Photojournalism

 My passion for teaching journalism translates neatly into a passion for teaching photojournalism and storytelling through photography. In an introductory class, students learn the five-shot rule for captioning an event—we use the acronym E.M.A.C.E., for establishing, mid-range, angle, close-up, and extreme close-up. Then we practice storytelling captions for our photos. Students produce either a photo page, an InDesign layout, or both.

Inevitably, some students grumble through the initial stages of caption writing: “I thought this was an art class, not an English class.” But we use plenty of examples from current events—sports, entertainment, politics, whatever their interests—to dig into the importance of those couple of sentences that tell the story of a photo. Learning to write those sentences correctly helps to ensure that the story will be correctly received. Learning to read those sentences critically helps us to understand what photojournalists communicate.

And out of every class, a couple of students take off with writing captions, joining publications staffs to keep practicing what they have learned. Mission accomplished.

SAMPLE STUDENT PHOTO STORIES