A picture speaks a thousand words, but does anybody hear them?
In todays internet age people are blasted with a plethora of images every day. The amount of information we take in is almost overwhelming. Most of these images are viewed for a few seconds and then forgotten, that is unfortunate. Most people just don’t seem to care about what goes on in their world nowadays. That doesn’t stop photojournalists from working to expose problems and promote solutions.
I’ve always believed in the power of photojournalism because most people need to see something to believe it. A powerful image may open the eyes of a few people, and that is the most that a photojournalist can hope for.
I did a little bit of photojournalism last weekend at the Arkansas River Cleanup in downtown Wichita, Kansas. I was inspired to see that hundreds of people showed up to help haul trash out of the Arkansas river. It’s easy to think that you do not need to help clean up trash in a river because you did not throw it in there. It’s easy to think that it is someone else’s problem. The bottom line is that a dirty river affects an entire ecosystem over a vast area. The Arkansas River supports a wide variety of fish, birds and mammals. It even plays host to our national symbol, the bald eagle, during the winter months. It was good to see people stepping up and helping to heal a little piece of mother earth.
Me and my family pitched in and hauled out our share of trash that day. I also took some pictures and when I got home I was glad to see that I got one good shot of good people doing a good thing. One good shot to sum up an entire idea, that is what photojournalism is all about.
I would like to ask people to support their local newspaper. I would like to challenge people to read the stories, take in the photographs, and understand what is going on in the world today. The next step is figuring out what you can do to help, however small and insignificant it may seem, because it all adds up.