Photo Galleries

When glimpsing through the various newspaper and magazine sites, three particular sites that stood out the most to me, with their innovative photo galleries included; TIME Magazine’s photo essays/galleries, National Geographic’s photo galleries, and The Times Union’s photo galleries. All three of these specific websites not only demonstrated interesting and well-taken photographs, but a different and unique way to tell a story through web journalism.

 TIME Magazine’s photo gallery website, not only demonstrated photo galleries of the most recent week, but also showed “More Photo Essays” that contained various different subjects of past news articles and events. When looking through this section of “more photo essays”, I found the photo gallery of the Winter Olympics to be the most interesting. The ways in which the photographers captured the action of each athlete and event was amazing. I found TIME Magazine’s photo galleries to not only contain brilliant photographs, but provide a story through the use of their photo galleries.

National Geographic’s Photo Gallery website was my particular favorite photo gallery website. The extent and varity of photographs that the photographers of National Geographic Magazine captured were unlike anything I have ever seen. The variations of the different photo galleries and the uncountable amount of photo galleries, in my opinion, ranked National Geographic to be by far the best photo gallery website. When wandering farther into this website, I began to explore “Animals”, from here I continued my journey by enhancing my knowledge and vision in the area of “Land Mammals”, specifically “Wild Cats”. Observing the closeness and great detail these photos possessed was mindblowing. The way the photographers captured the actions of each of these wild cats, also made for an exciting viewing. In my opinion, National Geographic’s Photo Galleries not only told a story and demonstrated a new variation of web journalism, but took the viewer on a eye openning journey into the world of wildlife.

The Times Union’s Photo Gallery website ceased to be my least favorite photo gallery website. After viewing both TIME Magazine and National Geographic Magazine, each of which possessed such innovative photo galleries with visually stimulating photographs; I became less impressed with the content and extent of the Times Union’s Photo Galleries. Although they too provided various galleries, all of which tied hand in hand with recent and past news, I still found the detail and extent to be not as advanced as the others’. The one photo gallery that I did find interesting was the Capital Region’s Photographs. Viewing a slideshow of photographs that are currently around me as a member of the Capital Region’s community, provided an insightful story into the deeper prospective of the Captial Region. Even though these photo galleries took last place in my mind, I still found the Times Union’s storytelling method to be an enhancing and enduring one.

After viewing and observing various different photo galleries,  I’ve come to the conclusion that while journalism and reporting is mainly all about the writing and facts, the visional appearance also plays a large role. While a story might contain insight and depth, it is the added storytelling ideas that make or break a story, especially those of web journalism. Photo galleries not only hold the readers attention, while still providing information and facts, but they can enhance the depth of a story, by creating a visually stimulating experience to completely get a point across. When viewing National Geographic’s “Wildcats” photo gallery, I have always know how vicious they can be. Along with this, I have read various articles stating the damage these wildcats can do, but it was not until I viewed the photo gallery of them, seeing slide after slide the length of their teeth to the speed of their bodies during hunting, that I fully understood it all. In my opinion, photo galleries add the extra visual material most stories need.