Photo illustrations

CREATING PHOTO ILLUSTRATING WITH PHOTOS VS. DOCUMENTING WITH PHOTOS

BY BRADLEY WILSON

HERE COMES SANTA

Jeanel Drake of Kansas State University created this photo illustration for the cover of a holiday gift guide. “Not much shooting can happen when you don’t have an idea what you are trying to convey. I have told editors many times that I can’t illustrate something I don’t understand,” Drake said. “Some topics are very broad, such as the Christmas gift guide cover, and others are very specific, such as illustrating freshman weight gain. Once you know what you’re illustrating, you have to come up with ideas of how to convey that message.

Sometimes you can picture what you want the illustration to look like, but you can’t think of how to make that image. Use the people around you to tackle the execution part. They can point you in the right direction to find props and models.”

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Having some fun with photographs is part of the job.

And it’s certainly a good way to ILLUSTRATE A CONCEPT in a way no documentary photo can. However, it is important not to mislead the reader.

O ILLUSTRATIONS SOMETIMES AN ORDINARY PHOTO WON’T DO. The message that the photographer wants to convey may be too complex, too abstract or simply unrealistic for a traditional documentary photo. That’s when the photo illustration is the perfect answer. ◆ “We use photo illustrations from time to time to illustrate more abstract or figurative concepts on our feature pages, stories which can’t be easily or well illustrated by a more literal photo,” said Mark Hertzberg, a photographer with The Journal Times in Racine, Wisc.

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CAREER FAIR

When photographer Evan Semon had to come up with a cover for the “Career Fair” newspaper supplement, he hit on the idea of using a photo taken earlier at the State Fair in the background and studio shots of students in the foreground.

GAINING WEIGHT

The photographer, Jeanel Drake, thought it would be fun to illustrate gaining weight from the scale’s point of view. She photographed the model (herself) standing on a ladder and imposed that, digitally, on the scale.

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BRAINSTORMING However, producing a photo illustration requires more than running out and taking a few pictures at a pep rally or a choir concert. Successful illustrations demand a great deal of brainstorming for good ideas and a significant amount of time for implementation of the best ideas.

Editors, and sometimes photographers, believe the photo illustration is a quick answer to fill a hole.

“Assignments for portrait illustrations are often made where there is no time to find a more storytelling image,” photographer Matt Hinton said. “They serve the purpose of being quick, cheap and easy solutions to assignments that otherwise could not be told because they would be too expensive or time consuming. Also, with dwindling page space in many newspapers, illustrations are often single images used for stories that would otherwise require a picture story or multiple images to fully describe.”

However, rarely are effective photo illustrations quick, cheap or easy. And certainly, taking another person’s images and making them your own is not the answer. Unless the images you use are ones you have shot or ones you have express permission to use, it is a violation of copyright law to use them, regardless of how much you manipulate them.

As Ken Krobre says in his textbook, Photojournalism: The Professional’s Approach, “Allow time — lots of time — to conceptualize, prop and photograph an editorial photo illustration .... Photo illustrations can take hours that stretch into days. Dreaming up concepts takes time. Rarely do the first headline and visual that come to mind result in the final photo.”

The key to developing a successful photo illustration is planning. Photographer, designer, writer and editor should spend time working together as they brainstorm for concepts that the photographer can then package. The planning should include these steps: Sketch ideas. Look for symbols of major concepts.

Do not rule anything out in the first round of brainstorming, but then spend as much time developing one or two concrete ideas.

To solidify the ideas, have the group write a headline to verbalize the concept. Next come additional steps: Work from that headline to discuss what props might be relevant and in what setting. Think about what (or who) will be the dominant element, what will be in the foreground and what will be in the background. Go shopping or visit the drama department.

Spending a few bucks or a few hours looking for the right items or the right people is worth the effort. Have the designer sketch how the photo illustration might fit on the layout with the type in place. And talk with the writer about the lead on the story.

Consider how the display type, the story, the illustration and the design will work together to attract and inform the reader.

