Time out Tuesdays: Empty walls

Welcome back to Time out Tuesdays, a continuing effort to share the stories that resonate with me and to keep myself constantly spelunking for the very best in photojournalism week after week, I've decided to start this new feature.

Every week, I'll post up a new photo story, video, picture or multimedia piece that I think gets it right and is worth taking a look at for study, ideas, appreciation and inspiration.

This weeks post is a little different.



You might be wondering what a music video from the (former?) front man of "System of the Down" has to do with photojournalism. Well, take a look at the strong visual symbolize and frantic camera work. Without having to hit you over the head, the song presents the iconography of the war in Iraq... the same icons that we as photojournalist created... and lets you discover its message.

That's storytelling by showing and not telling, the exact same thing we strive for when creating multimedia in our newsrooms. I hope so anyway, if you're still of the opinion of that narrating your own projects is a good idea, I'd ask you to think again.

For one, do you think watching a bull rider makes you a bull rider (sorry, Rodeos on my mind today). Of course not. So then why do you think listening to the radio makes you a commentator? Most of us are not voice-trained, it's an art, trust me.

Plus, when you shoot do you relay on the caption to tell the story? Oh course not. So then why feel the need to tell someone something if you're also going to show them something for 45 sec to a minute? If you're project isn't clear to the viewer after nine seconds (yes, nine), you've got re-editing to do.

And that's this weeks Time out Tuesday. Visual storytelling, kinetic editing and style.