Over the past five months, I’ve enjoyed working on a wide array of everyday projects as sports producer at The Arizona Republic. But one of my favorite duties is creating “close-up” photo galleries.
Here’s one example from the 2011 Fiesta Bowl, which took place in Glendale, about 15 minutes from where I work (downtown Phoenix).
The format might look familiar to you if you’re a follower of the Boston Globe’s “The Big Picture” photo blog, or of the St. Petersburg Times’ “All Eyes.” Same concept here. I mixed photos from some of the Republic photographers with those of the Associated Press and Getty Images and put them together at 905 pixels strong.
Normal photo galleries on azcentral.com are placed into regular slideshow format, or even in a super slideshow that displays images a little larger and is meant for visualizing stories that run in print. But on rare occasion, for bigger games, we will put a close-up gallery together.
Another one of my close-ups here, this time the 2011 BCS Championship from Glendale. Compare it to the regular slideshow.
Photojournalism falling into a template
If you compare the close-ups with the typical slideshows, you can probably see why I’m a big fan of the former over the other. What makes photojournalism so powerful is that when it’s done right, it brings readers into a story in a way writing can’t. It evokes thoughts and emotions that are impossible to draw through reading and imagination. Photography is the greatest form of nostalgia in journalism.
But taking great photos is half the battle — they also need room to breathe. And many newspaper websites shove them, usually one per story, into a corner. I couldn’t even count how many times I’ve read stories in print with five- or six-column photos that earn every inch, only to see them crammed into a template online. Design is essentially tossed out the window.
Take a look, for example, at this Miami Herald story from the latest Florida Panthers game. Photos are typically reduced to between 300 and 400 pixels wide and thrown into a template spot on the left side of each story. (Even worse, if you expand the slideshow, photos go about 500 or 600 pixels wide, tops. Full screen them!) Unfortunately, this is the same on a lot of sites, and it only gets worse when they try to tell feature stories.
Close-up galleries are one step toward expanding the power of photojournalism. They give photos that chance to breathe and provide the depth necessary to best tell a story.
What I’d love to see is this close-up concept better employed within online stories — for example, a clickable photo gallery embedded inside each article, no fewer than 800 pixels wide, with the option to full-screen the photos. Or even just have larger photos littered throughout the text, much like we see in print packages. If we can do it in print, why can’t we do it online?
But, from what I can gather, we’re in 2011 and we haven’t quite gotten there yet. (However, we can develop supercomputers that can pummel you in Jeopardy.)
Back to “The Big Picture” for a second: I’m particularly intrigued by creator Alan Taylor’s move to The Atlantic, where he will run a similar photo blog, “In Focus.” Taylor plans on bringing user involvement into the mix, something he experimented a little bit with at the Globe with user-generated content. Here’s an interview with Taylor from a couple years ago, if you’re interested in reading more. It’s nice to see someone thinking innovation when it comes to photojournalism because, in my opinion, we’re lagging a little bit.
Just a little bit.
What does the future hold?
Feel free to comment below with your thoughts on close-up galleries and the like. What are your favorite examples of sites getting digital storytelling right or wrong? Do you think close-up galleries are a step toward the future for online photojournalism? I don’t believe there is one right answer, but there are certainly steps we can take to make this sort of storytelling better.
Lastly, a quick shout-out to my former Central Michigan colleague, a good friend of mine and a hell of a photojournalist, Jake May, for the idea behind this post.
Posted by Brian Manzullo at January 25, 2011
Journalism, Photography