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What is a Photo Essay? 9 Photo Essay Examples You Can Recreate

A photo essay is a series of photographs that tell a story. Unlike a written essay, a photo essay focuses on visuals instead of words. With a photo essay, you can stretch your creative limits and explore new ways to connect with your audience. Whatever your photography skill level, you can recreate your own fun and creative photo essay.

9 Photo Essay Examples You Can Recreate

• Photowalk Photo Essay
• Transformation Photo Essay
• Day in the Life Photo Essay
• Event Photo Essay
• Building Photo Essay
• Historic Site or Landmark Photo Essay
• Behind the Scenes Photo Essay
• Family Photo Essay
• Education Photo Essay

Stories are important to all of us. While some people gravitate to written stories, others are much more attuned to visual imagery. With a photo essay, you can tell a story without writing a word. Your use of composition, contrast, color, and perspective in photography will convey ideas and evoke emotions.

To explore narrative photography, you can use basic photographic equipment. You can buy a camera or even use your smartphone to get started. While lighting, lenses, and post-processing software can enhance your photos, they aren’t necessary to achieve good results.

Whether you need to complete a photo essay assignment or want to pursue one for fun or professional purposes, you can use these photo essay ideas for your photography inspiration . Once you know the answer to “what is a photo essay?” and find out how fun it is to create one, you’ll likely be motivated to continue your forays into photographic storytelling.

1 . Photowalk Photo Essay

One popular photo essay example is a photowalk. Simply put, a photowalk is time you set aside to walk around a city, town, or a natural site and take photos. Some cities even have photowalk tours led by professional photographers. On these tours, you can learn the basics about how to operate your camera, practice photography composition techniques, and understand how to look for unique shots that help tell your story.

Set aside at least two to three hours for your photowalk. Even if you’re photographing a familiar place—like your own home town—try to look at it through new eyes. Imagine yourself as a first-time visitor or pretend you’re trying to educate a tourist about the area.

Walk around slowly and look for different ways to capture the mood and energy of your location. If you’re in a city, capture wide shots of streets, close-ups of interesting features on buildings, street signs, and candid shots of people. Look for small details that give the city character and life. And try some new concepts—like reflection picture ideas—by looking for opportunities to photographs reflections in mirrored buildings, puddles, fountains, or bodies of water.

2 . Transformation Photo Essay

With a transformation photography essay, you can tell the story about change over time. One of the most popular photostory examples, a transformation essay can document a mom-to-be’s pregnancy or a child’s growth from infancy into the toddler years. But people don’t need to be the focus of a transformation essay. You can take photos of a house that is being built or an urban area undergoing revitalization.

You can also create a photo narrative to document a short-term change. Maybe you want to capture images of your growing garden or your move from one home to another. These examples of photo essays are powerful ways of telling the story of life’s changes—both large and small.

3 . Day in the Life Photo Essay

Want a unique way to tell a person’s story? Or, perhaps you want to introduce people to a career or activity. You may want to consider a day in the life essay.

With this photostory example, your narrative focuses on a specific subject for an entire day. For example, if you are photographing a farmer, you’ll want to arrive early in the morning and shadow the farmer as he or she performs daily tasks. Capture a mix of candid shots of the farmer at work and add landscapes and still life of equipment for added context. And if you are at a farm, don’t forget to get a few shots of the animals for added character, charm, or even a dose of humor. These types of photography essay examples are great practice if you are considering pursuing photojournalism. They also help you learn and improve your candid portrait skills.

4 . Event Photo Essay

Events are happening in your local area all the time, and they can make great photo essays. With a little research, you can quickly find many events that you could photograph. There may be bake sales, fundraisers, concerts, art shows, farm markets, block parties, and other non profit event ideas . You could also focus on a personal event, such as a birthday or graduation.

At most events, your primary emphasis will be on capturing candid photos of people in action. You can also capture backgrounds or objects to set the scene. For example, at a birthday party, you’ll want to take photos of the cake and presents.

For a local or community event, you can share your photos with the event organizer. Or, you may be able to post them on social media and tag the event sponsor. This is a great way to gain recognition and build your reputation as a talented photographer.

5. Building Photo Essay

Many buildings can be a compelling subject for a photographic essay. Always make sure that you have permission to enter and photograph the building. Once you do, look for interesting shots and angles that convey the personality, purpose, and history of the building. You may also be able to photograph the comings and goings of people that visit or work in the building during the day.

Some photographers love to explore and photograph abandoned buildings. With these types of photos, you can provide a window into the past. Definitely make sure you gain permission before entering an abandoned building and take caution since some can have unsafe elements and structures.

6. Historic Site or Landmark Photo Essay

Taking a series of photos of a historic site or landmark can be a great experience. You can learn to capture the same site from different angles to help portray its character and tell its story. And you can also photograph how people visit and engage with the site or landmark. Take photos at different times of day and in varied lighting to capture all its nuances and moods.

You can also use your photographic essay to help your audience understand the history of your chosen location. For example, if you want to provide perspective on the Civil War, a visit to a battleground can be meaningful. You can also visit a site when reenactors are present to share insight on how life used to be in days gone by.

7 . Behind the Scenes Photo Essay

Another fun essay idea is taking photos “behind the scenes” at an event. Maybe you can chronicle all the work that goes into a holiday festival from the early morning set-up to the late-night teardown. Think of the lead event planner as the main character of your story and build the story about him or her.

Or, you can go backstage at a drama production. Capture photos of actors and actresses as they transform their looks with costuming and makeup. Show the lead nervously pacing in the wings before taking center stage. Focus the work of stagehands, lighting designers, and makeup artists who never see the spotlight but bring a vital role in bringing the play to life.

8. Family Photo Essay

If you enjoy photographing people, why not explore photo story ideas about families and relationships? You can focus on interactions between two family members—such as a father and a daughter—or convey a message about a family as a whole.

Sometimes these type of photo essays can be all about the fun and joy of living in a close-knit family. But sometimes they can be powerful portraits of challenging social topics. Images of a family from another country can be a meaningful photo essay on immigration. You could also create a photo essay on depression by capturing families who are coping with one member’s illness.

For these projects on difficult topics, you may want to compose a photo essay with captions. These captions can feature quotes from family members or document your own observations. Although approaching hard topics isn’t easy, these types of photos can have lasting impact and value.

9. Education Photo Essay

Opportunities for education photo essays are everywhere—from small preschools to community colleges and universities. You can seek permission to take photos at public or private schools or even focus on alternative educational paths, like homeschooling.

Your education photo essay can take many forms. For example, you can design a photo essay of an experienced teacher at a high school. Take photos of him or her in action in the classroom, show quiet moments grading papers, and capture a shared laugh between colleagues in the teacher’s lounge.

Alternatively, you can focus on a specific subject—such as science and technology. Or aim to portray a specific grade level, document activities club or sport, or portray the social environment. A photo essay on food choices in the cafeteria can be thought-provoking or even funny. There are many potential directions to pursue and many great essay examples.

While education is an excellent topic for a photo essay for students, education can be a great source of inspiration for any photographer.

Why Should You Create a Photo Essay?

Ultimately, photographers are storytellers. Think of what a photographer does during a typical photo shoot. He or she will take a series of photos that helps convey the essence of the subject—whether that is a person, location, or inanimate object. For example, a family portrait session tells the story of a family—who they are, their personalities, and the closeness of their relationship.

Learning how to make a photo essay can help you become a better storyteller—and a better photographer. You’ll cultivate key photography skills that you can carry with you no matter where your photography journey leads.

If you simply want to document life’s moments on social media, you may find that a single picture doesn’t always tell the full story. Reviewing photo essay examples and experimenting with your own essay ideas can help you choose meaningful collections of photos to share with friends and family online.

Learning how to create photo essays can also help you work towards professional photography ambitions. You’ll often find that bloggers tell photographic stories. For example, think of cooking blogs that show you each step in making a recipe. Photo essays are also a mainstay of journalism. You’ll often find photo essays examples in many media outlets—everywhere from national magazines to local community newspapers. And the best travel photographers on Instagram tell great stories with their photos, too.

With a photo essay, you can explore many moods and emotions. Some of the best photo essays tell serious stories, but some are humorous, and others aim to evoke action.

You can raise awareness with a photo essay on racism or a photo essay on poverty. A photo essay on bullying can help change the social climate for students at a school. Or, you can document a fun day at the beach or an amusement park. You have control of the themes, photographic elements, and the story you want to tell.

5 Steps to Create a Photo Essay

Every photo essay will be different, but you can use a standard process. Following these five steps will guide you through every phase of your photo essay project—from brainstorming creative essay topics to creating a photo essay to share with others.

Step 1: Choose Your Photo Essay Topics

Just about any topic you can imagine can form the foundation for a photo essay. You may choose to focus on a specific event, such as a wedding, performance, or festival. Or you may want to cover a topic over a set span of time, such as documenting a child’s first year. You could also focus on a city or natural area across the seasons to tell a story of changing activities or landscapes.

Since the best photo essays convey meaning and emotion, choose a topic of interest. Your passion for the subject matter will shine through each photograph and touch your viewer’s hearts and minds.

Step 2: Conduct Upfront Research

Much of the work in a good-quality photo essay begins before you take your first photo. It’s always a good idea to do some research on your planned topic.

Imagine you’re going to take photos of a downtown area throughout the year. You should spend some time learning the history of the area. Talk with local residents and business owners and find out about planned events. With these insights, you’ll be able to plan ahead and be prepared to take photos that reflect the area’s unique personality and lifestyles.

For any topic you choose, gather information first. This may involve internet searches, library research, interviews, or spending time observing your subject.

Step 3: Storyboard Your Ideas

After you have done some research and have a good sense of the story you want to tell, you can create a storyboard. With a storyboard, you can write or sketch out the ideal pictures you want to capture to convey your message.

You can turn your storyboard into a “shot list” that you can bring with you on site. A shot list can be especially helpful when you are at a one-time event and want to capture specific shots for your photo essay. If you’ve never created a photo essay before, start with ten shot ideas. Think of each shot as a sentence in your story. And aim to make each shot evoke specific ideas or emotions.

Step 4: Capture Images

Your storyboard and shot list will be important guides to help you make the most of each shoot. Be sure to set aside enough time to capture all the shots you need—especially if you are photographing a one-time event. And allow yourself to explore your ideas using different photography composition, perspective, and color contrast techniques.

You may need to take a hundred images or more to get ten perfect ones for your photographic essay. Or, you may find that you want to add more photos to your story and expand your picture essay concept.

Also, remember to look for special unplanned, moments that help tell your story. Sometimes, spontaneous photos that aren’t on your shot list can be full of meaning. A mix of planning and flexibility almost always yields the best results.

Step 5: Edit and Organize Photos to Tell Your Story

After capturing your images, you can work on compiling your photo story. To create your photo essay, you will need to make decisions about which images portray your themes and messages. At times, this can mean setting aside beautiful images that aren’t a perfect fit. You can use your shot list and storyboard as a guide but be open to including photos that weren’t in your original plans.

You may want to use photo editing software—such as Adobe Lightroom or Photoshop— to enhance and change photographs. With these tools, you can adjust lighting and white balance, perform color corrections, crop, or perform other edits. If you have a signature photo editing style, you may want to use Photoshop Actions or Lightroom Presets to give all your photos a consistent look and feel.

You order a photo book from one of the best photo printing websites to publish your photo story. You can add them to an album on a photo sharing site, such as Flickr or Google Photos. Also, you could focus on building a website dedicated to documenting your concepts through visual photo essays. If so, you may want to use SEO for photographers to improve your website’s ranking in search engine results. You could even publish your photo essay on social media. Another thing to consider is whether you want to include text captures or simply tell your story through photographs.

Choose the medium that feels like the best space to share your photo essay ideas and vision with your audiences. You should think of your photo essay as your own personal form of art and expression when deciding where and how to publish it.

Photo Essays Can Help You Become a Better Photographer

Whatever your photography ambitions may be, learning to take a photo essay can help you grow. Even simple essay topics can help you gain skills and stretch your photographic limits. With a photo essay, you start to think about how a series of photographs work together to tell a complete story. You’ll consider how different shots work together, explore options for perspective and composition, and change the way you look at the world.

Before you start taking photos, you should review photo essay examples. You can find interesting pictures to analyze and photo story examples online, in books, or in classic publications, like Life Magazine . Don’t forget to look at news websites for photojournalism examples to broaden your perspective. This review process will help you in brainstorming simple essay topics for your first photo story and give you ideas for the future as well.

Ideas and inspiration for photo essay topics are everywhere. You can visit a park or go out into your own backyard to pursue a photo essay on nature. Or, you can focus on the day in the life of someone you admire with a photo essay of a teacher, fireman, or community leader. Buildings, events, families, and landmarks are all great subjects for concept essay topics. If you are feeling stuck coming up with ideas for essays, just set aside a few hours to walk around your city or town and take photos. This type of photowalk can be a great source of material.

You’ll soon find that advanced planning is critical to your success. Brainstorming topics, conducting research, creating a storyboard, and outlining a shot list can help ensure you capture the photos you need to tell your story. After you’ve finished shooting, you’ll need to decide where to house your photo essay. You may need to come up with photo album title ideas, write captions, and choose the best medium and layout.

Without question, creating a photo essay can be a valuable experience for any photographer. That’s true whether you’re an amateur completing a high school assignment or a pro looking to hone new skills. You can start small with an essay on a subject you know well and then move into conquering difficult ideas. Maybe you’ll want to create a photo essay on mental illness or a photo essay on climate change. Or maybe there’s another cause that is close to your heart.

Whatever your passion, you can bring it to life with a photo essay.

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Week Five – The Photo Essay

“It is difficult to get the news from poems, yet men die miserably every day for lack of what is found there.”

