Can Photographs Change the World?

      I believe that photographs can definitely change the world. Photographs are very powerful. In a Forbes article Rahim Kanani said, “Photographs have the power to become icons, and to stay in people’s minds for their entire lifetime.”  Photographs are just as important as words and maybe even more important in some insistence's. Professor Nordell said, “ a photo is worth a thousand words.”  I completely agree with this because photographs are able to show you things that would be very hard to describe with words. Rahim Kanani also said, “Photographs are a shortcut to communicating quickly, and they reach people on an emotional level as few other things do.”   Photographs have the ability to tell a story without using any words.

                I think that the photo below really changed the world. This photo is of astronaut Neil Armstrong stepping on the moon. This was a huge accomplishment that I believe changed the world in many ways. This photo proves that there is more out their in the universe. This photo showed us something that we would have never been able to see. Without this photo we only would have had the astronauts account of what they saw. This photograph gave us the ability to feel as if we where also on this mission. This photo in my opinion changed how we thought about the universe and this photo made people curios about outer space. This also brought the country together because the first person walk on the moon was an American.

Photo by- NASA
Image Source- http://www.citizen-times.com/story/local/2014/07/17/legacies-apollo-years-moon-landing/12802617/


                Photographs have the ability to impact lots of people. The video in the content area talks about how Alexander Zemlianichenko took a photo of Boris Yeltsin dancing (Photo Below). Boris Yeltsin was President of Russia. This photo helped him to get reelected because it showed the people of Russia that Boris was healthy and strong enough to serve another term.   This photo did more than words could describe because people were able to see Boris dancing around for themselves.

         

Photo By- Alexander Zemlianichenko
Image Source- http://www.pulitzer.org/works/1997-Feature-Photography

                  Since photographs can be so powerful, people sometimes don't want them to get out to the public. This is called censorship. It is not very hard for photographs to not get published by large media outlets. Ashley Lutz from the Business Insider said “6 corporations control 90% of the media in America.” This makes easy for the large media outlets to control what gets to the public. Large media outlets are not the only way that photographs can get out.  Social media is huge and is a great tool to get things out to large numbers of people. Dan Gillmor talked about how instrumental cell phone cameras and social media was in the Ferguson incident. These people are called citizen journalists and they are very powerful most use social media to share there photos and videos.

   

                  The photo below of Muhammad Ali standing over Sonny Liston is a very powerful photo. The photo was taken after Ali knocked Sonny out with one punch. I have always really liked this picture and it was the first photo that came to my mind. This photo shows proves that anything can happen and that we should not underestimate others. This photo is an iconic sports photo. This photo makes me believe that if I work hard enough no matter how impossible a goal seems I can succeed and reach my goal.

Photo By- Neil Leifer
Image Source- http://www.blizter.com/muhammad-ali-2

Introduction to the History of Photojournalism

 The History of Photojournalism

                Photojournalism has many definitions. The Merriam-Webster dictionary said that photojournalism is "the job or activity of using photographs to report news stories in magazines or newspapers."  Photojournalism is the process of taking pictures and writing about those pictures. Professor Nordell explained it best, he said that to truly define photojournalism you have to look at the words “photo” and “journalism”. Meaning that a photo journalist cannot just be a great photographer or a great journalist, they have to be good at both. It is not enough to just know all about how to get a good photo because you also need to be able to know why you are photographing the event. Having background information on the event is very important as well. Also you cannot just be a good journalist because you need to know what camera equipment and angles are important to take a good photo. A good photojournalist has both skills sets.

             There are many different types of photo journalists. There are photo journalists like Zoriah and Alissa, who were mentioned in the course content video. Both of these photojournalists cover conflict areas. This is mostly covering wars and war torn areas. These photojournalists put there lives on the line to get photographs that are not guaranteed to even get published. There are also photojournalists who work for local publications and they cover all sorts of local events. In one of the videos from the course content it talks about Jason Henske who is a local photojournalist. He explains that it is hard to work as a photojournalist in a small town because you know everyone. This makes it hard to separate you're feeling from your work.  There are also many more types of photojournalists.

 Image source: http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/articles/43443/101-images-for-press-freedom-wednesday-nov-14/          

                 Photojournalism is very important because it help us document history. Knowing about the history of photojournalism is crucial. It says it perfectly in the “Why history is important” video, it said "history is the window to the past". It also said that "understanding the past is the key to understanding the present." I agree with this one hundred percent. Photojournalists help to document history and with that history documented we are able to learn from the past. We can use that information later on in the future. Without photojournalists we would be unable to get a clear idea or “picture” of what went on in the past and this could cause use to have to unnecessarily relive certain parts of history.

             Photojournalism helps us to see different peoples view points and ideals.The history of photojournalism helps us learn from our mistakes and figure out things worked well. Some people might say that knowing about history is not important because what is going to happen will happen regardless of whether or not we know history. This is not true because if we learn from photojournalists we can attempt to stop history from repeating itself. Knowing about the history of photojournalism is vital to learning and knowing about our pasts.

Image source: https://photogo.wordpress.com/2008/10/14/what-it-means-to-be-a-photographer/Photo by: Robert F. Sargent

Raising the Flag

Photo by Joe Rosenthal
Image Source:  http://www.cosasdearquitectos.com/2014/02/fantasticas-imagenes-historicas-recreadas-con-lego/