Editors
tend to be "word people." But they still need to recognize a good
visual when they see one -- and then to know how to do
it justice.
Here are
some hallmarks of a good photo:
| * Every
good photo has a clean, clear center of interest -- a focal
point or a center of visual impact that
draws the viewer's eye to it. |
| * Good
photos are natural -- they show real people
doing real things, rather than posed shots of people not doing
much of anything.
Good
photos commonly include motion or emotion. Just
as you want to use strong action words when you write, you want
photos to be strong, artistically pleasing and visually
compelling.
Human
faces often make good focal points for strong photos. In general, faces
in a photo should be at least the size of a dime so we can see them
clearly. |
| * Good
photos often follow the "rule of thirds."
This
guideline suggests that you can think of a photo as divided into
thirds, horizontally and vertically, something like this:
The
focal point will be near one of the intersections where a horizontal
line crosses a vertical line.
That
placement is often the most visually interesting option because
it creates asymmetry or a bit of artistic imbalance -- and thus
a bit of tension or motion within the photo. |
| * Good
photos are relevant to the photo they are trying
to tell. Like any other journalistic message, photos tell a story.
Your
task as editor is to select the best photo for the story you
want to tell -- and to display that photo big enough
for it to do its job. |
|
That
last point bears repeating in a box by itself: Big Is Beautiful.
Effective
photos draw readers into the page and into the stories on that page.
So you want to run the photos big enough to achieve that impact.
It's better
to use fewer large photos than a lot of small ones.
(That said,
if you use multiple photos in a package or "photo spread," they should be
of varying sizes. More on design to come!) |
Photos can run in a publication ...
| * With
stories. The technical term for these is "photos that run with
stories." |
* Without
stories. These are called standalone photos or, less commonly,
wild art.
These
can be used to tell a story all by themselves. Or they can serve
as promotional devices for a separate story elsewhere in the publication.
(For instance, you might use a standalone on the front page and write
a cutline that refers readers to more details in a story on page
5A, say.) |
|
The
content of the photo determines its optimal shape. But basically,
photos, especially news photos, are usually rectangular, either
horizontal
...
...
or vertical.
Square
photos are rare in newspapers because it's a boring, static shape.
(Yes,
you can run cutouts and silhouettes and other creatively cool
configurations. Those work well when used to
achieve
a specific effect on splashy feature pages. On basic news pages, your
best options are generally more sedate.) |
Most
photos need to be both cropped and sized.
* Cropping
means cutting the clutter out of a photo. The
goal is to enhance the impact of the photo's focal point and therefore
increase its
storytelling power.
Different
crops will tell different stories. For instance, a crop that
focuses tightly on a person's face can
be used to show emotion
or character. One that shows more background can be used to convey
something about the person's environment. |
* Editors
adjust a photo's size -- making it larger or smaller than the original
-- depending on the needs of the story
and of the page design.
But
be careful not to create distortion when you resize a
photo. Height and width must be changed proportionately. If you
change one dimension without a corresponding adjustment to the
other, you will create
a fun-house mirror sort of photo. |
|
The
Editorial Eye has excellent information about the ethics
of photo editing.
It's very
easy to digitally manipulate a photo. Some manipulation
(such as enhancement of contrast between foreground and background)
is acceptable.
But anything that changes the story the photo tells is an unacceptable
breach of faith with viewers, who expect photos in your publication
to reflect the reality the photographer saw.
|
All
photos should have both a credit line and a cutline:
*
A credit line
is the photographer's equivalent of a reporter's byline.
(So you want to remember to include it.)
The
credit line generally runs in small type just below and to
the right of
the
photo.
Each
publication has its own style for credit lines. As an editor,
all you have to do is know the style and remember to include
the credit line.
Example
of a credit line:
Rachel
Mummey/The Daily Iowan |
* The
cutline or caption uses text to complement the
story that the photo tells visually.
Use
the cutline to answer questions not clearly answered
in the photo -- to tell the viewer what the photo fails
to show and to address any ambiguities.
For
instance, cutlines should always identify the "who" --
the people in the photo. They typically also include the "when" and
the "where," along with the "what" (if
it's not obvious from the photo).
Good
cutlines also add context and detail. In just
a sentence or two, they tell
a little mini-story, informing the majority
of your
readers -- the ones who will look at the photo, read the
headline and read the cutline ... but will not read the
story.
Three
more points about cutlines (see The Editorial Eye for
more):
| * Much
of the basic information for the cutline comes from the photographer.
(Check for accuracy of spellings, especially names.) The
rest comes from the reporter -- from within the story. |
* Don't
insult the reader's intelligence by stating what's obvious
in the photo.
For
instance, if the photo shows a man and a woman, you don't
have to say "Joe Smith, left." (If it shows two men, on
the other hand, you do need to let the reader know which
one is Joe.) If the photo shows a guy walking his dog, there's
no need for a cutline that says "Joe Smith walks his dog."
And so on.
Look
for ways to convey details that the photo does not or cannot
convey on its own. |
* The first sentence of a cutline is written in present
tense,
which lends a sense of immediacy.
The
first sentence also provides the basic information contained
in the photo, helping
people understand what they're looking
at.
The
second and subsequent sentences of a cutline (if any) may
be written in either present tense (for ongoing
action)
or
past tense (for background). They provide additional
information about the story surrounding the photo. Obviously,
standalone photos commonly need longer cutlines than photos that
run with a story. |
|
Standalone
photos (those that run without a story) also should have a
slug line, also sometimes called an "overline." (Some publications
include slug lines with all photos, but most newspapers reserve them for
standalones.)
A
slug line is to a cutline what a label headline is to a story. In
just two or three catchy (ideally) words, a slug ...
* Introduces
the photo and cutline.
* Draws
the reader's eye thanks to type that's bigger and bolder than the
cutline itself.
* Time
and creative juices permitting, says something clever. |
|
Publications
of all sorts also make extensive use of infographics (sometimes called
just "graphics"), which combine illustrations and information to quickly
and clearly tell a visual story.
Infographics
include everything from maps to diagrams to timelines to charts to
... well, just about anything you can think of.
The
Editorial Eye offers a bunch of useful information about the
various kinds of infographics and how to use them. Here are just
a few highlights:
* Think
about asking for an infographic if you have a story that contains
a lot of details that can bog down the flow of the text (or that
the writer is struggling to integrate seamlessly).
Something
as simple as a table or chart (which you often can create yourself)
can be quite effective in conveying this sort of information, especially
for details involving numbers. Tables and charts, along with
other sorts of sidebar boxes, also nicely break up a big block
of text.
More
complex graphics such as maps or diagrams can be great for
both "selling" and "telling" a story. |
* Infographics
typically combine visual and verbal elements,
including:
| * A
slug line (again, a mini-headline). |
* "Chatter,"
the words providing verbal context for the visual element(s).
This
should be carefully
researched information, which comes from the artist, the writer
... and you, the editor.
Think
about what info you already know, what you don't know but
wish you did ... and, importantly, what
you don't really need to include. Too much text can clutter
up a good graphic and be distracting. |
| * A
compelling, appropriate visual presentation, which the artist
creates. |
| * The
source of the original information (for instance, a government
agency or university study or whatever). |
| * A
credit line for the artist. |
|
* As
an editor, you should know which graphic is best for a particular
task. For instance, if you're helping the artist choose among different
kinds of charts or graphs ...
| * Bar
charts show relationships between or among items on the chart. |
* Pie
charts show the division of a unit into smaller
pieces.
|
| * Fever
charts (also called line graphs or run charts)
show trends,
or changes over time. |
|
|