Dear Reader, Do you want to take stunning photos and videos for your social media accounts? Nothing to it, according MLive’s award-winning photojournalists.
“It's all about physical distance and beautiful color palettes, and the idea of just, time of day, emotional ambience and the purpose of humans, you know?” said Jake May, photographer at The Flint Journal. “I think, ultimately, the heart of the work should show through, what you do and how you see the world, and how the world is reflected back through the lens.”
Good so far? Next, take video footage and edit it into a compelling narrative.
“How are you going to lay out the story, how are you going to share what you're seeing (to viewers)?,” said Kaytie Boomer, who shoots for The Saginaw News and The Bay City Times. “So, basically I just take all the images I would imagine, and then I turn that into video form, lay out a story with some interviews, and get some B roll.”
Check. Oh, one more thing: You might need more than a camera.
“A house fell into Lake Michigan because of the high water levels last year, and just being able to fly a drone over and just get a different kind of angle – in the past we would have had to take a plane,” said Cory Morse, photographer at The Grand Rapids Press. “So, the tools that we have to show the stories of our community have evolved.”
I’m sure you get my point: Photography is still a staple of journalism, but it’s more than photos, and it takes special talents and dedication to do it well on behalf of our readers. I’m proud to say MLive has some of the best in the business.
In the past two weeks, May was named the Photographer of the Year for small markets by the National Press Photographers Association, AND the Photographer of the Year by the Michigan Press Photographers Association. He’s won the former three of the last four years, and the latter four times overall, in his eight years working for MLive. In 2017, he was a Pulitzer Prize finalist for feature photography.
MLive photographers from all over the state are finalists for 17 awards in the Michigan Associated Press journalism awards this spring. Morse is guaranteed to sweep the Best Photo Story category, Boomer is a finalist for two of three Best Video awards.
And Boomer and Morse are finalists in a category called Best Multimedia Story, Boomer for her coverage of the devastating Midland-area flood last year; and Morse (co-nominated with MLive reporter Garret Ellison) for coverage of the Great Lakes water level story he mentions above.
That last category shows how much storytelling – how we do it, and how you consume it – has changed in the past few decades. Still photography is still vital, but video continues to grow as a way people preferred to be informed, as well as entertained. And so the skill sets of our journalists have had to evolve, too.
“In college, we’d turn a hotel bathroom into a darkroom and process our film,” said Morse, who has worked for MLive for more than 20 years. “And here we are in the digital world, and it has changed quite a bit.”
An understatement, to be sure. But May points out that the journalists’ obligation, and commitment, to get to the core of a story doesn’t change, even if the platforms have.
“Any type of social media, any type of interaction online nowadays – it gets turned into storytelling, you know? I think that's what we really are, we're all storytellers,” he said. “We just picked a visual medium. And it's a growing medium in how we all communicate.”
🎧 Photographers Boomer, May and Morse joined me on this week’s episode of the MLive podcast “Behind the Headlines.” To listen, click here. To hear all the stories behind the stories, click here and subscribe to our Behind the Headlines podcast.
Editor's note: I value your feedback to my columns, story tips and your suggestions on how to improve our coverage. Let me know how MLive helps you, and how we can do better. Please feel free to reach out by emailing me at editor@mlive.com.
John Hiner Executive Editor Vice President of Content Mlive Media Group
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