Documentary photography is the art of telling a story through photography, which should be taught among the fundamental principles of good yearbook photojournalism. Here are five ideas for understanding and applying documentary photography.
Read more from Five Simple Ideas
From the category archives:
Five Simple Ideas
An interview that lasts less than an hour can still lead to a ton of useful information and quotes. That is, if the reporter takes proper notes and gets the right details down.
Using correct interview techniques will lead to better information from sources and therefore, better stories.
It’s a fact of life – students die. So do teachers. It is an emotional time for any school. But for publication staffs, emotions cannot rule your decisions. Your staff needs a clear policy so that all school deaths are handled equally, avoiding questions of favoritism.
Yearbook staffs view the index like the mom with four children contemplates her youngest child’s baby book. Ideas for what to put in it are few, and time is limited. Because yearbook staffs wait until the last deadline to think about the index, the section is often only a boring gray list that students open simply to find their own names. But the index can be a section in itself, an archive with sidebars, group shots and group coverage. Assign a staff member to the index and let them use one of these five simple ideas to give it a little flair.
When school starts and your staff is excited about the new year and the new book, it seems like everyone is working together. As the year progresses, senioritis hits and sometimes becomes a roadblock. Over the years I’ve found several ways to keep the seniors motivated to continue working until graduation.
One of my students’ favorite activities is a yearbook theme design contest. Instead of waiting until September to come up with a concept, we have a contest every spring. The winning theme is usually the yearbook theme for the next school year. Here are the rules and advantages.
A staff manual should answer any question a yearbook staff member may have if they were to find themselves working alone in the yearbook room – not that that should happen. But the point is, the manual needs to be inclusive and easy to navigate and access information. Place your mission statement and purpose at the beginning with the table of contents and, at minimum, put these items in the manual. This contents list comes from Deborah Garner, yearbook adviser at Central High School in Springfi eld, Mo.
Those of us who have been advising for a while know yearbook production is a year-round job, no matter what our teaching contract says. Just like the Boy Scouts, the better prepared staff members are, the better the outcome. Here are ways to keep students thinking yearbook over the summer.
Capturing sports photographically has always been one of, if not the toughest, assignment faced by any photographer. For some students, the challenge is welcomed. For others, just the word sports puts fear into their hearts. However, patience and practice can help any photographer become less afraid of the dreaded sports assignment.