― William Carlos Williams

PHOTO ESSAY EXAMPLES:

• Trouble Shared (Brenda Ann Kennelly/ New York Times/Lens)
• A Country Doctor (W. Eugene Smith/Magnum for Life)
• A Young Father’s Balancing Act (Benjamin Norman/The New York Times)
• New York City Coffeehouse (Dima Gavrysh/Lens)
• Where Beauty Softens Your Grief (Gianni Cipriano/ICP)
• Gun Nation (Zed Nelson)
• What the World Eats (Time)
• Last Supper (2004; Celia A. Shapiro/Mother Jones)
• The Bitter Sweet Pill – GMB Akash
• Happy Horsemeat (Alex Soth)

UNUSUAL PHOTO ESSAYS

• Febuary Assignment: Photographing Pictures in Reflection
• Magic in the Nearly Forgotten Mailbox
• Andrew Moore Detroit
• Superheroes – Dulce Pinzon
• A Photo Fright Most Viral
• Jump Book – Phillippe Halsman

Let’s work through an example to illustrate each category below. Let’s say National Geographic s sending you to into southern Tunisia to do a story on an ancient and unique kind of weaving practiced by a Berber tribe. You are taken by a ‘fixer’ — a paid translator, driver and social planner — to a village made up of several small huts and a central bungalow with three ancient looms and the equipment for making the dies. Likely it would be women doing the weaving.  You’d probably have a working shotlist in your head (or written). It would include photos in each of the categories below:

• Signature photo : A photo that summarizes the entire issue and illustrates essential elements of the story. This might be a photo of woman — maybe your main character — weaving at a loom in the bungalow. Ideally, you’d be able to frame the shot to provide some context, maybe other women, the village in the background, etc.
• Establishing or overall shot : a wide-angle (sometimes even aerial) shot to establish the scene. If you’re shooting for National Geographic it’s entirely possible they would rent a helicopter and you’d take an aerial shot of the village. Or, if on a tighter budget, maybe the village from a nearby dune. The idea of the establishing shot is this: When you do a photo story your are taking our viewers on a journey. You need to give them a sense of where they are going, an image that allows them to understand the rest of the story in a geographic context.
• Close-up : A detail shot to highlight a specific element of the story. Close-up, sometimes called detail shots, don’t carry a lot of narrative. Meaning, they often don’t do a lot to inform the viewer on a literal level but they do a great deal to dramatize a story. Perhaps the weavers hands or a sample of a rug or the bowls in which the dies are mixed. For reasons we’ll come back to when we talk about multimedia in week 12, it’s ALWAYS a good idea to shoot lots of close-ups.
• Portrait : this can be either a tight head shot or a more environment portrait in a context relevant to the story. As mentioned above, photo essays are build around characters. You need to have good portrait that introduces the viewers to the character. I always shoot a variety of portraits, some candids and some posed.
• Interaction : focuses on the subject in a group during an activity. Images of your character interacting with others — kids, others in the village, sellers — all helps give a human dimension to your character. It’s likely that our weaver(s) also raise families, which means cooking cleaning, etc. Think about reactions too.
• How-to sequence : This is photo or group of photos that offer a how-to about some specific element of the story or process. With our example maybe we would telescope in for a few images on how the dyes are made or the making of a specific element of the textile
• The Clincher : A photo that can be used to close the story, one that says “the end.” Essentially, our example is a process piece. What’s the end of the process? Maybe an image of a camel caravan loaded with textiles and heading off into the sunset on the way to market.

I want to introduce a few basic ideas here about editing essays in general and slideshows in particular. As outlined above, variety is key. The first few images are especially important and often include a combination of the following:

• An establishing shot : Often a wide-angle image to give a sense of place, a sense of environment to give the view a sense of place.
• A portrait : An online slideshow needs to be humanized quickly. We need to be introduced to our character as a sort of travelling companion on our journey.
• A close-up : A telling detail shot early on is both graphically appealing and an opportunity to focus the viewer in on what the story is about.

There are several conventional ways to structure the narrative of a story, sometimes photographers will use a combination of the options presented below:

• Process : essentially the photographer is showing how something is done from beginning to end. How a sculpture is made. A sports competition. Even an arrest and court case.
• Chronology : real or implied, you can let time structure your story. A very typical way to structure a story through time is as a ‘day in the life’ piece.
• Highlights : in reality all photo stories are highlights stories in that the photographer should always seek to relay the most important visual elements of a story. But some stories are structure less to illustrate  a clear story line and more to show the peak moments or most dramatic aspects of the topic. For example, a year-in-review story or coverage of a natural disaster or a story after the death of a public figure that highlights the most significant moments in his or her career.  When news organizations do this kind of story often the work of several photographers — and maybe even crowd-sourced photos — are used.

In the commercial world online publications frequently present something called a ‘flipbook.’ This might be series of images of this season’s most popular style of purses  or the ten best-selling flatscreen TVs.

The series is a set of similar images designed to illustrate a comparative point: for example a series of portraits or of new cars or phones or homes. Images in a series should be stylistically similar to further illustrate the comparison.

In week three we looked at images from two portrait series: Richard Avedon’s ‘In the American West’ and Jill Greenberg’s ‘End Times.’  We also looked at some of Steve McCurry’s amazing portrait work.

A portrait series is not the only kind of series. The two series below are examples of the technique that go beyond the simple portrait.

You needn’t get to crazy about making every image in series EXACTLY like the others. Sometimes it’s just not possible. But here are a few things to keep in mind:

• Angle of View – When possible, try and keep the angle of view consistent in a series. Meaning, if one picture is taken from eye-level, try and take them all from eye-level. Focal Length – Try and be consistent in the focal length of your lens. This will ensure a consistent perspective.
• Framing – All of the images should be framed about the same way. If focal length stays the same, you may need to step farther away for larger objects (or people with bigger heads) and closer for smaller object.
• Color and Image Quality – If possible, avoid using a flash with some images and not others. Try and be consistent with ISO, white balance and depth-of-field.

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Importance of Photojournalism in 2024 (+ Examples & Advice)

Explore the dynamic world of Photojournalism in this in-depth guide. Dive into its history, influence on society, and how it shapes our perception of events.

Learn | By Dana Dekis

Is the importance of photojournalism something you think about?

Dating back to the 19 th  century, photojournalism truly revolutionized the way we received news stories.

Designed to educate and inform citizens through a series of compelling photos, photojournalism continues to be a critical form of journalism today.

In this guide, I’ll explain everything you need to know about photojournalism in 2024.

Table of Contents

What is Photojournalism?

There are dozens of formal definitions for photojournalism, but in its simplest form, photojournalism is the act of collecting, organizing, and distributing information and news.

As opposed to verbose written reports, photojournalism tells a news story almost entirely through photographs as a kind of documentary photography .

It’s the amazing portraits of refugees you see in publications such as National Geographic or the poignant images depicting racial segregation in a photo essay in LIFE magazine.

While images are traditionally used in articles to help elevate the story, photojournalism relies on the power of images almost exclusively.

This allows the viewer to consume and interpret a story based entirely on photographs vs. being persuaded by written narratives.

I’m sure we can all agree that photojournalism is profoundly important, but how did it originate and evolve? Let’s dig into the history of photojournalism.

• 30 Reasons Why Photography is So Important in Today’s World

A brief history of Photojournalism

• Mid-19th century: Photojournalism emerges alongside photography.
• Late 19th to early 20th century: Advancements in technology and printing facilitate the growth of photojournalism.
• Influential photojournalists like Mathew Brady (Civil War era), Lewis Hine (early 20th century), and Robert Capa (World War II) capture significant events and social issues.
• 1947: Magnum Photos, a renowned photo agency, is founded, expanding the reach of photojournalism.
• Present: Photojournalists continue to document global events using traditional and digital platforms, preserving history, raising awareness, and fostering empathy.

Photojournalism has a rich history of documenting history, generating knowledge, and cultivating compassion and continues to successfully do so thanks to organizations such as the British Press Photographers Association.

What are the main types of photojournalism?

There are several branches of photojournalism, but some of the main types include the following categories:

Spot news: Spot news photography is a type of visual journalism that covers abrupt, unplanned events the public needs to be made aware of — think car accidents, plane crashes, or school lockdowns.

Sports: This one’s obvious! Sports journalism historically covers important sporting events that could involve everything from the Olympics or major sports in developed countries to kids playing baseball in third-world counties.

Feature: Feature photography is a type of visual journalism that’s a little more lighthearted and is designed to entertain. You might see a feature showcasing a day in the life of an actor, comedian, or world-renowned chef.

General news:  This is probably the first branch you think of when imagining photojournalism. Breaking news and hard news fall under this category, which may include photos of national conferences, current protests, and more.

While this list covers the basic kinds of photojournalism, you can learn more about the vast array of items that fall under the photojournalism umbrella in  this article  by iSchoolConnect.

What is the importance of photojournalism in society?

Visual journalism plays a pivotal role in society. Whether capturing critical world events like the Black Lives Matter protests or the harrowing violence of the American Civil War, photojournalism sometimes serves as a wake-up call to those of us living comfortably in our own bubbles.

For example, hundreds of photojournalists captured the multitude of ways the COVID-19 pandemic affected the world and changed our lives forever.

While many of us were fortunate enough to continue day-to-day life with social distancing and mask-wearing, others weren’t so lucky.

The immunocompromised and elderly naturally suffered major health problems when exposed to the virus some never even knew they were carrying.

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With just a glance at this  NPR article  full of sobering images captured by legendary photojournalist, Alan Hawkes, you’ll learn the importance of digital photojournalism in society.

Intended to encourage the unvaccinated to get vaccinated, Hawkes leveraged poignant digital photography highlighting patients, nurses, and family members deep in the trenches of life-or-death reality during the height of the pandemic.

What are the benefits of photojournalism?

By providing a photographic essay showcasing important events, visual journalism enlightens both those who are well-versed in global events and those looking to get educated.

Let’s discuss more benefits a professional photojournalist could provide:

• Photojournalism brings an emotional element to breaking newspaper stories you might only see scrolling social media or during a commercial break on TV.
• Photojournalism enhances the art of storytelling and is an essential public service, as noted by the National Press Photographers Association.
• Ideally, photojournalism features a wide range of different demographics and locations, enabling journalists to be inclusive.

What constitutes ‘good’ photojournalism?

Did you know photojournalism could have ethical issues involved?

Good visual journalism embodies a code of ethics that’s represented in every high quality image.

According to the National Press Photographers Association, there are several ethical codes related to the subject and location, and general laws, to be mindful of when producing visual journalism.

Be sure to check out our section on the ethics of photo reportage towards the end of this article!

What Do You Do as a Photojournalist?

As a photojournalist, you’re responsible for capturing candid images that represent vital news stories.

Whether you’re featuring world events, sports events, or street photography , there are specific skills and experience levels that are such an important part of storytelling, so let’s dive into just a few required skills below.

What skills are needed to be a photojournalist?

• Journalism: This one’s obvious! You’ll need to abide by an important code of ethics to ensure swift, accurate news stories.
• Photography and photo editing: You’ll need to be proficient in photography, the latest printing and photography innovations, and image capturing technology — this means shutter speed, auto focus, film roll length, photo editing software, and more.
• Research: You’ll also need to be well-researched on the subjects you’re featuring and the background of events related to them.
• Legal: While you won’t be respected to know the ins and outs of every law, you will need to be familiar with copyright laws to avoid legal problems.

What is the difference between a photojournalist and a journalist?

The main difference between visual journalism and journalism is the content itself.

While journalism relies primarily on the written word, photojournalism leans heavily on images to tell the story , so make sure you know your way around your digital camera settings !

How many years does it take to become a photojournalist?

This depends, but typically about 4-5 years. Some get their degree in journalism or visual communications and immediately land a job in photojournalism, while others join a national organization for help.

Do photojournalists make good money?

As is the case in any field, you won’t necessarily make great money in an entry-level visual journalism role. However, with experience and passion, you can work your way up the ladder and snag a role with reputable publications that pay well.

Do photojournalists have to write?

Although images are the main method of storytelling in photojournalism, captions are critical.

You’ll want to be adept at writing concise captions that enhance your image.

What is a Photojournalistic Photography Style? 21 Examples

As noted earlier in the article, there are tons of photography styles that fall under the visual journalism umbrella in real life and art galleries.

I’ll jump into some themes and styles below.

1. Religious representations

A big part of photojournalism involves spotlighting different races, religions, and cultures, which makes this portrait by Shibram2 a wonderful example of visual journalism.

2. Racial issues

Black Lives Matter protests are a huge example of visual journalism, as exemplified in this in-action rally shot by Ehimetalor Akhere Unuabona.

3. Feminism

Feminist rallies are another stellar example of digital photojournalism that illustrate the gender inequality that’s present around the globe, captured beautifully by Roya Ann Miller.

4. Climate Strikes

Capturing signage from protests will always show visual journalism perfectly, as proven in this image of a climate strike taken by Markus Spiske.

5. Celebrities Out and About

This style of photojournalism combines artistic events with celebrities living their lives, like this shot of Sean Oko Lennon at Fashion Night Out NYC by Paul La Rosa.

6. Indigenous Culture

Again, any image centered on culture will likely be an excellent example of visual journalism, as indicated in this shot of an indigenous local maker in Colombia taken by Roxanne Desgagnés.

7. Major Sports

Major sports also classify as photojournalism, which is executed perfectly in this incredible group shot of France’s International Athletics Meeting by Nicolas Hoizey.

8. Music Icons

A photographic essay that spotlights someone in the public eye, such as a singer with an upcoming album release, is also a great example of visual journalism — as shown in this example of celebrity photography with Beyoncé on the cover of Vogue taken by Emily Bauman.

9. Children in Rural Areas

Another excellent example of photojournalism centers on subjects in rural or lower-income areas. This allows middle-class citizens to see what a simpler life looks like, which is captured beautifully in this shot of children on a playground in Himachal Pradesh by Siddhant Soni.

10. Disabilities

Highlighting those with disabilities is another top example of visual journalism, which allows us to see challenges we couldn’t even begin to imagine — as illustrated in this image in Hong Kong from Red John.

11. Labor Issues

Labor issues in the form of unfavorable working conditions or even just cultural pride in humble work environments for local makers is another leading example of photojournalism, as shown in this photo by Pham Yen.

12. Poverty

Poverty is another critical branch of visual journalism.

Whether showing homeless people on urban streets or an impoverished family in rural California, it’s a prominent theme in the best photographic essays.

