19th MARCH 2006 - LECTURE 4

A picture is worth a thousand words. The timely old saying that, now that I think of it, would have made writing essays so much easier ("Hey miss, here's a picture of a bear. 1000 words right?"), has sort of been updated considering the big shift in journalism towards photojournalism and the concept of telling stories via images. There's been a long history of images telling stories. Yet humanity has come a long way from cave paintings on a wall.
In 2006 President Bush launched Operation Iraqi Freedom, to rid Iraq of tyrannical dictator Saddam Hussein and eliminate Iraq's ability to develop weapons of mass destruction. He did this by aiming U.S Cruise missiles and precision-guided bombs at Saddam Hussein in Baghdad. Nice.
In a time of great drama and tension, the images that appeared did nothing to help squash the growing rift between multiple countries and the people within those countries. The world was slowly tearing at itself. All because a few photos captured "the moment".

Not a thousand words, but an entire lifetime. That's the power of the modern photo. The modern video. The modern image. The ability to appeal straight to a person's emotions in an instant, to create that story in a second, is an exciting opportunity for journalists that they should grab at. Framing a photo, focusing on the most heart-wrenching elements and then BAM, snapping the pic at just the right moment and there's your story.

Just think, you could change the world, one image at a time.


Images available: http://weblog.sinteur.com/index.php/2006/03/01/bush-denies-iraq-heading-toward-civil-war/     http://www.marcodilauro.com/features/iraq-war/