Photojournalism Ethics: Online Course Series

This week, we have launched a brand new online training course designed specifically for photojournalists and documentary photographers. This is the first course in a series of 3, each one covering a different topic in photojournalism ethics to be released over the course of this year.

This first course focuses on the topic of accuracy, asking questions like: What is the meaning of “authenticity” in a photograph? What are the barriers to authenticity when we are photographing? How can we improve the accuracy of our photographs?

We begin the course by talking about awareness. Awareness is the foundation for accuracy in photography. We unpack the 3 different kinds of awareness that we can develop in order to improve the accuracy of our images, and we offer some suggestions and exercises for honing this skill.

Next, we explore the meaning of authenticity, and we practice identifying barriers to authenticity in our photographs. Barriers to authenticity can be very obvious or subtle and insidious. They can be very difficult to identify without practice and sufficient awareness of context, as we will see.

Third, we address the important roles that editing and captioning play in terms of the accuracy of our photographs. After looking at some examples, it becomes clear that editing is not only about making a photograph aesthetically pleasing, but that the way we edit photographs can change their meaning.

This course is the just beginning of a year-long journey into photojournalism ethics. We hope you will join us.