Take this photo below from the New York Public Library as an example, which is actually from a well-known collection showcasing farm laborers by Dorothea Lange.

13. Influencer Culture

Another modern example of photojournalism focuses on social media and influencer culture. Many appreciate the behind-the-scenes element influencers share whether posting as a local foodie or a fashion icon, as represented in this picture by Eaters Collective.

14. Pollution

Pollution of any kind will always be a solid example of photojournalism. This photo by Ahmer Kalam showing the visible smoke affecting New York’s air from Canadian wildfire fires is incredibly moving.

Photojournalism has strong roots in war coverage. This photo by Yurii Khomitskyi encouraging Ukrainians to never give up is an empowering image of visual journalism.

You should also read about these famous war photographers who documented conflict from the frontlines.

16. Schools

Schools tend to be an excellent setting for photojournalism, and what’s more relevant in today’s world than high school students wearing masks to school or small children wearing them while learning? Shown here in this photo by Kelly Sikkema.

17. Public breastfeeding

While many may think of political events when it comes to photojournalism, pivotal everyday moments in life count too.

Take breastfeeding for example! Some women are shamed into not doing this totally natural act in public, which is why I love this shot from Dave Clubb showing his wife breastfeeding their baby.

18. Mass transit

Because we can be surrounded by so many walks of life within public transportation, mass transit is another wonderful example of photojournalism, as shown in this photo by JC Gellidon.

19. High-risk Workers

High-risk labor is another great, though a possibly unexpected, form of photojournalism. Perfectly illustrating the careful balance of life and death with everyday work, Nuno Silva captures commercial window cleaners.

20. Risky Work Meets Entertainment

As we know, entertainment and sports can also fall under the photojournalism umbrella. And the cool thing about this image from Komorebi Photo is that it combines the risky world of racecar driving with the entertainment element that includes a large audience of spectators.

21. World Leaders

We couldn’t end this list of examples without discussing world leaders! This shot of former US President Barack Obama from History in HD during his presidency is an equally simple and strong example of photojournalism.

What are the Ethical Rules of Photojournalism?

Good photojournalism aims to treat subjects with dignity and respect with content that’s comprehensive, accurate, and free from manipulations or other camera enhancements.

Followers of good photojournalism also ensure other journalists are treated with respect and have access to the same news story they do.

To learn more about the ethics of photojournalism, visit the NPPA’s  website .

What are the Guidelines for Captioning in Photojournalism?

Typically, captions for photojournalism are structured as complete sentences.

As detailed in NPR’s style guide, all captions should be closely examined for accuracy and typos and should cover the subject, the location, the event, the background, and why it’s significant.

And while different publications adhere to different style guides, let’s continue using NPR as an example. As opposed to commas, NPR captions will have parentheses to show who’s in the photo — e.g., Local restaurant owner Sean Husk (left) and his wife step outside for fresh air.

In short, remember to always check which style guide the company or publication you’re working for uses before captioning!

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Dana is a passionate lifestyle photographer and professional writer. When she isn’t working with designers and creative directors at photoshoots, she can be found using her Fujifilm or Nikon cameras out in the wild, capturing elements of fashion and nature.

Nice article to post on importance of photo journalism.

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Ten examples of immersive photo essays

By Marissa Sapega — Contributing Writer

Photo essays are one of the most powerful forms of storytelling in the last century. From the great depression photographer W. Eugene Smith to the photojournalism of National Geographic or Life Magazine , the best photo essays entertain, educate, and move readers more than words alone ever could. 

But photo essays have changed. Over the last decade, web publishing technologies — including web browsers and file formats — have improved by leaps and bounds. A good photo essays today is more than a collection of images. It’s a truly interactive, immersive, and multimedia experiences.

In this guide, we introduce 10 stunning examples of visually arresting interactive photo essays to fuel your creative juices.

Now, let's set the scene with a short introduction to immersive, interactive photo essays on the web.

What do the BBC, Tripadvisor, and Penguin have in common? They craft stunning, interactive web content with Shorthand. And so can you! Publish your first story for free — no code or web design skills required. Sign up now.

The rise of immersive, interactive photo essays

What is an immersive, interactive photo essay? Let's take these terms one at a time. 

An immersive photo essay uses rich media and story design to capture and keep the reader's attention. Immersive content is typically free of the most distracting elements of the web, such as pop-ups, skyscrapers, and other intrusions on the reading experience.

As a basic rule of thumb, immersive content respects the reader's attention. 

An interactive photo essay is one that allows the reader to control how the content appears. It may include interactive elements, like maps and embedded applications.

More commonly, modern interactive photo stories use a technique known as scrollytelling . Scrollytelling stories allow the reader to trigger animations and other visual effects as they scroll. Many of the examples in this guide use scrollytelling techniques. Read more scrollytelling examples .

Until relatively recently, immersive, interactive photo essays could only be created with the help of a designer or web developer. But with the rise of digital storytelling platforms , anyone can create compelling, dynamic stories without writing a single line of code.

If you're looking to learn more about how to create a photo essay — or are looking for more photo essay ideas  — check out our introduction to photo essays . 

Photo essay topics

If you’re looking for photo essay examples, chances are you’re looking to create a photo essay for yourself. If you’re just getting started, you might want some guidance on exactly what kinds of topics make for great photo essays.

More experienced photographers — feel free to skip this section. But for those who are just starting out, here’s a quick list of classic photo essay subject matter, for all types of photo essays.

• Local events. A great way to start out is photograph local events in your community, such as a high school fundraiser. A bonus is that you’ll have a ready
• Historic sites. Another classic photo essay topic is an exploration of a historic site. This could be a building, a monument, or even just a specific location that has significance.
• Profile of a person. A great way to get to know someone is to profile them in a photo essay. This could be a family member, friend, or even just someone you’ve met.
• Animals in captivity. Another popular subject matter for photo essays is animals in captivity, whether that’s at a zoo or elsewhere.
• A day in the life. Have you ever wondered what it’s like to live someone else’s life for a day? Why not find out and document it in a photo essay?
• Street photography. Another great way to practice your photography skills is to head out into the streets and photograph the everyday lives of people around you. The world has plenty of photo essays of cities like New York and London. But what about street photography in your own backyard?
• Still life photography. Still life photography is all about capturing inanimate objects on film. This could be anything from flowers to furniture to food. It’s a great way to practice your photography skills and learn about composition
• Landscapes . Landscape photography is one of the most popular genres, and for good reason. There are endless possibilities when it comes to finding interesting subjects to shoot. So get out there and start exploring!
• Abandoned buildings. There’s something fascinating about abandoned buildings. They offer a glimpse into the past, and can be eerily beautiful. If you have any in your area, they make for great photo essay subjects.
• Lifestyles. Document someone who lives a lifestyle that’s different from your own. This could be a portrayal of an everyday person, or it could be someone with an unusual job or hobby.
• Social issues. Take photos depicting significant social issues in your community, remembering to respect your subjects.

Ten inspiring photo essay examples

Pink lagoon and peculiar galaxies — July’s best science images

In Pink lagoon and peculiar galaxies , Nature present a mesmerising series of images from the natural world. Highlights include:

• a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it photo of rare albino orcas performing feats of synchronized swimming;
• an arresting aerial view of the aftermath of the flash floods in Germany; and,
• a scarlet gawping Venus flytrap sea anemone. 

The best part? Nature publishes similarly powerful photo essays every month, showcasing some of the best and most creative photography of the natural world anywhere on the web.

Vanishing Lands

Vanishing lands — an ominously interesting photo essay from media company Stuff — opens with a bucolic visual featuring meandering sheep flanked by breathtaking mountains that blur into obscurity.

Soon, more awe-inspiring photos of breathtaking New Zealand farmland appear, accompanied by expressive prose whose tone matches the visuals’ stark beauty.

In this unflinchingly honest photographic essay, Stuff takes the viewer behind the scenes with a day in the life of a high country sheep farmer facing an uncertain future. One stunning photo fades into the next as you scroll through, broken only by the occasional noteworthy quote and accompanying narrative.

Olympic photos: Emotion runs high

This emotionally wrought sports story from NBC begins with a close-up of an anxious Simone Biles, her expression exemplifying the tension and frustration echoed on so many of her fellow athletes’ faces.

The subtitle puts it perfectly: “The agony—and thrill—of competition at the Olympics is written all over their faces.”

Devastation, disappointment, and defeat take centre stage in this piece — but not all the subjects of the photos in this compelling photography essay depict misery. Some of the images, like that taken of the gold medal-winning Russian artistic gymnasts, manage to project the athletes’ joy almost beyond the edges of the screen.

The NBC editors who created this visual story chose to display the series of photos using the entire screen width and limit the copy to simple captions, letting the visuals speak for themselves. The result is a riveting montage of photographs that manage to capture the overarching sentiment of the 2020 Olympic Games.

James Epp: A Twist of the Hand

In A Twist of the Hand , the Museum of Classical Archaeology at the University of Cambridge have produced a gorgeous photo essay. This online art show showcases artist James Epp’s installation, combining photographs of the exhibit with images of museum prints and authentic artefacts.

As you scroll down, close-up shots of the installation make you feel like you’re physically wandering among the ancient sculptures, able to examine hairline spider cracks and tiny divots marking the surface of every antiquated figure. In between the photos—and often flanked by museum prints—are James Epp's musings about what inspired him to create the pieces. It’s an absorbing virtual gallery that will no doubt inspire real life visits to the exhibition.

The Café Racer Revolution

Though it’s a cleverly built piece of interactive content marketing , Honda’s “ Café Racer Revolution ” is also a great photo essay. Alongside information about the latest and greatest motorcycles Honda has to offer, it details the history of the bikers who sought to employ motorcycles (specifically “café racers”) as a way to forge an identity for themselves and project a “statement of individuality.”

Scroll down, and nostalgic black-and-white photos give way to contemporary action shots featuring fully decked-out motorcyclists on various Honda models.

Dynamic photos of bikes rotate them 360 degrees when you mouse over them, and text superimposed over flashy shots rolls smoothly down the screen as you scroll. This photo essay will stir a longing to hit the open road for anyone who has ever dreamed of owning one of Honda’s zippy bikes.

Built to keep Black from white

In Built to keep Black from white , NBC News and BridgeDetroit have built a stunning narrative photo essay that encapsulates the history of Detroit’s Birwood Wall — a literal dividing line intended to separate neighborhoods inhabited by people of different races. 

The piece begins with a brief history of the concrete barrier. Between paragraphs of text, it weaves in quotes from residents who grew up as the wall was erected and a short video. Animated maps highlighting the affected neighborhoods unspool across the screen as you scroll down, accompanied by brief explanations of what the maps represent.

In the series of photographs that follow, contemporary images transition into decades-old shots of the wall when it was newly constructed. This is followed by images of original real estate documents, resident portraits, and additional animated maps — each considering the issue from different angles.

The piece ends with an interactive display of how Detroit’s racial makeup has changed over the past several decades, from majority white to black, and how the wall has impacted the lives of its residents who lived (and died) within its borders.

The story of Black Lives Matter in sport

The BBC pairs illustrations and bold imagery in this photo essay on how athletes participated in the Black Lives Matter movement . At the start, a narrow column of text leads into an iconic image of American football players kneeling during the pre-game national anthem in a solemn protest against police brutality. 

The first excerpt, a summary of Trayvon Martin’s death in 2012, draws you in with piercing prose capped off with photographs that bleed into one another. Every account in the photo essay follows this layout.

WaterAid Climate Stories

Climate change affects everyone on the planet, but some people are feeling the effects more than others. WaterAid’s scrollytelling photo essay illuminates the plight of individuals living in areas where extreme weather conditions — caused by climate change — have drastically impacted the water supply and environment, endangering their livelihoods and ability to survive.

This climate change story starts with an engrossing video that provides an up-close and personal look at the devastation that climate change-induced droughts have wreaked on people and the environment. As you scroll down, images of massively depleted bodies of water with superimposed text and quotes unfold before your eyes. It’s an efficient way to drive home the critical message WaterAid wants to convey: climate change is real, and it’s harming real people.

Each extreme weather story focuses on an individual to help viewers empathise and understand that climate change has real, drastic consequences for millions of people worldwide. The piece ends with a call to action to learn more about and financially support WaterAid’s fight to assist people living in the desperate situations depicted in the essay.

28 Days in Afghanistan

In this piece, Australian photo-journalist Andrew Quilty tells the story of the four weeks he spent in Afghanistan . He captures daily events ranging from the mundane—like a casual visit to his barber—to jarring. More than one photo documents blood-spattered victims of violence.

Viewers must scroll through the piece to follow Andrew’s daily musings and the striking photos that accompany them. His photo essay is a powerful example of how scrollytelling is transforming the art of long-form journalism .

La carrera lunática de Musk y Bezos (Musk and Bezos' lunatic careers)

Billionaires Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos are angling to conquer the final frontier: space.

El Periódico captures their story via a whimsically illustrated photo essay, filled with neon line drawings and bold photos of the massive spaceships, the hangars that house them, and footprints on the moon. La carrera lunática de Musk y Bezos describes the battle between the two titans’ space companies (Blue Origin and SpaceX) for the honor of partially funding NASA’s next mission to the moon.

As you scroll down, white and fluorescent yellow words on a black background roll smoothly over images. The team at El Periódico slips in stylistic animations to break up the text—such as rocket ships with shimmering “vapour trails”—then ups the ante with a series of moon images that transition into portraits of the 12 U.S. astronauts who visited the celestial body.

The photo essay ends with the question: “Who will be the next to leave their footprints on the dusty lunar soil?” At the time of publishing, NASA had not yet decided between the two companies. (Spoiler alert: SpaceX won .)

Marissa Sapega is a seasoned writer, editor, and digital marketer with a background in web and graphic design.

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Pictures That Tell Stories: Photo Essay Examples

Like any other type of artist, a photographer’s job is to tell a story through their pictures. While some of the most creative among us can invoke emotion or convey a thought with one single photo, the rest of us will rely on a photo essay.

In the following article, we’ll go into detail about what a photo essay is and how to craft one while providing some detailed photo essay examples.

What is a Photo Essay? 

