TRANSITION TIMES:Louise Holden runs through some basics of photography, in our SchoolMag guide
When you leaf through a magazine, what usually grabs your attention? Probably the photographs. Well-chosen images can draw a reader into a story - and sometimes the picture is the story. How often have you spotted a photograph on a magazine cover and bought the magazine as a result? If you want your school mag to get attention, plan how you will use images.
The picture editor is one of the most important people on your team, taking overall responsibility for every image that appears. The picture editor must talk to the writers even before they start researching their articles, in order to formulate a plan for getting the best photographs for each. If a piece involves a local angle, for example, borrow a camera and take some photographs to go with it. Think laterally - don't go for the most obvious angle or shot. If the piece is about national or world events, search free photographic libraries on the internet and find the best images for your story.
Some photographs are good enough to stand alone - in other words, appear without illustrating an article. If you have good photographers on your team, perhaps send them out to see what interesting images they can find.
Impact, which won last year's SchoolMag competition, featured creative byline pictures - photographs of the journalists - that reflected the theme of each piece. The television review, for example, was accompanied by a photograph of the reviewer standing next to a dusty old TV with his name written in the dust. Genius!
Here are some tips for getting the perfect image from a leader in the field, Peter Thursfield, picture editor of The Irish Times.
Before shooting photographs to accompany a story, make sure you're aware of the issues and personalities involved, so you can concentrate on the story's key visual elements.
Try to avoid common mistakes. Amateur photographers occasionally make mistakes with the focus point of an image, leave too much space around the subject - in other words, are not close enough to their subject - and don't use a fast enough shutter speed, so the image is slightly blurred.
If you are photographing people to go with articles, don't make the subject too static. Don't assume, either, that your subject is completely at ease. Make them feel comfortable, so that they can relax, then encourage them to react to things you say. This should liven up most portrait sessions.
If you think you don't have a decent photograph to accompany a piece, find out more about the story. There are usually angles within each story that offer potential for interesting images.
When it comes to the front page, look for a photograph that has vitality - even more than other photographs on other pages. It must grab the readers' attention immediately.
For more inspiration, go to http://nile.doceus.com/editorial/ top40covers.htm, which features the best magazine covers of the past four decades, as chosen by the American Society of Magazine Editors. Top of the pile are Rolling Stone's shot of John Lennon and Yoko Ono (top left) and Vanity Fair's photograph of Demi Moore (above left). Both were taken by Annie Leibovitz.
•For more tips, visit www.irishtimes schoolmag.ie. If you would like to see an area of magazine production covered in this column, e-mail lholden@irish-times.ie
