10 Narcissus: Put a Human in the Picture
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A final remark. So far we have not specifically discussed the subject of your photos. Well, that’s because, when it comes to photojournalism, the answer is simple: a picture is never as compelling without a person in it. To demonstrate this, I recommend that you flip through your nearest magazine or newspaper and count the pictures sans people. I think you’ll find that people-less pictures are very, very rare. Even when a building is the focal point of a photo, the journalist will wait for a person to enter or seek out some other possibility to include a person in the frame. The reason for this is also simple: we humans are narcissists. We like to see ourselves in print. Not necessarily our literal selves, but most definitely other humans. As previously stated, the photographer evokes the humanity in their audience by showing the audience itself in a mirror. As the audience, we are much more likely to be attracted to a photo if we see our own reflection, so to speak. No matter how humble an individual is, humanity, as a whole, is largely vain as Narcissus. To feel connected to a photo, we must see other humans in it, in order to compare and contrast our own human experience with the story that’s being told. There is a simple hierarchy of attractiveness when it comes to inclusion of objects in a photo, and the hierarchy ranks as follows: 1) People 2) Animals 3) Inert objects So whatever job you’ve received as a photojournalist, take care to include a person in the picture. This small and simple step will greatly improve your chances of publication. Though neither of the pictures on the next page is a very good one, they illustrate the topic under review. The picture below was taken a couple of seconds prior to the picture above. Though the railing frames the ship nicely in the photo below, it is without life and can't compete with the one above, despite the fact that the people in the latter photo are relegated to the shadows.
A good picture shows humans. In the words of Sebastião Salgado: „It’s not the photographer who makes the picture, but the person being photographed.“