Recorded on July 20th, 2021.

In this recording, Alaska Press Club members heard from Brian Venua, a photographer whose work ranges from landscape photography and profile images to other types of photojournalism.

He recalls what he does to capture engaging images to accompany his daily work as a radio reporter. As internet publication becomes more important, having a growing and varied stock photo library becomes indispensable. 

Venua’s talk covers the basic elements to keep in mind out in the field. He recalls what he does to capture engaging images to accompany his daily work as a radio reporter.  

He states the importance of straightening the horizon line while taking your photograph. This is important for several reasons but primarily it helps convey what information is in the photograph, as a crooked angle can be disorienting to look at.

Working in Alaska, Venua notices three common subjects while reporting are boats, buildings and people. He breaks up his tips based on these three subjects. 

Boats

There are several techniques that can be used to photograph boats. First off, is being aware of the harbor at different times of day for sunset or midday light as well as high or low tides. For example, when the waters are high and the winds are low you can try to capture interesting looking reflections.

How close you want to capture the boat on camera is also important, you can go for close ups of the crew working aboard, you can photograph the boat at a medium range to show us what the vessel looks like or you can get a large scene of it floating out on the water to show the boats relation to the rest of the environment.

Light is obviously an important factor, thinking about whether you are shooting at noon or sundown can dramatically influence the look and feel of a photo. What lighting will best fit your story? Sunrise/sunsets can add a lot of color to skies or give an orange glow to vessels, bright sunny days can bring a lot of hope and energy to a story, or clouds/rain better express negative or more neutral emotions. 

Buildings

As for buildings, it’s important to think about how you want to capture a building in photographs because there are so many different ways you can do it and they all greatly influence the tone and feeling of a photograph.

He shows several examples of photographs of the same building that all look completely different from each other as you can get creative with shooting buildings as opposed to just photographing them straight on. 

There are many different angles you can try photographing, you can use the ground as foreground which leads us up to the building which sits in front of a sky background. Also look for other things to include in the image in front of or behind the building, things such as trees, signs, cars, windmills or clouds. Keep in mind you can always zoom in or crop out if there’s something you don’t want to see in your image. This can be useful if certain things distract from the focus of the story.

Lens compression is an important thing to consider, a wide angle prime or zoom lens at a wide angle you get very little compression, which gives a large distorted view of whatever you are photographing. Medium lenses tend to capture reality evenly with minimal distortion or compression, while tight lenses are able to fit vast amounts of space into a smaller frame if you’re able to get far away enough, you can put a lot of context around a building. So, as you can imagine, lots of decisions are being made with every photograph taken.

People

When photographing people/portraits the first rule Venua establishes is do not place people next to walls, unless you have a studio backdrop meant for taking portraits it’s recommended if you’re shooting inside to place your subject in the middle of the room and compose the backgrounds around them. 

It’s also important to make the person you want to photograph comfortable and, depending on the context, preferably smiling. Brian gives a few ways to do this, he talks to his subjects about their job and whether or not they like it or telling them to pretend he said something funny but regardless there are several ways to diffuse any potential tension they could be feeling. 

Venua showed a portrait he took and gave an example of this. He said he asked the person in the photo about their last year in Kodiak and got them to talk to him about it so he was able to get an authentic expression out of them. 

While photographing your subject it’s important to include in the photograph specific aspects of a person to show who they are and what they do. Like if you are photographing a fisherman you may want to get a photo of them on a beach holding a fish, a florist amongst flowers or like the example Brian gives which is a superintendent in her office amongst many books, degrees and her plants.

It’s important to get a nice personal photo that shows who the subject photographed is or where they are so the audience can either imagine themselves being there or envision them saying some of the quotes they gave.

Workflow

Venua recommends getting used to using your camera one handed and shooting in one of the many automatic modes your camera may or may not have. You mainly just need to be able to reach the power and shutter.

He talks about different types of lighting. Backlighting is when your subject is between you and the light source, although it may be too dramatic and not very photojournalistic so again it’s important to think about the lighting and how the light is hitting the subjects face. Depth and contrast is important, if you have the light source on the side light will wrap around your subjects giving us a very clear sense of depth and dimension.

As for photo essays his first piece of advice is to have your microphone in one hand and camera in the other and just capture whatever looks interesting around you or whatever seems relevant to whatever you are reporting on. Brian says he even snaps photographs of interviewees while the mics are going and he’s talking to them.

Unlike shooting in film, as long as you have a charged or mostly charged battery and space on your SD card, you can take many photos with a digital camera. Taking bad photos is fine as you don’t have to use them. The more photos you take the more likely it is you’ll have at least one good keeper image to use for your story. Sometimes you can also review your photos to remind yourself of details you may have forgotten or accidentally omitted from your story.