Photo Credit: The New York Times/Sally Ryan
If the proverbial buck stops with the U.S. press secretary's role as intermediary between the president and the public, then the White House's Tony Snow is redefining the role. Not only does the buck stop with Snow, but now he wants people to give him one or two (million).
Snow's recent campaign fund-raising is a target for much media criticism, but beyond the relevancy of Snow's exploits, defining the "news", the image, made by Sally Ryan, is a nice example of "making something out of nothing" photojournalism.
What is meant here is that many photo assignments are aesthetically or graphically challenged. Press conferences, lecturers, or environmental portraits require the photographer to create an image that will not only help viewers understand the context of a story, but also draw them into the scene.
In this case, the photographer uses the rule of thirds to make a somewhat more compelling picture. What the viewer doesn't know is how restrictive these sorts of events can be. Patrons pay a lot of money to hear speakers like Snow and the event handlers are sensitive to allowing packs of photographers roaming through the crowd. Therefore, the photographer must get the most intellectually and emotionally appealing image possible. Not always the easiest of assignments.
Some students in our introduction to visual journalism class have struggled a little with grasping the principle of thirds in a frame. Ryan's picture is a classic example of how the principle is commonly used in news work. Snow's projected image is already in thirds, but by placing one screen slightly off to the side of the others a sense of scale is created. The formula would then be that screen one has a dimensional relationship to screens two and three, just as these to latter screens have a relationship to the whole. That's the gestalt of photojournalism. And that is now news image help to construct social realities for us.
See also my post on The power of thirds.