In this example on the left, the candidate just wanted publicity. By having him talk with another employee, it wasn't so obvious that it was a staged shot.

Election Eve 1993: Tom McRae (left), a Democratic candidate in the most-watched lieutenant governor's race in Arkansas history, discusses issues with North Little Rock Community Relations Director Joe Smith. McRae lost to Rep. Mike Huckabee, who would later become governor of the state.

Piggy-back: Mayor Pat Hays gives a Sherman Park resident a lift during the National Night Out festivities.

According to Bradley Wilson of North Carolina State, people want to see pictures of themselves when they open a yearbook. Then they'll look for pictures of their friends and acquaintances. The more people we include in a publication, the more readers we'll have. Focusing on including people in your photos is a formula for success.

Environmentalists: Dr. Doug Stevens and his wife Joy point to a 5.2-acre tract they purchased overlooking Lakewood Lake No. 1. The Stevens said they plan to preserve the land in its natural state.

Photographers observe action rather than participate in it. Let people get comfortable with you being there, then start documenting the action. If you're not comfortable behind the camera, your subjects will not be comfortable in front of it.
Capture the emotion of people by telling their story through photos. It's more than just shooting party pics or mug shots.
Capture action and reaction, e.g. people riding bicycles on campus, the homecoming queen reacting to her coronation, the player who struck out to end the game.
Move up close and fill the frame, but don't crop out relevant background material that would add meaning to the photo.
Keeping the background clean will focus attention on the people.
Get the person OUT of the CENTER of the frame. Follow the rule of thirds to give your photo a less formal look, which gives the subject room to look or move into.
Play with light - avoid backlighting; side-lighting provides texture
To set a scene or provide context, some building pictures help. But does anyone pay for a yearbook or newspaper to see another picture of the music building?

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