A photo essay is a series of photographs that, when assembled in a particular order, tell a unique and compelling story. While some photographers choose only to use pictures in their presentations, others will incorporate captions, comments, or even full paragraphs of text to provide more exposition for the scene they are unfolding.

A photo essay is a well-established part of photojournalism and have been used for decades to present a variety of information to the reader. Some of the most famous photo essayists include Ansel Adams , W. Eugene Smith, and James Nachtwey. Of course, there are thousands of photo essay examples out there from which you can draw inspiration.

Why Consider Creating a Photo Essay?

As the old saying goes, “a picture is worth 1000 words.” This adage is, for many photographers, reason enough to hold a photo essay in particularly high regard.

For others, a photo essay allow them to take pictures that are already interesting and construct intricate, emotionally-charged tales out of them. For all photographers, it is yet another skill they can master to become better at their craft.

As you might expect, the photo essay have had a long history of being associated with photojournalism. From the Great Depression to Civil Rights Marches and beyond, many compelling stories have been told through a combination of images and text, or photos alone. A photo essay often evokes an intense reaction, whether artistic in nature or designed to prove a socio-political point.

Below, we’ll list some famous photo essay samples to further illustrate the subject.

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Famous Photo Essays

“The Great Depression” by Dorothea Lange – Shot and arranged in the 1930s, this famous photo essay still serves as a stark reminder of The Great Depression and Dust Bowl America . Beautifully photographed, the black and white images offer a bleak insight to one of the country’s most difficult times.

“The Vietnam War” by Philip Jones Griffiths – Many artists consider the Griffiths’ photo essay works to be some of the most important records of the war in Vietnam. His photographs and great photo essays are particularly well-remembered for going against public opinion and showing the suffering of the “other side,” a novel concept when it came to war photography.

Various American Natural Sites by Ansel Adams – Adams bought the beauty of nature home to millions, photographing the American Southwest and places like Yosemite National Park in a way that made the photos seem huge, imposing, and beautiful.

“Everyday” by Noah Kalina – Is a series of photographs arranged into a video. This photo essay features daily photographs of the artist himself, who began taking capturing the images when he was 19 and continued to do so for six years.

“Signed, X” by Kate Ryan – This is a powerful photo essay put together to show the long-term effects of sexual violence and assault. This photo essay is special in that it remains ongoing, with more subjects being added every year.

Common Types of Photo Essays

While a photo essay do not have to conform to any specific format or design, there are two “umbrella terms” under which almost all genres of photo essays tend to fall. A photo essay is thematic and narrative. In the following section, we’ll give some details about the differences between the two types, and then cover some common genres used by many artists.

⬥ Thematic 

A thematic photo essay speak on a specific subject. For instance, numerous photo essays were put together in the 1930s to capture the ruin of The Great Depression. Though some of these presentations followed specific people or families, they mostly told the “story” of the entire event. There is much more freedom with a thematic photo essay, and you can utilize numerous locations and subjects. Text is less common with these types of presentations.

⬥ Narrative 

A narrative photo essay is much more specific than thematic essays, and they tend to tell a much more direct story. For instance, rather than show a number of scenes from a Great Depression Era town, the photographer might show the daily life of a person living in Dust Bowl America. There are few rules about how broad or narrow the scope needs to be, so photographers have endless creative freedom. These types of works frequently utilize text.

Common Photo Essay Genres

Walk a City – This photo essay is when you schedule a time to walk around a city, neighborhood, or natural site with the sole goal of taking photos. Usually thematic in nature, this type of photo essay allows you to capture a specific place, it’s energy, and its moods and then pass them along to others.

The Relationship Photo Essay – The interaction between families and loved ones if often a fascinating topic for a photo essay. This photo essay genre, in particular, gives photographers an excellent opportunity to capture complex emotions like love and abstract concepts like friendship. When paired with introspective text, the results can be quite stunning. 

The Timelapse Transformation Photo Essay – The goal of a transformation photo essay is to capture the way a subject changes over time. Some people take years or even decades putting together a transformation photo essay, with subjects ranging from people to buildings to trees to particular areas of a city.

Going Behind The Scenes Photo Essay – Many people are fascinated by what goes on behind the scenes of big events. Providing the photographer can get access; to an education photo essay can tell a very unique and compelling story to their viewers with this photo essay.

Photo Essay of a Special Event – There are always events and occasions going on that would make an interesting subject for a photo essay. Ideas for this photo essay include concerts, block parties, graduations, marches, and protests. Images from some of the latter were integral to the popularity of great photo essays.

The Daily Life Photo Essay – This type of photo essay often focus on a single subject and attempt to show “a day in the life” of that person or object through the photographs. This type of photo essay can be quite powerful depending on the subject matter and invoke many feelings in the people who view them.

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Photo Essay Ideas and Examples

One of the best ways to gain a better understanding of photo essays is to view some photo essay samples. If you take the time to study these executions in detail, you’ll see just how photo essays can make you a better photographer and offer you a better “voice” with which to speak to your audience.

Some of these photo essay ideas we’ve already touched on briefly, while others will be completely new to you. 

Cover a Protest or March  

Some of the best photo essay examples come from marches, protests, and other events associated with movements or socio-political statements. Such events allow you to take pictures of angry, happy, or otherwise empowered individuals in high-energy settings. The photo essay narrative can also be further enhanced by arriving early or staying long after the protest has ended to catch contrasting images. 

Photograph a Local Event  

Whether you know it or not, countless unique and interesting events are happening in and around your town this year. Such events provide photographers new opportunities to put together a compelling photo essay. From ethnic festivals to historical events to food and beverage celebrations, there are many different ways to capture and celebrate local life.

Visit an Abandoned Site or Building  

Old homes and historical sites are rich with detail and can sometimes appear dilapidated, overgrown by weeds, or broken down by time. These qualities make them a dynamic and exciting subject. Many great photo essay works of abandoned homes use a mix of far-away shots, close-ups, weird angles, and unique lighting. Such techniques help set a mood that the audience can feel through the photographic essay.

Chronicle a Pregnancy

Few photo essay topics could be more personal than telling the story of a pregnancy. Though this photo essay example can require some preparation and will take a lot of time, the results of a photographic essay like this are usually extremely emotionally-charged and touching. In some cases, photographers will continue the photo essay project as the child grows as well.

Photograph Unique Lifestyles  

People all over the world are embracing society’s changes in different ways. People live in vans or in “tiny houses,” living in the woods miles away from everyone else, and others are growing food on self-sustaining farms. Some of the best photo essay works have been born out of these new, inspiring movements.

Photograph Animals or Pets  

If you have a favorite animal (or one that you know very little about), you might want to arrange a way to see it up close and tell its story through images. You can take photos like this in a zoo or the animal’s natural habitat, depending on the type of animal you choose. Pets are another great topic for a photo essay and are among the most popular subjects for many photographers.

Show Body Positive Themes  

So much of modern photography is about showing the best looking, prettiest, or sexiest people at all times. Choosing a photo essay theme like body positivity, however, allows you to film a wide range of interesting-looking people from all walks of life.

Such a photo essay theme doesn’t just apply to women, as beauty can be found everywhere. As a photo essay photographer, it’s your job to find it!

Bring Social Issues to Life  

Some of the most impactful social photo essay examples are those where the photographer focuses on social issues. From discrimination to domestic violence to the injustices of the prison system, there are many ways that a creative photographer can highlight what’s wrong with the world. This type of photo essay can be incredibly powerful when paired with compelling subjects and some basic text.

Photograph Style and Fashion

If you live in or know of a particularly stylish locale or area, you can put together an excellent thematic photo essay by capturing impromptu shots of well-dressed people as they pass by. As with culture, style is easily identifiable and is as unifying as it is divisive. Great photo essay examples include people who’ve covered fashion sub-genres from all over the world, like urban hip hop or Japanese Visual Kei. 

Photograph Native Cultures and Traditions  

If you’ve ever opened up a copy of National Geographic, you’ve probably seen photo essay photos that fit this category. To many, the traditions, dress, religious ceremonies, and celebrations of native peoples and foreign cultures can be utterly captivating. For travel photographers, this photo essay is considered one of the best ways to tell a story with or without text.

Capture Seasonal Or Time Changes In A Landmark Photo Essay

Time-lapse photography is very compelling to most viewers. What they do in a few hours, however, others are doing over months, years, and even decades. If you know of an exciting landscape or scene, you can try to capture the same image in Winter, Spring, Summer, and Fall, and put that all together into one landmark photo essay.

Alternatively, you can photograph something being lost or ravaged by time or weather. The subject of your landmark photo essay can be as simple as the wall of an old building or as complex as an old house in the woods being taken over by nature. As always, there are countless transformation-based landmark photo essay works from which you can draw inspiration.

Photograph Humanitarian Efforts or Charity  

Humanitarian efforts by groups like Habitat for Humanity, the Red Cross, and Doctors Without Borders can invoke a powerful response through even the simplest of photos. While it can be hard to put yourself in a position to get the images, there are countless photo essay examples to serve as inspiration for your photo essay project.

How to Create a Photo Essay

There is no singular way to create a photo essay. As it is, ultimately, and artistic expression of the photographer, there is no right, wrong, good, or bad. However, like all stories, some tell them well and those who do not. Luckily, as with all things, practice does make perfect. Below, we’ve listed some basic steps outlining how to create a photo essay

Steps To Create A Photo Essay

Choose Your Topic – While some photo essayists will be able to “happen upon” a photo story and turn it into something compelling, most will want to choose their photo essay topics ahead of time. While the genres listed above should provide a great starting place, it’s essential to understand that photo essay topics can cover any event or occasion and any span of time

Do Some Research – The next step to creating a photo essay is to do some basic research. Examples could include learning the history of the area you’re shooting or the background of the person you photograph. If you’re photographing a new event, consider learning the story behind it. Doing so will give you ideas on what to look for when you’re shooting.  

Make a Storyboard – Storyboards are incredibly useful tools when you’re still in the process of deciding what photo story you want to tell. By laying out your ideas shot by shot, or even doing rough illustrations of what you’re trying to capture, you can prepare your photo story before you head out to take your photos.

This process is especially important if you have little to no control over your chosen subject. People who are participating in a march or protest, for instance, aren’t going to wait for you to get in position before offering up the perfect shot. You need to know what you’re looking for and be prepared to get it.

Get the Right Images – If you have a shot list or storyboard, you’ll be well-prepared to take on your photo essay. Make sure you give yourself enough time (where applicable) and take plenty of photos, so you have a lot from which to choose. It would also be a good idea to explore the area, show up early, and stay late. You never know when an idea might strike you.

Assemble Your Story – Once you develop or organize your photos on your computer, you need to choose the pictures that tell the most compelling photo story or stories. You might also find some great images that don’t fit your photo story These can still find a place in your portfolio, however, or perhaps a completely different photo essay you create later.

Depending on the type of photographer you are, you might choose to crop or digitally edit some of your photos to enhance the emotions they invoke. Doing so is completely at your discretion, but worth considering if you feel you can improve upon the naked image.

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Best Photo Essays Tips And Tricks

Before you approach the art of photo essaying for the first time, you might want to consider with these photo essay examples some techniques, tips, and tricks that can make your session more fun and your final results more interesting. Below, we’ve compiled a list of some of the best advice we could find on the subject of photo essays. 

⬥ Experiment All You Want 

You can, and should, plan your topic and your theme with as much attention to detail as possible. That said, some of the best photo essay examples come to us from photographers that got caught up in the moment and decided to experiment in different ways. Ideas for experimentation include the following: 

Angles – Citizen Kane is still revered today for the unique, dramatic angles used in the film. Though that was a motion picture and not photography, the same basic principles still apply. Don’t be afraid to photograph some different angles to see how they bring your subject to life in different ways.

Color – Some images have more gravitas in black in white or sepia tone. You can say the same for images that use color in an engaging, dynamic way. You always have room to experiment with color, both before and after the shoot.

Contrast – Dark and light, happy and sad, rich and poor – contrast is an instantly recognizable form of tension that you can easily include in your photo essay. In some cases, you can plan for dramatic contrasts. In other cases, you simply need to keep your eyes open.

Exposure Settings – You can play with light in terms of exposure as well, setting a number of different moods in the resulting photos. Some photographers even do random double exposures to create a photo essay that’s original.

Filters – There are endless post-production options available to photographers, particularly if they use digital cameras. Using different programs and apps, you can completely alter the look and feel of your image, changing it from warm to cool or altering dozens of different settings.

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If you’re using traditional film instead of a digital camera, you’re going to want to stock up. Getting the right shots for a photo essay usually involves taking hundreds of images that will end up in the rubbish bin. Taking extra pictures you won’t use is just the nature of the photography process. Luckily, there’s nothing better than coming home to realize that you managed to capture that one, perfect photograph. 

⬥ Set the Scene 

You’re not just telling a story to your audience – you’re writing it as well. If the scene you want to capture doesn’t have the look you want, don’t be afraid to move things around until it does. While this doesn’t often apply to photographing events that you have no control over, you shouldn’t be afraid to take a second to make an OK shot a great shot. 

⬥ Capture Now, Edit Later 

Editing, cropping, and digital effects can add a lot of drama and artistic flair to your photos. That said, you shouldn’t waste time on a shoot, thinking about how you can edit it later. Instead, make sure you’re capturing everything that you want and not missing out on any unique pictures. If you need to make changes later, you’ll have plenty of time! 

⬥ Make It Fun 

As photographers, we know that taking pictures is part art, part skill, and part performance. If you want to take the best photo essays, you need to loosen up and have fun. Again, you’ll want to plan for your topic as best as you can, but don’t be afraid to lose yourself in the experience. Once you let yourself relax, both the ideas and the opportunities will manifest.

⬥ It’s All in The Details 

When someone puts out a photographic essay for an audience, that work usually gets analyzed with great attention to detail. You need to apply this same level of scrutiny to the shots you choose to include in your photo essay. If something is out of place or (in the case of historical work) out of time, you can bet the audience will notice.

⬥ Consider Adding Text

While it isn’t necessary, a photographic essay can be more powerful by the addition of text. This is especially true of images with an interesting background story that can’t be conveyed through the image alone. If you don’t feel up to the task of writing content, consider partnering with another artist and allowing them tor bring your work to life.

