The Cost of War Photography

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The Inner Lives of Wartime Photographers

Photo Story Assignment

You will be responsible for creating a multi-image photo story, writing a story to serve as an introduction that must be at least five paragraphs long and include informative captions to go with each image. 

The main purpose behind this project is for you to take all the skills and concepts you've learned over the past five assignments and create an informative photographic story that follows an idea or concept.

Research is key to this project, so make sure you seek out the subject matter experts for your story, conduct an interview(s) as well as find statistics that support the images and story.

Highlight those adjectives and adverbs. You'll need six to 12 images that offer a variety of angles, frame orientation (vertical and horizontal), as well as detail, medium and overall shots. Try to shoot a number of each scene if possible.

This assignment should test how well you can research a story, narrow the scope of your story as well as keeping an accurate assessment of the image you have and the images you need as we peer edit each other's work. You have until May 4 to complete this assignment, so you have a number of weeks to capture images and receive feedback on your progress.

Do not forget to get quotes and statistics. This will become very important when it comes to not only captioning, but the story as well. And remember, photojournalists are journalists. So proper grammar, spelling and creative writing skills are a must.

Just like the social issue assignment, it helps to work on a story you have some sort of familiarity with or you are passionate about.

I can give you some direction on finding contacts for these and other issues you may find.

Make sure you have a back-up story if something happens to your first choice.

The baseline requirements for this assignment are the usual: properly composed, a good exposure, sharp focus, correct color balance and a complete caption. The rest of your grade depends on the items we talk about in class: communication points, accurate representation, well thought out idea or concept, creativity and those adjectives and adverbs that come across in the image.

Shoot with a purpose, always be editing and work that viewfinder from the outside in.

If you have any questions or need some guidance, feel free to contact me via email or cell. 

The due date for this assignment is May 4.

Below are some past examples of photo stories by former students and professionals.

W. Eugene Smith's "Nurse Midwife" Story

Deanne Fitzmaurice's Pulitzer Awarded "Saleh" Story

         Background on Deanne's "Saleh" Story

Ami Vitale's "Kushti Wrestling" Story

Matt Eich's "Baptist Town" Story

Gamers: Dorkness Rising

A group of nerds, and proudly so, get together once a week to role play in an imaginary world run by the Dungeon Master, Tyler Cole. Cole, 19 years old, has been DMing (running campaigns as a Dungeon Master) for 6 years. The others in the group include Daniel Mettie, 23 years old and has been playing for 8 years; Charles Tryon, 37 years old and has been playing for about 20 years; and Ronnie Rodriguez, 24 years old and has just started playing a month ago.

In the world, the players are awoken with no memories in a city surrounded by walls of stone and walls of monsters. There is a king who rules by withholding the knowledge of everyone’s memories in books, and a hunter’s guild that pays for various tasks such as retrieval of items and the eradication of the beasts outside.

Mettie takes the role of a bard, often playing music in battle to help the others do better; Tryon is a wizard who thinks more about setting things on fire than the greater good for the team; Rodriguez is the fearless fighter, striking foes down with almost every swing of his blade. Cole plays everyone else in their world, from the beasts to the king to the civilians of the towns.

In their most recent session, the group was sent to retrieve a particular necklace from the Castle. Hopping from roof to roof, and scaling from wall to wall. The three musketeers of sorts roll d20s (20 sided dice) to try and pass a stealth and climb check, afterall breaking into the king’s castle is a pretty serious offense and the guards are always patrolling the city. Mettie fails both of these checks on several tries (frame 3) and is forced to run around buildings and come up with another plan to catch up with Rodriguez after Tryon falls from one of the rooftops (Frame 4).

After reaching the castle and climbing through a window they are confronted and informed that they had been set up and it was all a trap. Rodriguez also had a surprise waiting for him when it was revealed that the necklace’s owner was his mother, but he still couldn’t remember his past. They returned home and after a good night’s rest Rodriguez visits the clothing shop to see his special girl. Unfortunately Tryon decided to disrupt his happiness and paid several women and even a little boy to tell lies of lust to the girl, and now has to figure out who to prove his innocence in love (Frame 5).

