creativ-photo: Theme: Analyzing a Picture ( Photojournalism )

10 Oct 2008US shares plunged to fresh five-year lows on Thursday selloff as jitters intensified over the global financial crunch. The Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged 678.91 points (7.33%) to end at 8,579.19. - AP
adapter from: http://www.channelnewsasia.com/gallery/index.htm

Light quality
The light quality in this picture comes from the computer screen in the background. The lighting is harsh as this picture is trying to depicts the seriousness of the whole situation unlike the use of soft and diffused lightings. The direction of the light is pointing at the man and its bright. I don’t think there’s use of flash as the lighting from the computer screen is intense enough.

Texture
There’s no use of close up textures as the main focus of the picture is the man and his actions – hand grabbing his head.
As I would say, this is a picture depicting emotions from the man’s gestures rather than details of the objects. However, the background is important in telling the audience why the man is behaving in this manner. The computer screen is actually graphs of the plunging market shares of a company in U.S. Therefore, it clearly tells the audiences that the content on the screens cause a great impact in the man’s emotions.

Focus
The photographer uses a narrow depth of field, capturing only the man in in sharp focus and leaving the background blur. As mentioned, I think the photographer is putting the main focus and attention onto the man, leaving the audiences to imagine what has caused the man to react in this way with reference to the blur background.

Angle of View
The camera angle is at the eye level. I guess this photo is trying to let the audience have a feel of what it’s like to be in the position of the man or be in this situation of a bad market crash.

Framing / composition
The photographer decides to put the attention on to the man rather than the background as the latter is already bright enough to attract people’s eye to it.
Actually, I feel that the composition in this picture is not effective enough as there may be limitations while taking this picture such as timing and opportunity.
The man is not really in the middle of the picture and there is a lack of light balance in this photo. It seems a little over exposed on the top right hand side of the photo.
However I feel that the photographer is successfully in capturing only the important objects such as the man and the 2 computer screens. That is sufficient for me to realize that there are graphs and indications on the screens and a man is looking at it.

Colours
The colour is intense and it seems like the photo is in its original state without any manipulation of the colours and effects.
As the word journalism spells, I think the photographer wants to let audiences to get a feel of the seriousness of the situation by choosing to retain its original settings. By altering the effects of the photo, audiences may feel that the news is just to create attention and not to disseminate accurate and reliable news to the viewers.

Rationale behind my analysis
This photo is taken from channelnewsasia.com and it’s a website where its audiences come from around the world and they are in need of real and reliable information. Thus photos uploaded in this website, in the news and reports must not be so ‘artistic’, ‘fanciful’ and ‘artificial’ that people may think that its only for entertainment purposes.
Photojournalism favors towards realism rather than formalism and expressionism.
Thus the objective of the photo is to capture more realistic elements than conceptual and subjective elements.

The followings are photos that support my analysis for photojournalism.Basically they depicts realism in the photos for audiences.