Final Thoughts 

The world is waiting to tell us story after story. Through the best photo essays, we can capture the elements of those stories and create a photo essay that can invoke a variety of emotions in our audience.

No matter the type of cameras we choose, the techniques we embrace, or the topics we select, what really matters is that the photos say something about the people, objects, and events that make our world wonderful.

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Photojournalism

Summary of Photojournalism

Though one might be forgiven for sometimes confusing it with Documentary and Street Photography , Photojournalism possesses a vitality and a force all of its own. At its most rudimentary, Photojournalism is the practice of conveying the urgency of current news stories through pictures. It is true that a photojournalistic image can sometimes be left to speak for itself, but more usually it develops a narrative in conjunction with a written text; a comingling, in other words, of photography and journalism. Photojournalism is the lifeblood of the daily press, but it is associated predominantly with the rise of dedicated photo magazines and their preference for the so-called "photo-essay". Photojournalism deals with important, or newsworthy, subject matter, and its two overarching themes are world events and social injustice. Given, moreover, that photojournalists are usually committed to exposing wrongs, photojournalism is predicated on an unwritten code of practice that states that - if it is to adhere to the very highest standards of journalistic objectivity - the image must not be staged or manipulated. These rules are easier to apply to live action photography, however, and in actual practice the codes of practice can be bent where the urgency of the situation has demanded it. And while photojournalistic images tend to be very much "of the moment," Photojournalism has become instrumental in how we have come to view the last 170 years of world history.

Key Ideas & Accomplishments

• At basis, Photojournalism performs an important civic duty. Based on the premise that one always trusts the evidence of one's own eyes, it is Photojournalism's job to inform the public by showing the world "how it is in reality." The image, therefore, confirms the content of any accompanying written text (or vice-versa indeed).
• It is true that some exceptional photojournalists have achieved the status of "artists" - Henri Cartier-Bresson , Dorothea Lange and Arthur Rothstein for instance - but typically Photojournalism does not sit comfortably within the sphere of modern art photography . Photojournalists are more likely to earn the respect of their peers and the public as intrepid buccaneers willing to put their own safety at risk in order to capture the truest images.
• Since they can both aim at exposing social and/or humanitarian injustices, Photojournalism can certainly qualify as Documentary Photography . But unlike documentary, photojournalism tends to be investigative and unrehearsed. Photojournalism relies very much on an opportunistic snapshot principle for its effect whereas Documentary Photography is more typically the result of planning and considered composition.
• The photojournalist seeks to capture a moment - or a split second (the "decisive moment" as Henri Cartier-Bresson called it) - that would have, without their daring and endeavour, gone unnoticed. There is then sometimes a guerrilla element to photojournalism, especially so where the photojournalist is operating incognito or within a war zone.

Key Artists

Overview of Photojournalism

The role of the photojournalist can be incredibly dangerous. More than 1,000 photojournalists have died internationally since 1992 as they risk attack, retribution and kidnap to present the world with powerful images from the front line of conflict and danger.

Important Photographs and Artists of Photojournalism

Valley of the Shadow of Death

Artist: Robert Fenton

Fenton's image, which depicts a ravine in a desolate landscape beneath a bleak empty sky, is populated only with cannonballs. Strewn along the road on the right, and filling the ditch between the road and two paths on the left, the cannonballs are meant to represent British casualties of the Crimean war. The perspective of the photograph, looking up toward the sloping hills and around the incline of the road, captures something of the sense of hopelessness at being trapped in a valley under enemy fire from above. As Fenton described it: "the sight passed all imagination: round shot and shell lay like a stream at the bottom of the hollow all the way down, you could not walk without treading upon them." This barren war landscape would have resonated with the British national consciousness. Most had heard the story of "The Charge of the Light Brigade," an elite cavalry unit that sustained heavy casualties when ordered to charge through the Valley of the Shadow of Death toward fortified Russian artillery on October 25, 1854. The event was commemorated in a poem of the same title by Alfred Lord Tennyson, the poet laureate. The location in this photograph is of a similar but different ravine, and the image came to represent the heroism and tragedy of war. It transpired, however, that Fenton photographed the ravine on two separate occasions. Subsequently, controversy developed as to whether some of the cannonballs were placed to make a better second image. Thus, while the image remains of great historical significance, it is also attended by the issue of authenticity which underscores all judgements on the value of Photojournalism.

Salted paper print - J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles California

A Harvest of Death, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, July 4, 1863

Artist: Timothy H. O'Sullivan

This image, possibly the best known of Brady's Civil War photographs, depicts dead soldiers scattered on the battlefield after the Battle of Gettysburg, which took place between July 1-3, 1863. The photograph was included in Alexander Gardner's, Photographic Sketch Book of the War (1866), with text that read: "it was, indeed, a 'harvest of death' that was presented; hundreds and thousands of torn Union and rebel soldiers - although many of the former were already interred - strewed the now quiet fighting ground." The image was preceded by Gardner's hope that "Such a picture conveys a useful moral: It shows the blank horror and reality of war, in opposition to its pageantry. Here are the dreadful details! Let them aid in preventing such another calamity." During the Civil War, though photographs were taken of the dead, sometimes even in the stages of decomposition, newspapers and journals refused to publish them. It was only in books like Gardner's that the images were available to the public. Viewers, used to heroic depictions of war presented in paintings, were shocked by images like this one. The collected works showed the power of photography to depict history in the making. As The New York Times said of the book, "The faithful camera [...] has written the true history of the war."

Albumen silver print - The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York New York

The Crawlers

Artist: John Thomson

This picture depicts a destitute middle-aged woman holding a sleeping child on her lap, as she rests on a doorstep. The Crawlers was intended to communicate the dire situation of London's poor and to advocate a call for social change. The image was one of 36 published in Street Life in London (1877) with the writer Adolphe Smith Headingly's text relating the story of how the woman, through circumstances beyond her control, "descended penniless into the street." Using photographs to uphold the arguments presented by the text, the book helped pioneer the concept of the photo-essay. Thomson and Smith were both social reformers and hoped that their work would convince their readers that homelessness was "often, the result of unfortunate circumstances and accident." The image conveys the woman's exhaustion and also her solicitude for the child. In their introduction to the book, the co-authors championed "the precision of photography" and its ability to "present true types of the London poor and [to] shield us [the authors] from accusations of either underrating or exaggerating individual peculiarities of appearance."

Woodbury type - Victoria and Albert Museum, London England

Farmer and Sons Walking in the Face of a Dust Storm, Cimarron County, Oklahoma, April 1936

Artist: Arthur Rothstein

This iconic image depicts Arthur Cobel, a farmer and his two sons walking toward their simple shack in a dust storm on the Southern Plains of Oklahoma. The dust is so dense that the horizon is a blur, and the accumulated sand has built up in drifts so that the fence posts are now shorter than the young boy who runs along behind (with his hands protecting his face from the dust). Rothstein said of this photograph, "It was a picture that had a very simple kind of composition, but [...] it showed an individual in relation to his environment." Arthur Rothstein was the first photographer appointed by the Farm Security Administration (FSA), a project that was meant to build support for the social reforms of the Roosevelt Administration. Here he documents the devastating effects of the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, a phenomenon caused by a combination of a severe drought and over farming, that lasted eight years and devastated livestock and crops. Rothstein's career extended over some five decades. Working for Look magazine first as a photographer, and subsequently as its director of photography, in later years he became a respected teacher who schooled the renowned filmmaker Stanley Kubrick.

Gelatin silver print - Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas

The Falling Soldier

Artist: Frank Capa

As its original title confirms, Capa's most iconic image captures the "moment of death." The falling soldier is a loyalist militiaman fighting the Spanish Civil War and he has been struck in the forehead by a bullet; he falls backwards as his own rifle slips from his hand. Prior to Capa's photograph, war photography had often depicted stationary scenes of armaments, encampments, or the aftermath of battles. Shockingly brutal in its depiction of the realities of war, The Falling Soldier (originally titled: Loyalist Militiaman at the Moment of Death, Cerro Muriano, September 5, 1936 ) earned Capa the accolade "the greatest war photographer in the world" and duly set a new standard for authentic war photography. As Photojournalism emphasizes the accurate depiction of newsworthy events, questions of authenticity (more so than artistic merit) are of crucial importance. Thus, a hint of controversy developed around the identity of the soldier, the precise location of the photograph, and the circumstances under which it was taken. It wasn't until the 1990s that the man's identity was confirmed by his surviving brother, and military accounts recording the event of the man's death confirmed the picture's authenticity. However, other controversies persist around the potentially disconcerting effects of the photojournalistic image itself and how it impacts on the lives of the people it directly affects. These were not issues that concerned Cartier-Bresson who viewed Capa, with whom he later cofounded the Magnum agency in 1947, as a mentor and a voice of conscience.

Gelatin silver print - The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York New York

The Louisville Flood

Artist: Margaret Bourke-White

Bourke-White began her career in the early 1930s, and in 1937 when the Ohio River flooded Louisville Kentucky, she was sent to the area as a staff photographer for LIFE magazine. Documenting what was one of the largest natural disasters in the history of the United States, Bourke-White's images offered a commentary on racial and economic inequity. This photograph depicts African-Americans queuing outside a flood relief agency in front of a billboard that depicts a cheerful white middle-class family in their car. The billboard's heading "World's Highest Standard of Living," and the slogan "There's no way like the American Way," can be treated with ironic scepticism given the reality that is playing out in front of the billboard.

Gelatin silver print - Whitney Museum of American Art, New York New York

FRANCE. Normandy. June 6th, 1944. US troops assault Omaha Beach during the D-Day landings (first assault)

Artist: Robert Capa

This photograph captures a single instance of the D-Day invasion as Allied forces came ashore during the Normandy beach landing. The image focuses on a single soldier, who lies prone in the water as he looks towards shore, his gun extended in front of him. In the background, troop carriers can be seen, and objects - perhaps dead soldiers - float in the water. The blurriness of the photo, due to the photographer's position in the water, and the terror of being under artillery fire himself, conveys the utter chaos of the scene. Capa took over a hundred photos of the D-Day invasion, but a processing accident at LIFE magazine's London darkroom destroyed all but eleven of them. Dubbed the Magnificent Eleven , the images inspired Steven Spielberg's 1998 movie Saving Private Ryan . The film represented the Omaha Beach assault through a 27 minute opening sequence that many critics consider to be the most realistic depiction of battle ever produced. Capa was the foremost war photographer of his generation, and perhaps, of the entire 20 th century. His work exemplified the exacting standards expected of photojournalists and this was acknowledged by the Overseas Press Club of America who awarded the annual Robert Capa Gold Medal for overseas coverage "requiring courage and enterprise" in his honor from 1955. Capa himself was killed in 1954 while photographing the Indochine War in Vietnam.

Film negative - International Center of Photography/Magnum Photos

Shanghai 1948

Artist: Henri Cartier-Bresson

Cartier-Bresson travelled to China in 1948 on an assignment with LIFE magazine. He was tasked with photographing the transition from the Kuomintang government to the People's Republic, led by the Communist Chairman Mao. In this claustrophobic and turbulent scene a group of Chinese people tries to form a line outside of a bank (just outside of the picture's frame on the right). Some huddle or cling for physical stability to the people around them while others jostle forward. Others are seen climbing the building behind the crowd mass. Tightly framed, the image conveys a sense of panic and desperation. The cause of the crush was a currency crash that rendered paper money worthless and the ruling Kuomintang government promised to give forty grams of gold to each effected citizen. Cartier-Bresson called it "The Gold Rush" and described how "Outside the banks on the Bund vast queues have formed, spilling over into the neighboring streets and blocking the traffic. About ten people must have died in the crush [...] Some people waited more than 24 hours to try and exchange their banknotes."

A Disturbed Child in a Warsaw Orphanage

Artist: David Seymour

Already well known for his photographs of the Spanish Civil War (where he worked alongside Capa) David "Chim" Seymour was a Polish Jew and the first official UNICEF photographer to document the plight of children who had become refugees or orphans after World War II. This image depicts Terezka, a traumatized girl of seven or eight, who, having grown up in a concentration camp, was moved to a home for mentally disturbed children in Warsaw. Terezka had been asked to draw a picture of "home" and produced a frenzied scribble that was matched by her agitated expression. "Chim's" UNICEF photographs were published in LIFE magazine in 1948 with the caption for this image reading: "Children's wounds are not all outward. Those made in the mind by years of sorrow will take years to heal." "Chim's" friend, and cofounder of Magnum, Henri Cartier-Bresson suggested that "Chim" had "picked up his camera the way a doctor takes his stethoscope out of his bag, applying his diagnosis to the condition of the heart." Cartier-Bresson's assessment might have had special resonance for this image given that "Chim" had learned the details of his own parents' deaths in a Warsaw ghetto while on the UNICEF assignment. This photograph, selected by Edward Steichen for his world famous exhibition The Family of Man in 1955, became one of his best known. "Chim" was killed during a photo assignment while he was covering the armistice of the 1956 Suez War.

Gelatin silver print - The National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Aid from the Padre, June 4, 1962

Artist: Hector Rondón Lovera

This photograph depicts Navy chaplain Luis Padilla, himself under threat of sniper fire, holding a wounded man in the street during a Venezuelan revolt. The padre had gone out into the streets to give last rites to the dying man, when the photographer, also under fire, took this shot. The background, depicting a closed up carnicería - which in Spanish translates to "butcher's shop" or "slaughter and carnage" - brings added poignance to the image. Lovera was working for La Republica , the Venezuelan newspaper, when he took this photograph - one of a series in the city of Puerto Cabello, home of Venezuela's largest naval base. Through the selfless humanitarianism of the solitary padre, the image represents both the best and worst of the human condition and the photograph was named the World Press Photo of the Year in 1962 and won the Pulitzer Prize for Photography a year later. The photograph also influenced Norman Rockwell's Murder in Mississippi (1964).

