I am not a photojournalist.

So in my last post I briefly talked about the theatre festival assignment I did and I would now like to elaborate a bit.

We were to document the event just as a real photojournalist would, that meant taking down names of the people we were photographing ( 5 people or less thankfully), where they are from, what they were doing, why they were doing it and when they were doing it. In addition, we were to have cutlines (aka headlines) and captions ready for print. The part that was the most difficult for me, however, was that in photojournalism, all pictures must be a "complete sentence." This means there is a subject, an action, and I'm blanking on the third but the point is I am realizing I more of a fine art photographer. I take pictures for the formalism (shapes, colors, patterns, etc) and/or feeling. It was a challenge remembering that the picture isn't supposed to repeat what your captions are saying, they are supposed to provide new insight.

I processed the images this past week and was so glad that I had enough images that I could turn in. I'm not sure how many I took but I probably only had about a quarter of the total that were useable. I wanted to post some of the images, but I forgot that because the festival was made of primarily minors, I can't post any of them because I don't have releases from their parents.

While I didn't truly enjoy the experience, I am thankful for it. If there comes a day when I need to do photojournalism to pay the bills, I will know how to successfully do it and won't feel like a mermaid out of water. Best of all, I know now that I am not a photojournalist.

As always, I hope you have a terrific day!

-La Petite Sirène