Trust your Eyes

Dealing with photo editors is the bane of every photojournalist. Not the good editors, the ones who understand images, but every photojournalist has had to deal with editors who came from the editorial (writing) side of publishing. Many of them were very good writers and researchers and they had good journalistic instincts – that’s how they got promoted to editor – but they weren’t as literate visually as they were verbally. They didn’t understand that what sounds right doesn’t always look right.

I once worked with an editor who wanted to illustrate the idea of stupid tourists with an image of a tourist who has had a map wadded up and thrust back in his face by an irritated local. The concept, of course, being that one too many tourists had asked the locals for directions. It’s a bit heavy handed as a literary concept, but I’ve heard worse.

As a visual image though, it was impossible to shoot. Good images are like good jokes. They only work if you don’t have to explain them. Yet the only way to make the scenario clear would be to load the poor sap up with tourist clichés and write, “Map” in big letters on the paper. Even then, I doubt many would have gotten the joke.

In a presentation, the point of every image you project on the screen is to reinforce what you are saying, not to say it for you. It needs to get the concept across at a glance, without the need for explanation or extended study, so the audience can immediately turn its attention back to you. What sounds like a good visual illustration of a concept doesn’t always get the point across visually.

Step back and take a fresh look at your slides. Trust your eyes, not your mental descriptions, when you evaluate the meaning of your images.