Film negative - World Press Photo Archive

Czechoslovakia, August 1968

Artist: Josef Koudelka

To take this image, Koudelka asked an unnamed passer-by to position himself in order to show the exact moment the Soviets invaded Prague in 1968. Koudelka, a theatre photographer, had never photographed news events before, but in the week following the invasion he took over 5000 photographs of the widespread revolt of anti-Soviet activists. He was shot at and pursued by soldiers but managed to arrange for his photographs to be smuggled out to the country and sent to Magnum. The images then appeared in the British Sunday Times and LIFE magazine in America. The published photographs were attributed to someone known only as PP (for "Prague Photographer") in order to avoid personal reprisals. Ultimately, Koudelka left his native country for a life of exile. He became one of the most noted photojournalist of his generation, and published his first book Gypsies in 1975 and Exiles in 1988, both of which reflect on the themes of homelessness, exile, and the life of the outsider. This work, however, exemplified the idea of photojournalist as personal witness and the risks that that might entail.

Film negative - Magnum Photos

Mourning a brother killed by a Taliban rocket, Afghanistan

Artist: James Natchwey

Natchwey is one of the best-known contemporary photojournalists and war photographers. He has been awarded the Robert Capa Gold Medal five times, and the World Press Photo Award twice. He has covered armed conflicts since 1981 when he was assigned to Northern Ireland, and has been a contracted photographer with Time since 1984. This image originated in his coverage of the war of Afghanistan in the 1990s and depicts a local woman in mourning. She is shrouded in a burka reaching out to touch the tombstone of her brother's grave in a cemetery in Afghanistan. The horizon is cut off in order to emphasize a desolate landscape littered haphazardly with similar headstones. In his work, Natchwey emphasizes the role of photojournalist as objective witness: "There's a vital story to be told" he said and he has used his camera to tell the story of war, famine, social unrest, the AIDS epidemic in Africa, and the worldwide epidemic of drug resistant tuberculosis. Committed in principle to Capa's famous maxim "If your pictures are not good enough, you are not close enough," Natchwey is noted among photojournalists for the intimacy of his images. In 2001 a documentary film about him, War Photographer , was nominated for an Academy Award as best documentary.

Silver gelatin print - Museum of Art and Photography, Bangalore India

America 1968 Baltimore Riots

Artist: Devin Allen

This photograph shows a young black man running down the middle of the street, while being pursued by dozens of policemen. Having grown up in West Baltimore, Allen was 26 years old when he took this and other images documenting the riots following the death of Freddie Gray while in police custody. The image captures something of the intensity of the hostilities while working also as a commentary on contemporary race relations. Inspired by Gordon Parks and Andy Warhol, Allen had previously explored street photography and portraiture. He posted his images on Instagram where they were shared widely on Twitter and other social media platforms. Finally they featured on CNN and the BBC news channels. Indeed, this image became Time 's cover image (on April 25, 2015) and he was only the third amateur photograph to be featured on its cover. The cultural critic John Logan noted that in the age of social media the "documentary images of this civil rights era [had become transformed through] first-person dispatches," though whether that is necessarily a positive step forward for Photojournalism is open to question.

Film negative - National Museum of African American History & Culture, Washington DC

Beginnings of Photojournalism

The first cameras were seen as little more than machines for documenting reality. Early pioneers such as Louis Daguerre and Henry Fox-Talbot used their cameras to either produce studio portraits or to photograph public spaces and landmarks and the realization that photography could be used to inform the public emerged soon thereafter. The first true Photojournalism, however, is usually attributed to Carol Szathmari and Roger Fenton who used their cameras to document the Crimean War (1853-56). Szathmari, a Romanian painter, became a war photographer when, on his own initiative, he outfitted a wagon with a dark room and headed first to the banks of the Danube River, and onward then, to other Crimean battlefields. He exhibited approximately 200 war photographs at the 1855 Paris World Exhibition to great acclaim and was subsequently appointed Court Painter and Photographer for Romania in 1863.

In 1854, meanwhile, the British photographer, Roger Fenton, urged by Prince Albert and the British Secretary of War, headed for Crimea. The British government hoped that photographic images might boost the people's moral support for the unpopular war effort. Fenton's desolate landscape, The Valley of the Shadow of Death , became his most famous photograph. The location, near Sevastopol, was known as "The Valley of Death" after the elite British Light Brigade sustained heavy casualties when ordered to charge a heavily fortified Russian position that overlooked the valley. Fenton's image resonated with the British public as did his panoramic images. For the latter, Fenton had set up a camera in a chosen location and then rotated it for a series of shots which rendered - in pictures - the experience being on the front lines. Fenton's photographs appeared in the Illustrated London News in 1855 and were also put on public display widely throughout England. Fenton also presented his work to Queen Victoria, the French Emperor Napoleon III, and other royal dignitaries who quickly realized the important role Photojournalism could play in forming a national consciousness.

The American Civil War and Matthew Brady

Matthew Brady was an acclaimed New York portrait photographer and one of the first to launch his own studio in 1845. The outbreak of the American Civil War in 1861 created a new demand amongst his clients for photographs of conscripted relatives leading Brady to develop an interest in war photography.

It was President Abraham Lincoln no less who granted Brady permission to travel to battle scenes (with the caveat that Brady cover his own expenses). Brady assembled a team of 24 photographers whose photographs of the First Battle of Bull Run became especially well known, with several being published in Harper's Weekly . Though they offended the tastes of the public at large, The New York Times commented that "The faithful camera...has written the true history of the war. It is not merely what these representations are to us, but what they will be to those who come after us."

Social Documentary

At the start of the 1860s, a major trend in Photojournalism emerged with the camera being employed as a tool to highlight the plight of the poor and needy in industrial societies. Having travelled with his camera throughout Southeast Asia and China (the idea of colonial photography, and the colonial "postcard" in particular, becoming a field of photography in its own right), the Englishman John Thomson returned home in 1872 when he used his camera to expose social inequalities in Victorian England. His famous collection, Street Life in London , comprised of 37 photographs, was supported by essays by Adolph Smith Headingly and is often cited as among the first to match written essays with photographic images.

In the United States meanwhile the photographer Jacob Riis (know as an innovator in flash photography) documented the grave living conditions in the tenements of New York City. A Danish émigré, Riis found work as a journalist, a newspaper editor, and a police reporter and was a strong advocate of social reform. Eighteen of his photographs appeared in a photo essay "How the Other Half Lives" in Scribner Magazine' s 1889 Christmas edition and included images like Bandit's Roost (1888), which depicts a number of shadowy men standing along a narrow street which was located in the most crime-ridden area of New York City.

The “Golden Age” of Photojournalism

The work of Fenton, Brady, Thompson, Riis and the like helped establish the conventions of Photojournalism. And though it is problematic to speak of a "golden age" for a genre that tends to focus on human suffering, the so-called "golden age" of Photojournalism began, nevertheless, around 1930. Lasting a period of roughly 30 years, it has come to be considered exceptional because it gave rise to several noted photographers who between them helped expand the genre by exploiting innovations in camera technology. The "golden age" also coincided with the rise of popular photographic magazines like LIFE, Look , Regards , and Paris Match all of which carried the work of distinguished photojournalists.

The development of portable cameras with faster exposure times, including the Filmo 70 16mm movie camera and the 35mm Leica, gave photographers more mobility and a better chance of capturing live action. Robert Capa became the pre-eminent war photographer of his generation and remains best known internationally for The Falling Soldier (1936); a photograph that caught the instant when a Republic soldier in the Spanish Civil War was felled by an enemy bullet. Henri Cartier-Bresson , meanwhile, earned the title of "father of Photojournalism" thanks to his uncanny ability to freeze noteworthy events in what became known as his "decisive moment". The Frenchman covered occasions ranging from the coronations of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth II, to the Occupation and Liberation of France during and after World War II.

Social Documentary in the 1930s

In the 1930s, Social Documentary was an expansive artistic movement that welcomed photojournalists into its ranks. Between 1935 and 1944 Photojournalism in the US was exemplified by projects undertaken under the auspices of the Farm Security Administration (FSA). The purpose of the FSA project was to highlight rural (rather than urban) poverty and it brought international recognition to the likes of Dorothea Lange , Walker Evans , Arthur Rothstein , and Gordon Parks . Major national disasters like the Dust Bowl drought and the Great Depression, events driven by weather patterns and economic situations respectively, were shown through the personal impact they had had on individuals. The success of the FSA project was such that magazines such as LIFE employed staff photographers such as Margaret Bourke-White to cover events of national significance (such as the flooding of Louisville, Kentucky in 1935).

World War II

Following the rise of Nazism, photojournalists turned primarily towards documenting the turmoil of WWII. Bourke-White was the only Western photographer to witness the German attack on Moscow - known as the "Battle of Moscow" - in 1941 and she was the first woman to accompany US Air Corps crews on bombing missions in 1942. She also travelled with General Patton through Germany as his armies liberated a number of concentration camps. Between 1941- 46, Robert Capa (the Hungarian had relocated to New York from Paris where he had been a colleague of Cartier-Bresson) worked as a freelance photographer and war correspondent for LIFE and Collier's magazine. He was the only official American photographer to accompany the Allied troops on the D-Day landings and he also covered Allied victories in North Africa, and the Allied seizure of Leipzig, Nuremberg, and Berlin.

The Magnum Photographic Agency

In 1947, Capa, Cartier-Bresson, George Rodger, William Vandivert and David "Chim" Seymour formed a photographic cooperative that gave its members the freedom to photograph (and to own the copyright of) what they saw rather than be beholden to the demands of magazine editors. Magnum's mission statement proclaimed to "feel the pulse of the times," and it launched a number of long-running photographic projects including People Live Everywhere , Youth of the World , Women of the World and The Child Generation . Photographic coverage of geographical areas was split meanwhile among the core group: Roger covered Africa and the Middle East; "Chim" covered Europe; Cartier-Bresson covered China and India while America became Vandivert's territory. Capa was the exception, more a free-roaming figure was who would work worldwide. Each of the photographers became associated with their coverage of subsequent events, as was the case for instance with Cartier-Bresson who covered the assassination and funeral of Mahatma Gandhi in 1949.

Technology and Innovation

Given the need for long exposure times, and the need to place their camera on a tripod, the early war photographs by the likes of Fenton and Brady were of a somewhat static quality. Their images were largely restricted to pictures of military camps, generals in their tents, or decimated battlefields. The photographs of Thomson and Riis also lacked any real sense of mobility but their capacity to shoot in under lit urban environments was made possible by the development of a flash mechanism. The pocket Kodak was available from the late nineteenth century but lacked professional quality. That was remedied between the mid-1920s and mid-1930s when the Leica 35mm compact and the Filmo 70 16mm movie cameras brought with them a new sense of liberation. War photojournalists like Gerda Taro and Robert Capa could film battle scenes as they happened, and photographic coverage of conflict, whether war or civil unrest, began to dominate the news.

Technology has continued to change Photojournalism with the development of the smart phone and the ability to upload images almost instantaneously to the web. The New York Times and Washington Post both ran headline images taken by ordinary citizens on their camera phones during the 2005 London bombing. In 2013 the Chicago Tribune laid off their photojournalistic staff, including John H. White whose work had previously won a Pulitzer prize, and began using freelance photographers who were trained to use an iPhone. Due to the technology of the camera phone, a new kind of everyman-photojournalist has resulted.

Concepts and Trends

The “photo-essay”.

With the rise of many photo magazines, and the overall turn of the medium to a greater reliance on imagery, the so-called "photo-essay" became a popular method for covering news and human interest stories. On the one hand, photo-essays focused on events of national significance; on the other, photo-essays reflected a humanist perspective (and sometimes the two would overlap). Most of the noted photojournalists working in the mid-to-late-twentieth century - including W. Eugene Smith, Cartier-Bresson, Dorothea Lange, and more recently, Josef Koudelka , Sebastião Salgado, and Gabriela Iturbide - have worked (or continue to work) at one time or another in the photo-essay format. When LIFE magazine suspended publication in 1972, various critics felt that the photo-essay was dead, but, in fact, it has remained a viable form, though more so in book publications and exhibitions.

Standards in Photojournalism

Given its integral relationship with journalism, Photojournalism came under the rule of the same ethical codes. In the years following World War II, quality Photojournalism insisted on a number of stipulations: no posing or posturing, no artificial lighting, no manipulation of the scene, and no darkroom manipulation beyond cropping or lightening and darkening. All manipulation cast aspersions upon the status of the photograph and, by extension, the reputation of the photographer. In the modern era, early examples of Photojournalism (including Fenton's Valley of the Shadow of Death ) have been subject to revision as questions concerning image authenticity have become more pressing.

The matter of truthfulness continues to be a professional concern in contemporary Photojournalism. However, the pressure to act as an objective onlooker has often been at odds with the photographer's humanitarian instincts. The South African photographer Kevin Carter became well known for his The Vulture and the Little Girl (1993) that shows a famine stricken Sudanese child (who was in fact a boy) being stalked by a vulture. When the image appeared in The New York Times , there was a justifiable public outcry as many readers felt that Carter had a moral duty to go to the child's aid (which he did) before taking his photograph.

Issues of Censorship and Risk

Photojournalists are faced with the same fundamental problem as street photographers: that being the moral quandary of exploiting the lives of strangers for their own gain. However, those in conflict zones will often encounter people suffering in the most wretched of situations, and where that is the case, then the photojournalist can rationalize their actions given that they have undertaken to bring a particular human or political crisis to the attention of the wider world. Yet what is truly unique to the photojournalist covering political unrest or war is the element of personal risk from imprisonment and even injury or death. Indeed, Capa, Taro, and "Chim" all died while photographing combat situations. There can be a psychological cost too. Carter, stating in his suicide note that he was "haunted by the vivid memories," took his own life just four months after winning the 1994 "Pulitzer Prize for Feature Photography" for The vulture and the little girl .

Reporting on the death in Syria of the American foreign affairs correspondent and British journalist Marie Colvin in 2016, Tom Seymour of The Guardian noted that, since 1992, some 1,197 photojournalists had lost their lives in conflict situations. Seymour had put this depressing statistic down to the fact that all the major news publications had closed down their foreign bureaus and had come to "rely more and more on independent photographers working without the backing of a large organisation and on a shoestring budget" with the result that photojournalists were now even "targeted as enemy combatants."

