By Tejal Patel
Students filled Studio A of Dempster Hall Wednesday night to hear professionals share their experience with newspaper and newsmagazine photography as part of the event “Photojournalism in Focus.”
The speakers were New York Times award-winning photojournalist Ozier Muhammad and Newsday photo editor Rebecca Cooney
Muhammad has won a Pulitzer Prize in international reporting and the Polk Award for photography. Cooney has freelanced for the New York Times, Village Voice, Time magazine and the New York Times magazine.
At the program, Muhammad showed pictures he took after Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans.
“[The city] looked like a ghost town,” Muhammad commented. When he went, 80 percent of the city was still under water and he had to sleep in his rental car for four nights until the New York Times was able to get an RV. Some of the pictures displayed included a bar that had never closed and an elderly man sitting on his porch eating popcorn while waiting for his sheets to dry outside.
Muhammad also covered the post-Katrina Mardi Gras celebration and the jazz festival in New Orleans. He went back to at the end of August during the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina to cover the arrival of President Bush. Muhammad said he was disappointed to be assigned to the president’s arrival because he felt there were more important things going on.
Gregory Smith, assistant professor of journalism, media studies and public relations, moderated the event and encouraged students to participate throughout the night. He spoke of the role of photos, which are supposed to spark interest in readers.
“Pictures are in a newspaper to draw the reader in, not to repeat what is written in the story,” Cooney said. She said that pictures of unexpected things are much more interesting.
Cooney added that pictures today are about an abundance of feeling and what is lost in pictures is what something actually looks like. She suggested pictures should include a 360-degree vision and that the photographer should look at the surroundings as well.
“It’s not only about the subject,” Cooney said. “But it’s the negative space, too.”
As a photo editor, Cooney comes in to work and looks at thousands of photographs a day. She then makes a large selection and narrows it down once again to two or three possible choices, which she then gives to the art editor.
When hiring a photographer, Cooney said she looks for someone with a personal vision and passion, someone who has a sense of who they are, technical abilities and the ability to match a skill to an assignment.
As the program came to a close, the floor was opened up to student questions. One student asked Muhammad if any of the pictures he showed were staged and what his feelings were on that.
“If you stage anything, it’s the wrong thing to do,” he said.
