Reminders
Your photo essays should include 12-20 images, plus informative captions that not only describe what is happening in the photo, but include reporting, quotes, and relevant background information (context, statistics, numbers, timeline of events, etc.) Caption length can vary per photo, but altogether the captions should add up to at least 400 words.
The photo essay will be due by class time next class, on Friday, Oct. 2.
Pitches due for radio stories on Friday, October 9.
Caption Writing
Just because photojournalism is a visual medium, it doesn’t mean you get to be any less thorough when it comes to names, facts, dates, etc. You need to always make sure you get the names, locations, professions, ages (if relevant) to include in your captions. The Who/What/Where/When/Why.
Washington Post guidelines:
Freelance Image Metadata Fields
“A caption should briefly and clearly describe in a complete sentence what is happening in the picture, including an active verb (‘someone does something’). This will allow our internal systems to take sections of the sentence and automatically create keywords. In many cases, a single sentence will suffice. A second sentence is acceptable if it adds additional information, follows the required formula and does not editorialize.”
Caption example:
BEVERLY HILLS, CA – JANUARY 11: Actress Kate Winslet holds her award at the 66th Annual Golden Globe Awards on January 11, 2009 in Beverly Hills, California. Winslet won the Golden Globe for best supporting actress for her role in “The Reader,” as Hollywood set aside labor strife and a recession to honor the year’s best performances. (Photo by Rich Lipski for The Washington Post)
Notice how the first sentence is in present tense, describing what is literally happening in the photo, and the following sentence is in the past tense, giving background and context.
In a photo essay, the captions play the additional role of shaping a narrative. So while wire photos and breaking news photos might all include similar captions because most likely they’ll only be used one at a time, your captions in a photo essay will need to follow a somewhat more narrative shape. Meaning, the first one will include a lot of that 5W’s stuff, while the additional captions might fill in the blanks some more.
Constructing Your Photo Essays
Here are some examples of past student photo essays:
https://acandelario.exposure.co/tough-breaks
https://reemadoleh.exposure.co/gentrification-in-brooklyn
In the past, I have recommended Exposure for students’ photo essays because it allows you to beautifully display photography, but they recently changed their free trial police from three free projects to two weeks, meaning that any projects you create will be locked from editing and no longer viewable after two weeks.
If you want your photo essay to display in a scrolling manner, I now recommend using this class blog. You’ll embed your photos by selecting “Add Media” and then “Upload File” and then “Insert Into Post.” If you want to keep the present tense captions separate from the past-tense writing in the story, you can enter the caption text in the “Caption” field on the right before you click “Insert Into Post.”
Intro to Radio Reporting
Photo by Youth Radio
For your radio stories, you’ll be creating something called a wrap: a scripted feature with narration, natural sounds, and sound bites all woven together.
Sample wrap.
Sample radio script.
Here are some basics you’ll want to keep in mind as you set out to collect sound:
Choose your environment wisely. Be aware of your surroundings. If you interview someone under a subway track, your recording will be impossible to understand. Pick a relatively quiet space. A little background noise is fine and adds atmosphere – except for music. Music makes editing difficult, so avoid it if possible.
Cell phones off or on airplane mode. Yours and theirs. If you’re using your phone to record, make sure it’s set to silent.
Don’t forget your nats. Natural sound is a crucial element of any audio piece. Think about what sounds will most effectively place your listener in the scene. Footsteps, dishes clinking, phones ringing. Don’t be afraid to get in there and get close. Music is fine to use as a nat sound, but not as background to an interview. It will mess up your ability to edit.
Don’t forget your ambi. “Ambi” refers to ambient sound, also known as room tone. Basically, this is the background noise from wherever you happen to conduct your interviews. Even if you record in a very quiet place, nothing still usually sounds like something because of how the acoustics vary in different rooms. Before or after every interview, always record 90 seconds to two minutes of ambi. This will go under your narration to make the story feel seamless.
Ask open-ended questions. Yes or no questions won’t give you good long responses filled with usable quotes.
Get close, but not too close. Putting a mic right up against someone’s mouth can result in popping and crackling sounds on the recording. Make sure to test your equipment so you know roughly where to hold your recorder for optimal sound quality.
Ask your question, then shut up. Active listening is a fantastic skill for a journalist to have, but if you keep murmuring “Uh-huh,” “Yeah,” and “Sure,” while they’re answering your questions, you won’t be able to use the material. Stick with smiling and nodding.
Keep control of the mic. Always monitor your sound with headphones while recording, if possible. (This is not possible with the Voice Memos app, unfortunately.) Hold the mic 1-2 feet from the interviewee’s mouth. Never let the person you’re interviewing hold it. Try to keep handling noise to a minimum.
If recording an interview remotely, try to do a tape sync. A tape sync means recording both ends of a phone interview in person and then editing them together. This will allow the sound quality for both voices to be high-quality and clear. Typically, radio hosts hire freelancers who live in the same city as their interviewee to go out and record the tape syncs, but in the pandemic it’s become more common to ask the interviewee to do it themselves and then send it to you.
A couple more radio stories:
Example of a clever host intro:
Need to release stress? Scream into Iceland’s abyss.
Great example of a local NYC story:
At this Brooklyn restaurant, you can get Korean food with a side of Russian history
A story reported by a Baruch multimedia student after the lockdown started last semester:
Guidelines for radio pitches
Assignment #2 will be a 3 or 4-minute news radio feature (a “wrap”). A wrap is a scripted radio piece that weaves together natural sounds, interview clips (known as “actualities”), and reporter narration to tell a story.
These are the components you are required to submit for the final draft:
- A good headline/title.
- Your final 3-4 minute edited audio file, posted to Soundcloud and embedded on the blog or on Exposure.
- At least one photo.
- 21The final draft of your script.