Later Developments - After Photojournalism

New journalism.

In 1973 Tom Wolfe edited the anthology The New Journalism , a term coined by Wolfe to describe a style of journalism that reported on a broad range of subject matter over an extended period of time. New Journalism, sometimes referred to as "literary journalism," could be less objective and adopt an experiential or interpretative approach to factual material. Examples of "New Photojournalism" can be found in the photo-essay approach of Eugene and Aileen Smith's Minamata (1975), which documented the effects of methyl-mercury poisoning on inhabitants of the Japanese village of the same name, and Lauren Greenfield' s Girl Culture (2002) which explores the lives of modern American girls through the theme of identity and self-image.

Mary Ellen Mark's Streetwise (1988) meanwhile started as commissioned project but Mark struck up an intense relationship with the street children of Seattle, one of whom was a thirteen-year-old prostitute nicknamed "Tiny." Indeed, having turned down her offer of adoption, Mark consistently returned to photograph her "confidant and friend" until the photographer's death in 2015.

Photojournalism and Visual Culture

At its most rudimental, Photojournalism is a means of telling news stories with pictures. It is then highly problematic to talk of Photojournalism as art. And yet, like art , photojournalism has the power to transform the way people see the world. It is true that several noted photojournalists have been trailblazers in other photographic movements. Cartier-Bresson's work, as both a photojournalist and street photographer, set the standard for both fields for several decades, while iconic images produced in the name of the FSA saw the likes of Walker Evans, Gordon Parks, and Dorothea Lange attain the status of artist. However, Photojournalism has provided inspiration for artists working in the late-1970s and 1980s such as Sherrie Levine whose conceptual art directly copied Evan's iconic image of Allie Mae Burroughs. Levine, with Cindy Sherman and Richard Prince , used photography to examine the codes of representation and meaning through manipulation and appropriation of existing material including Photojournalism. Their work became landmarks of postmodernism . Other artists, including Sam Samore, Anne Collier, and Simon Brann Thorpe, have also drawn upon the history of Photojournalism to inform their art. Thorpe's Toy Soldier No. 61 The Falling Soldier (2015), for instance, references Capa's Falling Soldier in a project where real soldiers posed as plastic toy soldiers in the Sahara Desert as a way of exploring forgotten conflicts (in the Western Sahara in this instance) and how modern spectators have become desensitized by exposure to so many images of death and suffering.

Useful Resources on Photojournalism

• Photojournalism Our Pick By the Getty

• Photojournalism: 150 Years of Outstanding Press Photography By Rueul Golden
• Robert Capa: The Definition Edition By Richard Whelam
• Mathew Brady: Illustrated History of the Civil War By Mathew Brady
• Magnum: Fifty Years at the Front Line of History: The Story of the Legendary Photo Agency By Russell Miller
• Henri Cartier-Bresson Foundation
• Magnum Photos Our Pick
• Matthew Brady page, Library of Congress
• Josef Koudelka page, Magnum Photos
• Robert Capa page, Magnum Photos
• Devin Allen website
• James Nachtwey website
• A terrible beauty: Robert Fenton Our Pick By Simon Grant / By Tate Etc. / September 1, 2005
• Unraveling a 70-Year-Old Photographic Mystery Our Pick By Carole Naggar / Time magazine / Apr 12, 2017
• Chim: A Vivid Retrospective of Europe By Peter Van Agtmael / New York Times / Jan. 17, 2013
• Revisiting the Valley of the Shadow of Death By Carefully Aimed Darts / June 22, 2009
• 40 years on: the exile comes home to Prague Our Pick By Sean O'Hagan / The Guardian / August 23, 2008
• All Cameras Are Good Cameras By John Logan / Buzzfeed / November 13, 2016
• A Life in Photography: Don McCullin By Nicholas Wroe / The Guardian / May 21, 2010

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Trolley - New Orleans (1955)

Related artists, related movements & topics.

Content compiled and written by Rebecca Seiferle

Edited and revised, with Summary and Accomplishments added by Antony Todd

• photography

TIME’s Best Photojournalism of 2021

S ome years, when viewed in retrospect, resemble nothing so much a swirl, all movement and color, no one thing dominant. Others feel like a mountain we will live in the shadow of for a long while. The year just ending is more like a checkerboard, though a checkerboard with more than two colors, and its squares staggered at random heights: some towers, some pits and some elevated just enough to trip a person.

It was not easy to find your footing in 2021.

That much is clear from the best of the images captured by photojournalists for TIME over the last 12 months. The same U.S. Capitol building that one day was under assault by supporters of a losing candidate —the arm of one intruder finding leverage on marble balustrade; another reclining in a ransacked office—reverted, just two weeks later, back to its role as ceremonial backdrop for the peaceful transfer of power.

The COVID-19 pandemic would begin a retreat as welcome (and, it turned out, as fragile) as a baby coming off a ventilator. But strife waited in the return to semi-normal life: abortion rights protests and Latin Americans suspended in the limbo of migration.

The bad news: climate change grew only easier to photograph, a crisis visible in a heat wave that made an ice machine the best friend of a polar bear in an Oregon zoo. The better news was the cool buoyancy of proposed solutions: a celebrated chef harvesting grain from sea grass , and a worker doing safety training for offshore wind farms by bobbing in the North Atlantic.

There was joy out there in 2021. No previous image of a politician’s spouse captured what Doug Emhoff threw off when, while touring Elizabeth, N.J. America’s Second Gentleman came upon a group of high school students doing yoga, and struck a tree pose in a blazer and slacks. And what Ruddy Roye caught in a Minneapolis hotel ballroom when the family of George Floyd heard the word “guilty” in the trial of Derek Chauvin looked a lot like transcendence.

Yet if progress could be detected in 2021, momentum was harder to detect. No single image could capture so complex a year. But the photograph on the cover a May TIME cover—of a COVID-19 victim being carried across the scorched earth of a New Delhi crematorium —managed to contain at least the iconography of the overlapping crises that made it such a challenge to navigate. —Karl Vick

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• PHOTOGRAPHY

The best photojournalism of the last decade

When a recent Top 10 list of journalism stories skipped photojournalism, we decided to create our own.

Photographer Stephanie Sinclair has traveled the world to tell the stories of child brides like Tahani, posting with a former classmate, Ghada, also a child bride outside their home in Yemen. Of Tahani’s early days of her marriage to Majed, then 25, she said: “Whenever I saw him, I hid. I hated to see him.” The project spurred a nonprofit dedicated to empowering women and ending child marriage .

In the past decade, photojournalism exposed one of the massacres that prompted 750,000 people to flee Myanmar. It revealed the lives of some of the millions of girls who are forced to become child brides each year. It showed the medical miracle of a new face, the horror of sexual assault in the military, the impunity of death squads in the Philippines.

Last week, NYU’s journalism school declared 10 works of journalism as having the greatest impact of the past decade. Missing: Photojournalism. So we’ve spent the last few days looking at scores of the greatest photojournalism stories of the past decade. They weren’t hard to find. We settled on 10 to get the discussion going , and to prove a point—that next time around, a work of photojournalism will be included in a “greatest journalism” list. Here is our quick, and by no means definitive list, with a warning—a few of these images are graphic.

A supposed “war on drugs” in the Philippines turned into an excuse for the killing of thousands of people by government-backed gunmen in the Philippines. In this image above, Daniel Berehulak captures the anguish of a 6-year-old girl as her father’s body was being moved for burial. Jimboy Bolasa, 25, was one of 57 homicide victims Berehulak documented in 35 days in 2016.

For six years , Mary Calvert zeroed in on sexual assault in the military—and its lingering effects. Above, Rachel Lloyd comforts her husband Paul after he had a flashback. The scent of a candle in a Utah supermarket had reminded him of the shampoo he’d been using in the shower in Army basic training, where he had been beaten and raped by another recruit. Suddenly his hands were over his face, and he sank to the floor, sobbing. “It's hell, and there's no escape from it,” he was quoted as saying in Calvert's interactive story in 2019 . More than 100,000 men have been sexually assaulted in the military in recent decades.

Beyond a medical miracle, photographer Maggie Steber captured love. Above, Robb and Alesia Stubblefield hold their daughter, Katie, months after Katie received a face transplant at the Cleveland Clinic in late 2017. Determined to help Katie live a life as normal and valuable as possible, Robb and Alesia put their own lives on hold for more than four years. They were looking then into ways to improve Katie’s vision.

Other outstanding examples of photojournalism from the past decade:

• The three images that showed the world what Myanmar had been denying: It was massacring members of its Muslim Rohingya minority and burning their villages in 2017. The report won a Pulitzer Prize, awarded while Reuters journalists Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo spent 511 days imprisoned by Myanmar authorities for doing their job.
• Nina Robinson ’s account of life and loss originally intended to cover a swath of the South, but family misfortune prompted her instead to focus on the power of memory and the small town in Arkansas where her grandmother spent her last days. “I’ve never done anything so personal before,” Robinson said. And so universal.
• Brent Stirton ’s work on wildlife has changed the dynamic for conservation photography, says Photography Editor Kathy Moran . She points to his series on rhino poaching . One photo from that series, on a de-horned rhino in South Africa, won him the 2017 Wildlife Photographer of the Year and a World Press Photo first place in nature storytelling.
• Ruddy Roye ’s six months in 2015 documented protest in Brooklyn, Mississippi, Memphis, Manhattan, and Ferguson. His photographic series, When Living is a Protest , was a revelation, showing people who pushed past the pain each day. “The fact that [people] refuse to go under, refuse to give up, that is a protest to me,” he said.
• Matt Black ‘s work through 46 states and Puerto Rico challenged mainstream representation of America's poor. His project, Geography of Poverty , breaks through America's mythologies and the stigma of being poor. He discovered, as he puts it, “who gets their needs met and who doesn’t; who’s valued and who isn’t.”
• Plenty of photographers parachuted in to South Dakota to cover the conflict in 2016 between Native Americans and developers of a pipeline that would run through their tribal lands. But photographer Josué Rivas spent seven months living at Standing Rock , participating in tribal ceremonies before even photographing the people, and his work conveyed a deeper understanding of what was at stake . “I knew I had to tell the story from an Indigenous perspective,” Rivas said.

Presenting a human face. Showing a touch of compassion. And using photography as evidence to hold people and governments accountable.

There is plenty to be proud of in this past decade of photojournalism, whether or not it is recognized.

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Easy Travel Photography tips for better pictures

Since I have been traveling in Southeast Asia and also planned a more extensive project on the Sulfur miners of Mount Ijen, I have become more interested in photojournalism and documentary photography . After visiting the locations taking pictures there, I realized that getting great photographs that are worthy of a photojournalism series is more difficult than I thought. While looking at Photojournalism examples, there is such a disparity between their level of quality and mine, that I realized I still have a lot to learn.

Which is totally fine and I am happy to see the fields where I still have a lot of room for improvement. It can be very rewarding to power through these and you can always use websites like  Essaywritingservice  if you need a helping hand. Watching great examples of photojournalism is a good way of gathering inspiration and becoming a better photographer overall.

In this article, I want to present my favorite photojournalism examples and present photographs that tell a strong story.

Photojournalism Captions

Captions are a field that I haven’t put much thought into. Normally I just give my photographs a title and the place where the photograph has been taken.

Photojournalism is a bit different in this field, as the caption can help to understand the circumstances under which the photograph has been created. Usually, I am a strong advocate that a good photograph stands on its own merit and doesn’t need an explanation. But since photojournalism should be about the truth and not be vague, captions in photojournalism can help to understand the context of a picture.

The caption should be precise and describe what is not visible in the photograph. Adding value to understand the context of the photograph should be one of the primary tasks of the caption. Therefore, the caption shouldn’t repeat what is already shown but give some background.

For future reference, information like the date and place are also helpful in understanding the story of the photograph. Be specific about the information and not too excessive. The caption for a photojournalism photograph should be as short as possible while providing all the useful information that are really needed.

In the following Photojournalism Examples, the caption will only be about the photographer and the image itself. The photograph will then be accompanied by a short description, rather than a caption.

Where to Find Photojournalism Examples

Finding photographs that fall into the photojournalism category isn’t exactly easy when You search for it on the usual channels where You are probably searching for Street Photography as well.

Social Media isn’t really great for finding Photojournalism work. Most of the photojournalists aren’t really popular, with tenth of thousands of followers, but are more focused on photography than building up their social media presence.

Interesting agencies that You should follow are:

Magnumphotos | Instagram  | Website

I hope I don’t have to explain what Magnumphoto really is, but to make it short, they are the most influential agency of the 20th century and continue to produce great series. On their Instagram account which has more than 2.7million followers, they present contemporary photojournalism photographs, as well as classics from their archives.

Lensculture | Instagram | Website

When it comes to websites dedicated to photojournalism series and projects, Lensculture is one of the first addresses to look for. Although I am not a fan of their competition businesses, the series that they feature on their website are normally of the highest of qualities.

NOOR | Instagram | Website

Similar to Magnumphotos, Noor is a collective of one of the best photojournalists out there, documenting the world. In addition to the photographs, they also provide some background informations and insights into their work as a collective on their Instagram account. Other than that, there are more than enough other ways to see these kinds of photographs. If You are following the news, some of the examples that I present may not be new to You, even if You might not be interested in the genre itself.

The World Press Photo Foundation

One of the best sources for photojournalism examples are the world press photo awards .

They are presented every year and one my favorite awards and exhibitions to visit. When we talk about Photojournalism, there is always the connotation of human suffering or war.

But Photojournalism is much more than documenting crisis areas or producing series depicting the negative sides of life.

Have a look at the 11 categories of the World Press Photo Award for 2018.

Contemporary Issues

Single pictures (CI) or stories (CIS) documenting cultural, political or social issues affecting individuals or societies.

Environment

Single pictures (EN) or stories (ENS) documenting human impact, positive or negative, on the environment.

General News

Single pictures (GN) or stories (GNS) reporting on news topics and their aftermaths.

Long­-Term Projects

A project on a single theme that has been shot over at least three different years.

Single pictures (NA) or stories (NAS) showing flora, fauna, and landscapes in their natural state.

