A picture paints a thousand words

KOTA KINABALU – A picture paints a thousand words. In news writing, when the writer includes suitable photos, readers can better grasp a brighter picture of an event or in an evangelization message.

With that in mind, the Social Communication Commission (SOCCOM), Kota Kinabalu Archdiocese organized a photojournalism workshop on 15 Dec 2018 at the Sacred Heart Parish Centre here.

The workshop was a response to the request by Catholic writers who have been following previous workshops organized by SOCCOM and who are actively contributing to the diocesan paper, Catholic Sabah. Altogether, 18 writers from various parishes participated in the workshop.

Joseph Leong, SOCCOM chairman, said Catholic writers are like modern prophets of our time who need to have eyes to see the need of the people and to tell the truth.

He said photojournalism is an evangelization tool to build the Kingdom of God and each Catholic writer must know to whom they are serving.

He mentioned that SOCCOM has the same vision as that of the Archdiocese, that is,  Christ-centred evangelization.

The workshop was facilitated by organizing chairman Ruben Sario, a retired journalist and a member of SOCCOM, together with Eddie Angat, a photojournalist.

Ruben and Eddie taught the writers on many photo-taking aspects and techniques for journalism purposes. They said a photo must be able to convey the main message to help readers to see the real situation, thus encouraging a photojournalist to be creative in taking photos.

In this era, most journalists use only smartphones to take photos especially in simple events, but still use big lenses camera for bigger events.

The organizing team took up this trend and taught the participants to take and edit photos using smartphones as a tool in photojournalism.

Participants were also given time to practise in groups; taking photos in and around the Cathedral to feature several aspects of photo-taking, that is full landscape of the cathedral, action photos and individual profile photos.

They were also trained to write proper captions to provide details about the photographs which must consist of the 5Ws (who, where, what, when, why).

For learning purposes, each group shared their captioned pictures with all to see, where Ruben and Eddie then gave comments and suggested ways to improve good angles while taking photos.

Besides contributing to fortnightly paper Catholic Sabah, Catholic writers can also provide their writings to the Archdiocesan website www.kkdiocese.net.

An article must be in Microsoft Word format,  and to include several 1MB-sized photos to Catholic Sabah at catholicsabah2009@gmail.com and the website at bbfspcc@gmail.com.– Linda Edward