Travel reportage and photojournalism

If you have chosen the travel reportage and your subject is a foreign country, you should be very well informed about the customs control procedure. Apart from the documents that you take on the road, you should also have a copy of the purchase invoice of the more expensive photo equipment. If you own voluminous equipment you can obtain a customs declaration issued by the customs authorities, according to which each object should be specified with its own fabrication series.

The conditions of digital cameras storing can be various. Do not forget that taking photos during important variations of humidity and temperature has a powerful influence on the state of functioning of your equipment. The camera and gear must be protected from humidity. There is an excellent way to do this: use the Silica Gel packs. This is a hygroscopic material used for eliminating humidity from the air. Put two Silica Gel packs in your camera case or in the gear bag, so that it absorbs humidity. Every few days, it is recommended that you should warm the Silica Gel packs in order to evaporate humidity.

If you go on vacation and you take pictures chronologically, in order to keep in mind the impressions and sensations that you experience, this doesn’t mean that you’re making photography travel reportage. In case you do want to make such reportage, you should start by thoroughly planning it. Let’s suppose you have decided to take a trip in order to make a photo-reportage about a certain fair, but the fair is organized by chance only once a week, in the morning, and that very morning you didn’t wake up in time.

If you have a plan in mind, it is best to establish where, when and how to take photos. Before you set out, do the following: try to establish how much time you have to spend in that place in order to collect the material you need, and with which photos you will begin your photo-reportage.

Make an introduction to your photo-reportage. Decide whether it will be accompanied by a text or whether a structured photo presentation without words would be enough. If you know exactly what the subject will be and how the photo-reportage will end, the photos will provide enough introductory information for the subject and they will arouse interest towards it.

You can’t obtain a chronological, unitary presentation of the photographed subject if the photos are “scattered”. You should take a lot of photos in various conditions which require technical knowledge and skills. Don’t be afraid if you make any mistakes, you will learn from your own mistakes, and the higher the technical quality of the photo is, the higher the value of the moment immortalized in the picture will be.

When he immortalizes an event, the photo-reporter is a witness of the facts and he establishes what, where, when and how it happened, thus offering all the needed information about it. Photo-reporters prefer to use wide-angle lenses in order to put higher emphasis on the main theme in the frame, but using wide-angle lenses supposes the necessity of taking pictures of the object from very small distances.

The use of flash-lamps triggers a higher contrast. If you do that willingly with the purpose of darkening the background, the photo will be great; however, if you use it unwillingly you can obtain a lit foreground on a dark background, therefore ruining the balance of the subject. If the background contains the main subject for press photography, the details should be well rendered.

Another useful piece of advice refers to the way you take photos. If a photo is shot by more photo-reporters at the same time, try not to disturb the activity of the other present photo-reporters. They won’t be thrilled if you cover the subject at a certain point, by setting a wide-angle lens to your camera since you need to adjust the frame.

full copyright, text&images
© www.digital-cameras-help.com