Single pictures (PO) or stories (POS) of individuals or groups either in observed or posed portraits.

Single pictures (SP) or stories (SPS) that capture individual or team sports.

Single pictures (SN) or stories (SNS) witnessing news moments or immediate events.

Especially Nature and Sports category are a nice change, with amazing photojournalism examples.

20 Photojournalism Examples

The first Photojournalism example looks like a movie still but shows real people in front of a coal power plant.

Smoke billows from stacks as men push a tricycle through a neighborhood next to a coal-fired power plant in northern Shanxi province.

About Kevin Frayer

He is an award-winning Canadian photojournalist based in Asia working for Getty Images.

His photographs have been widely published in leading newspapers, magazines and internet sites around the world.

The refugee crisis might have cooled down a little bit, over the winter months, but in March of 2016, the crisis was at its worst. Here, refugees try to leave an overcrowded Greek refugee camp to reach Macedonia.

About Vadim Ghirda

He joined the AP in 1990 at the age of 18 as communism was collapsing across Central and Eastern Europe. Ghirda started by covering the complex social and political turmoil generated by the transition from totalitarian rule to democracy. In Romania, civil unrest, miner riots, widespread high-level corruption, the declaration of independence of Moldova from the Soviet Union and a secession war in the Trans Dniester region, in Ukraine the protests before the toppling of Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, all in the early nineties.

Gael Monfils of France dives for a forehand, during his fourth-round match against Andrey Kuznetsov of Russia, in the 2016 Australian Open tennis championships at Melbourne Park, Melbourne, Australia.

About Cameron Spencer

Cameron is an Australian staff photographer for Getty Images based in Sydney, Australia, that specializes in photographing sport and portraiture.

After attaining a bachelor’s degree in visual communication and majoring in photography, Cameron began his career working as an assistant and freelance photographer.

A protester is treated after being sprayed with pepper spray at a police blockade on Highway 1806.

The Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) is a 1,886-kilometer-long underground oil pipeline project designed to transport oil from North Dakota to a shipping terminal in Illinois, USA. By 2016, most of the pipeline was complete, but the section closest to the Standing Rock Sioux reservation still awaited federal approval.

About Amber Bracken

She is a member of Rogue Collective and lifelong Albertan covering assignments across the province and farther from home.

After getting her start as a staffer in daily newspapers, she has moved on to a freelance career and the pursuit of long-term projects. She has since worked with many clients, including  The Globe and Mail , BuzzFeed, Reuters, Maclean’s, The Canadian Press, Postmedia and Canadian Geographic.

A barber’s shop in Old Havana.

Fidel Castro, Cuba’s former president and leader of the Communist revolution, died on 26 November. Mourning was fervent and public across the country. The mourning period lasted nine days, after which Castro’s ashes were taken on a route that retraced, in reverse, the steps of his victorious march from Santiago to Havana in 1959. Thousands turned out to watch the procession pass. Castro left a Cuba with much-admired education and healthcare systems, but one where a longstanding US economic embargo had led to shortages of basic supplies and widespread disrepair.

About Tomás Munita

Tomás Munita, born in 1975, is a freelance documentary photographer with a primary interest in social and environmental issues.

A leopard walks at night through Aarey Milk Colony, a residential, recreational and farming settlement adjacent to the Sanjay Gandhi National Park, in suburban Mumbai.

About Nayan Khanolkar

He is a self-taught avid nature photographer, who has been traveling the length and breadth of India to document Indian wildlife for over a decade and a half.

Domingo (foreground) came to Brazil from Angola in search of a better life and lives with Lourdes (cooking) and her five children in one of the occupied buildings.

About Peter Bauza

He is a German photographer within the documentary and storytelling world.

After graduating in international commerce, he first pursued a career for an international company, which took him to several countries where he also developed his visual language. He is very committed to social and geopolitical issues related to conservation, global health, diminishing cultures, sustainability and the environment. He resides between South America and Europe for now more than 20 years, frequently also traveling to Africa. His life-long respect for multicultural viewpoints fueled by the fluency in five languages also afforded him opportunities.

Najiba holds her nephew Shabir (2), who was injured in a bomb blast that killed his sister, in Kabul, Afghanistan, in March. The bomb exploded in a relatively peaceful part of Kabul while Shabir’s mother was walking the children to school.

About Paula Bronstein

She is a freelance photographer based in Bangkok, Thailand specializing in the Asian region.

Her work reflects the eye of a dedicated humanitarian and conflict photojournalist. With over 30 years of experience in the news business, Paula worked as staff for a variety of US newspapers for 14 years before moving overseas. She then went on to work for Getty Images newswire as a staff photographer from 2002-2013 covering stories globally, later was represented by Reportage by Getty Images.

Nigerian refugees cry and embrace in a detention center housing hundreds of women in Surman, Libya.

Refugees in such centers face indefinite detention. Many report sexual and physical violence, and insufficient food and water. A large number try to reach Europe by being smuggled over the Mediterranean Sea.

About Daniel Etter

He is a photographer and feature writer.

He moved to India in 2010, where he began exploring social inequality, with a particular focus on child labor. Since 2012, he has reported extensively on migration and refugee issues along Europe’s external borders and conflict zones across the Middle East.

Prisoners sleep on a staircase inside the Quezon City Jail, at night in Manila, Philippines. The jail was built in 1953 to house 800 people, though the UN says it should accommodate no more than 278. In August,  Time  reported that there were some 3,800 inmates at Quezon.

About Noel Celis

He is a Manila-based photojournalist from the Philippines.

Noel ventured into news photography for two local newspapers, The Manila Times in 2005 and The Manila Bulletin in 2007, covering different beats like police, sports, and lifestyle. In 2009, Noel joined AFP as a photo correspondent where he was able to shoot disasters like typhoon Ketsana. He was among the first photographers to arrive immediately after Typhoon Haiyan hit the Philippines.

In This Photojournalism Example, Investigators examine the scene after Romeo Joel Torres Fontanilla was killed by unknown gunmen riding motorcycles.

President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines began a concerted anti-drug offensive soon after taking office on 30 June. During his presidential campaign, Duterte and senior officials had linked high national crime rates with drugs: an approach popular with voters dissatisfied with the political establishment and its failure to tackle poverty, crime, and corruption.

About Daniel Berehulak

He is an independent photojournalist based in Mexico City.

A native of Sydney, Australia, and a regular contributor to The New York Times, he has visited more than 60 countries covering history-shaping events, including the Iraq and Afghan wars, the trial of Saddam Hussein, Ebola’s spread in West Africa and most recently the war on drugs in the Philippines. He focuses on news and social issues and on those affected.

A family flees Mosul, as oil fields burn in Qayyarah, 60 kilometers south of the city.

The Iraqi Special Operations Forces (ISOF), backed by the US and coalition forces, began an offensive to retake Mosul from the Islamic State group (IS) in October. IS had been entrenched in Mosul for more than two years. The Iraqi government initially dropped leaflets over the city, asking residents to stay in their homes. Many people were caught in the crossfire, but some chose to escape.

About Sergey Ponomarev

He is a freelance photographer best known for his photojournalism works depicting Russian daily life and culture as well as news images from the Libyan uprisal.

Before becoming a freelancer in 2012, Sergey worked for the Associated Press starting in 2003.

Civilians escape from a fire in a house hit during an air attack, in the village of Luhanskaya, Luhansk.

Donetsk and Luhansk are two self-proclaimed, pro-Russian ‘People’s Republics’ in the Donbass region in easternmost Ukraine. A 2001 government census showed that 74.9 percent of the population in the Donetsk region and 68.8 percent of the Luhansk region have Russian as a mother tongue.

About Valery Melnikov

Born in Nevinnomyssk, Valery Melnikov studied journalism in Stavropol, Russia.

His photographic career began when he started to work for The North Caucasus newspaper. For 10 years, he was a staff photographer for Kommersant publishing house and since 2009 for international news agency Rossiya Segodnya/Sputnik.

A loggerhead sea turtle swims entangled in abandoned fishing gear, off the coast of Tenerife, Canary Islands, in the northeast Atlantic Ocean.

The loggerhead is classed as a ‘vulnerable’ species globally by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, but the northeast Atlantic subpopulation is listed as ‘endangered’. Entrapment in nets intended for other species, and in gear left abandoned by fishing boats is the prime threat to marine turtles, followed by human consumption of meat and eggs, and coastal development affecting their habitat.

About Francis Perez

He was born in the Canary Islands and started in underwater photography taking pictures of the seabed in Tenerife.

As a freelance professional underwater photographer, he focuses on the submarine world with a unique style. His pictures show his own point of view in places such as Indonesia, Red Sea, Malaysia, South Africa, Mozambique, Philippines, Micronesia, Galapagos Islands, Mexico, Chile and Canary Islands, where he has focused on cetaceans.

Students of a gymnastics school in Xuzhou, China, do toe-pressure training for 30 minutes in the afternoon.

About Tiejun Wang

He was born in 1964 in Xuzhou, Jiangsu, China.

He is the vice president and general secretary of Xuzhou Photographers Association and is a member of China Photographers Association. He has been studying and practicing the art of photography for over 30 years, and more than 3,000 images accepted and partly awarded at competitions at home and abroad.

A black rhino, poached for its horn, is found dead at Hluhluwe Umfolozi Game Reserve, South Africa. It is suspected that the killers came from a local community approximately five kilometers away, entering the park illegally, shooting the rhino at a waterhole with a high-powered, silenced hunting rifle.

About Brent Stirton

He is the senior correspondent for Getty Images and Verbatim Photo.

He does most of his work for  National Geographic Magazine , Human Rights Watch,  Le Figaro, GEO  and other international titles.

Brent shoots issues related to the environment, to diminishing resources and on global health issues. His commercial clients include Coke, Nike, and Novartis, amongst others.

Ye Ye, a 16-year-old giant panda, lies in a training enclosure at the Wolong reserve, Sichuan, China. Her cub, Hua Yan was released into the wild after three years of training.

About Ami Vitale

Her journey as a photographer, writer and filmmaker has taken her to over 90 countries where she has witnessed civil unrest and violence, but also surreal beauty and the enduring power of the human spirit.

She has lived in mud huts and war zones contracted malaria, and donned a panda suit—all in keeping with her philosophy of “living the story.”

Each year on 28 December, residents of Ibi in Spain stage a mock military coup, pelting each other with flour and eggs and letting off firecrackers. A group of men, ‘Els Enfarinats’ (The Floured Ones) take control of the town, pronouncing ridiculous laws and fining citizens who infringe them. Another group, ‘La Oposicio’ (The Opposition) tries to restore order. At the end of the day, the fines are donated to charity.

About Antonio Gibotta

For him, photography is a way to show what’s inside without the use of the words.

It’s a means of expression. He loves traveling and searching for stories. Foreign cultures make him curious. He often looks and takes pictures, of the poor and outcast in order to sensitize people who often look at them with contempt. He wants to spread the sense of solidarity.

Jockey Nina Carberry flies off her horse Sir Des Champs (left) as they fall at The Chair fence during the Grand National steeplechase, at Aintree Racecourse, Liverpool, UK. A second horse, On His Own (right) also fell at the fence, moments before Sir Des Champs attempted to jump. None of the horses or jockeys involved were injured.

About Tom Jenkins

Tom Jenkins studied documentary photography under Magnum photographer David Hurn in Newport, South Wales, UK.

In 1989, after finishing the course, he freelanced for the sports specialist agency Allsport, as well as  The Independent ,  The Daily Telegraph ,  The Sunday Telegraph  and  The Sunday Express . In 1990, Jenkins began to get regular commissions from  The Guardian , and when The Guardian Media Group acquired  The Observer , from that newspaper, too. Most of his work is sports-based, but he has also covered a variety of news events.

Colima Volcano erupts with rock showers, lightning, and lava flows. The volcano, which is one of the most active in Mexico, showed an increase in activity from July onwards.

About Sergio Tapira

He is a photojournalist, documentary and nature photographer.

He was born in 1971 in the small city of Colima, Mexico. He started documenting Colima Volcano activity in 2002 and alternates his work with photojournalism since 2005.

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Photojournalism

Updated 21 July 2021

Downloads 28

Category Art ,  Family

Topic Child ,  Photography

Photojournalism: A Brief History

Photojournalism is the artwork of using photography to inform a story. Unlike today where snap shots can be cropped, altered and manipulated to present partial information, earliest forms of photojournalism had been believed to be inherently truthful. In the 1900s Lewis Wickes used photography to expose social injustices on child labor. He took images of children working in the factories and mines and detailed notes about their age. One photo that stood out was a ten-year-old girl Spinner at Whitnel cotton mill. This photograph is a clear indication that contemporary photojournalism draws a lot from the historical form of photography.

Ancient Limitations

Regarding content, ancient images was limited in the quantity of information that could be presented. In Wickes' photograph, it would be difficult to decipher the message without a caption given its content; the picture only portrays a girl standing in a corridor in what seems to be in an industry (Wickes). The photograph is also not clear; it is a bit blurred, and it is even difficult to determine whether the picture was taken at night or during the day. Besides that, the image had profound impact considering the efforts resulted in the implementation of laws prohibiting child labor.

Impact of Digital Technology

The digital technology has had a profound impact on photojournalism. Today, photographs tend to capture considerable information which adds up to the overall understandability of the image. For example, in a picture published recently in the New York Times, the photographer has captured enough information to determine the minor is working in a textile industry (Yeginsu). The picture is also of higher quality than in the previous case; the image has well-defined shadows and a relatively high degree of contrast. Evidently, the content, appearance, and quality of contemporary images are better than in ancient photography. While in the past photojournalist were more keen on taking notes, today such information can be captured using a digital camera.

Figure 1: Ten-Year-Old Spinner, Whitnel Cotton Mill

Figure 2: A young Syrian refugee sewed shoe parts last month in a factory in Gaziantep, Turkey

Works Cited

Wickes, Lewis. "Ten-Year-Old Spinner, Whitnel Cotton Mill."

Yeginsu, Ceylan. "In Turkey, A Syrian Child 'Has to Work to Survive.'" Nytimes.Com, 2017.

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