Four angles of good news photos

As a kind of visual communication, news pictures are an indispensable and important form in news reports. Good news photos are an organic combination of news value and visual beauty. In my opinion, in order to take good news photos, journalists need to master the following "four elements" in addition to photography technology.

Plan well

Fan Jingyi, the former editor-in-chief of People's Daily, once summed up his experience in reporting major battles in four words: "Planning is the most important". The same is true for taking good news photos, so we must pay attention to planning. It is necessary to take pictures in a planned and organized way, so as to better present the objective facts to readers, show the theme, attract readers and guide public opinion, thus producing good social effects. On the one hand, we need to find news points. At present, what people are paying attention to, what happened and what needs to be widely publicized are all good news points. Journalists should be good at combining news points and determining the theme of news photos, which is an important prerequisite for news photos to have a wide and far-reaching impact. On the other hand, strengthen analysis and research. After determining the shooting theme, we should make an in-depth analysis of the news material, what to shoot, how to shoot, and what details to pay attention to, so as to determine the starting point of shooting. Especially for the shooting of news photos of some major events and conferences, we should step on the spot in advance, collect information, predict the shooting angle and content, and make preparations in advance.

In July 2006, the south section of Beijing-Guangzhou Railway was seriously damaged by water. I was interviewing in Hunan. After learning the news, I immediately rushed to the scene by car or plane. Keep in touch with the comrades at the scene on the way, understand the impact of water damage and rescue situation, and think about how to take shocking photos all the way. After comprehensive analysis, I decided to rush to Lechang Station, where the water disaster was the most serious, and took a group of photos of transferring passengers, repairing equipment and rushing through lines during the flood, which was published on the front page of People's Railway the next day and was fully affirmed by newspaper leaders.

The planning of news photos is very important, but there are also strict requirements, that is, journalists can't make subjective arrangements and artificial designs for news events, let alone fake them, otherwise it will violate the news spirit and is absolutely not allowed.

Absorb a lot of information

"A picture is worth a thousand words." The biggest difference between news photos and other photos is that it must contain a lot of information that readers can understand at a glance. This information usually refers to time, place, people, events, causes and consequences, which are the six elements of news. Take taking photos of large-scale activities or conferences as an example. The photographer will focus on the rostrum. The reason is that the event logo and important attendees can take photos here. Only these two points can reflect the four elements of news: time, place, people and events. As for the reasons and results, it can be explained in writing. If you take photos of the railway technical competition, you can try to choose the competition site with logo, with the contestants as the main body and logo as the background, so that the audience can see the main contents of the news at a glance by looking at the pictures. Therefore, when shooting news scenes, journalists should consider how to capture the most abundant information within a limited framework.

20 10 April, on the occasion of the centenary of Wuhan-Guangzhou high-speed railway, People's Railway planned to send a short message in the headline around the theme that high-speed railway brings wealth to the people, requesting to distribute a photo. How can we take this photo to better reflect and contrast this theme? After many times of riding the EMU and field interviews, I finally took a photo of the EMU flying by with a blooming rape field and countryside around Yueyang as the background. As a result, this photo has been well received by many colleagues and readers in the industry. They think that this photo is not only beautiful, but also informative and full of artistic conception: first, high-speed rail, highway, EMU, new rural construction and rape blossom, which is very informative and magnificent. Second, the golden rape blossoms, the new countryside under construction and the speeding EMUs symbolize the excellent situation of economic and social development, set off the theme and have far-reaching artistic conception.

Highlight aesthetic feeling and visual impact

A good news photo should not only have the necessary news elements, but also give people visual beauty and impact, so that people can get news information and leave a deep impression, and achieve the effect of remembering news facts because of this photo. Usually when shooting, focus on the eyes of the protagonist, pay attention to reflecting the activities and scenes of the characters from the front, and avoid losing focus when shooting the characters from the back; Attention should be paid to capturing all kinds of scenes that can best reflect events, and the main characters and objects should be photographed as much as possible to avoid visual incompleteness; Reasonable use of wide-angle framing exaggerates the characteristics, movements and atmosphere of the scene, forming a visual impact and avoiding dull photos; Choose different angles to take photos, and make full use of various postures and techniques such as prone, prone, side-lying, penetrating, etc. to re-present common scenes in front of the audience from a novel angle to avoid the old scenes falling into the routine.