DON’T MISLEAD THE READER When they do work, as an integrated component of the page/spread, photo illustrations can be a powerful way to alert the reader and to convey information at the same time. Like the products of writers and documentary photographers elsewhere in the publication, visual illustrations do not mislead the reader.

They are clearly staged. They never force the reader to wonder

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Photo illustration by Jonathan Lewis, The Exposure yearbook (Scott County HS, Georgetown, Ky., Adviser: Steve Traynor)

whether the photo was real.

The job of the photojournalist is to document reality. A photo illustrator can take liberties with reality, but those liberties need to be clear to the viewer.

“The photographer needs to take the reader somewhere outside the bounds of reality and the printed page,” said Jay Koelzer in Photojournalism: The Professional’s Approach. “The photo illustration is the chance for the photographer to make people think.”

ON THE ROAD

CREDITS While some photographers enjoy the challenge of setting up an illustration with props and models, other photo illustrations are done completely within Photoshop by combining elements of different photos. The same rules apply: brainstorm for a pertinent idea and then assemble the pieces to convey a message that is clear to the reader.

Mike McNamara, a photographer in Columbia, Mo., said, “I remember that when the public found out what we could do with PhotoShop (maybe it was the OJ Simpson/Time magazine thing), it was proposed that a universal symbol be used on every photo so people knew it had been manipulated. The only thing I know is that if it’s going to be a photo illustration, you need to make it look ridiculous enough to where it’s obvious that it wasn’t documentary.”

McNamara also noted that publications often have guidelines about how such illustrations must be credited.

“I’ve seen some stylebooks that say things must be labeled as illustrations if the PhotoShop work done goes beyond what can be done in a darkroom (dust, scratches, burn and dodge...), except for things like taking out red-eye,” he said.

“That’s probably a good benchmark on where to start.”

JUGGLING TIME

Photo illustration by Jeanel Drake, Collegian (Kansas State University, Manhattan, Kan.)

GUIDELINES From Ken Kobre’s Photojournalism: The Professional’s Approach, fourth edition • Never set up a photograph to mimic reality, even if it is labeled as a photo illustration.

• Create only abstractions with photo illustrations.

Studio techniques, for example, can help to make situations abstract – the use of a seamless or abstract backdrop, photo montage or exaggerated lighting. Contrast in size and con‑ tent, juxtaposition of headline and photo – all can give the reader visual clues that what appears on the page is obvi‑ ously not the real thing.

• Always clearly label photo illustrations as such – regardless of how obvious you may think they are.

• Never play photo illustrations on news pages.

Restrict them to feature pages or to section fronts. Display them so that they are obviously distinct from news or feature pictures.

• If you haven’t the time to do a photo illustration right, don’t do it. Suggest another solution. ■

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STRONG MAN

Students seem to be prime targets for the telemarketing industry. From credit cards to free trips, how do you avoid offers that are too good to be true? Photo by H. Rick Mach, College Heights Herald (Western Kentucky University, Bowling Green, Ky.)

CREDIT CARD TEMPTATION

Photo illustration regarding drug use by students

by Jeanel Drake, Collegian (Kansas State University, Manhattan, Kan.)

IN THE EYE OF THE BEHOLDER

This photo illustration by Devin Miller and Jason Adams accompanied a story, “Imperfect in their own eyes: The quest for the perfect body images have both men and women using extreme methods to accomplish goals.” Daily Egyptian (Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, Ill.) Adviser: Lance Speere.

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PLAY GAMES

Photograher Jeanel Dreake follows her convictions. “Documentary photography,” she said, “is showing people what they would have seen had they been a fly on the wall at an event or any daily assignment. If you have good ethics, you don’t set up or manipulate photos for this type of photography because readers (of a respectable publication) are looking at the image under the impression that this is what actually happened, not what the photographer manipulated. By calling a photo an illustration, you are telling the reader, ‘no this isn’t necessarily real, but it’s what the story is about.’ A reader should care about this distinction because the credibility of the publication is at stake. If a paper is setting up photos and not telling you that they are set up, then how can you believe a word that they print?”

MORE GAMES

For the graduation guide, photographer Jeanel Drake chose a different game, the game of Life, to be a metaphor for the choices graduates were going to have to make.

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