Ryan's Writings…at Mason

Words have the ability to paint beautiful mental pictures for the reader; but what’s better than a mental picture?

A real picture.

Photographs are huge compliments to stories and now that journalism has gone mobile, anyone can take a photo and post it on the Internet with a story.

The thing is, taking a good photo — whether it’s on your iPhone or Android camera, a Canon or Nokia — takes a lot of practice.

You can’t just take a photo and expect it to strike your readers as something to look at (even with photo editing).

And because journalism has gone mobile, reporters cannot expect to have a photographer with them wherever they go.

It’s just not realistic.

So along with writing a story, journalists need to be patient with their photo-taking. Not every moment is picture-worthy, and learning how to capture the moments that are worthy of your time takes time and a lot of patience.

Though going mobile has hastened a lot of things — and some believe it has taken away the quality of journalism — it won’t hasten the art of photography. It still takes time, effort and patience to shoot a good photograph, and even if we’re shooting pictures from our smart-phones, photography still remains an art form that shouldn’t lack in quality.