Tryon creates a marker for his character on the dungeon map. “I’m going to name my marker ‘ME’ again,” says Tryon.

Rodriguez fidgets with his dice and makes a tower, unfortunately now he has to roll his dice.

The party contemplates what to do next, should they hunt for monsters or go figure out why they were set up?

The DM explains more story, the party members are held to the ground while they listen to a NPC (Non Playable Character) named Kurando. “You are about to make a big mistake,” Cole says while in character.

Mettie gives reasons for why they could’ve been set up. Is he right? “Maybe he doesn’t like us,” Rodriguez jokes.


Daniel Mettie plans a route of escape after failing his stealth and climb checks.

The third time isn't the charm for Mettie, after failing three times in a row. The team continues on without him as he tries to eventually catch up. Cole exclaims, "How do you fail 3 stealth checks in a row and still not get caught?"

Mettie fakes a Purple Bolt (when you roll all of the dice onto the table and do that much damage to a character). "If it were real that character would be dead."

Cole creates what appears to be a simple dungeon, but is it?

Rodriguez ponders the ways to win Kendall back after Tryon starts horrible rumors. "What is your problem with my character?" Rodriguez questions Tryon. "He just doesn't like people," Cole mentions.

Photo Story

Is this any better? Because you can see a little more of his face...

photo story

any suggestions for a detail? i am probably going to go with the last one.

Final Assignment Finished!

Hi everyone, I hope your final assignments are coming along well.  I uploaded mine in case it helps anyone.  It was tough to write and put together! 

InDesign Tip

If anyone else wants to use InDesign to create their layout, it is best to pull your images up in Photoshop and change the color space from RGB to CMYK to avoid printing problems. 

1. Open the document in Photoshop.
2. Go to the Image menu in the menu bar at the top of the window.
3. Select Mode at the top of the drop down menu. 
4. Then select CMYK.
5. Save the file. 
6. Import it into InDesign. 

This will also prevent error messages in InDesign due to color space issues when creating a pdf file.  I made my document 11x17 inches.

Need help picking a photo

I'm editing through my stuff and trying to figure out which of these two is a better choice. I'm leaning toward the second one. Which one do you guys prefer? (My story is on a couple who restore vintage and custom motorcycles)

Secret life of a Death Metal band

I covered a death metal band who by day rocks in there apartment but at night they work in food service. Cody and Mike are two normal dudes who just wanna rock out, but to pay the bills they both work in food services. Cody works at Valley Vista Care Center a retirement home in Sandpoint where he cooks and prepares individual meals for the resedents. Mike works at the local Domino's pizza, he has taken orders and made pizza's for four years now and he feels its a steady job. Here are some photos of the band at practice il post some of the work ones later. please comment and tell me what you think and I need ideas for captions!!!!!!!!! thanks for the help guys.

The Future of Newspapers Is Now?

It seems like it was about 17 years ago, if not sooner.

Check out these two stories and be sure to watch the video in the first one.

The Father of the iPad?

Knight Ridder Kills Digital Media Lab

Amazing Rocker Kid - Lesson & Band Practice

These are the most unique photos of my last set but I am not sure if they are the best.  I tried hard to get photos I that showed something different than what I already had or could replace an existing photo with a better one.  I am not sure I succeeded and have a lot of work to do to get the assignment done.

Since last week the band practice room has had one wall painted red.  It adds a nice touch to the photos but also makes them feel a little fake.



Hi, please tell me what you think. Many of these photo's could have been much better due to the fact that I was using a camera I was not used to; heavy lens and couldn't figure out how to use the auto focus made many of these a little soft:( Thanks. 

Austin Stiegemeir in studio behind parents house. 

Stills from movie scenes.

Some of Austin's art hanging on living room wall of parent's home.

Paint supplies.

Austin's "best work" that is hanging in the educational building.

Working with kids at Art On The Edge.