Why Feature Photography at www.japanese-home-gardens.com

That's one reason why feature photography the feature photography field remains comparatively uncrowded, despite its obvious advantages over spot news coverage. It's easier for the cameraman to come up to the standards of news photography than to those of feature photography. There are many photographers perfectly capable of doing features, and who would like to do them, who never get into the field for the simple reason that they don't ever see the opportunities all around them for feature pictures. They lack the knack, something akin to the "nose for news" mentioned in the previous chapter, to recognize feature picture material.

She blundered her way through technique, resorting to any means to get desired effects. The blurred, out-of-focus images that many critics deplored were deliberate. She wrote to her friend Sir John Herschel that she hoped to elevate her art beyond mere conventional topographic Photography—map making & skeleton rendering of feature & form without that roundness & fulness of force & feature that modelling of flesh & limb which the focus I use only can give tho' called & condemned as "out of focus'' What is focus—& who has a right to say what focus is the legitimate focus—My aspirations are to ennoble Photography and to secure for it the character and uses of High Art by combining the real & ideal & sacrificing nothing of Truth by all possible devotion to Poetry & Beauty—,19.

Have you noticed the repeated references to "sets" of pictures in this discussion of newspaper features? This is a highly important point. Every feature you ever do should be covered with at least three or four pictures, or more if they are necessary to tell the story. Many times, the sale of picture sets is easier than the sale of a single picture; also, they bring more profit on each story. When you get into magazine photography, you can expect to supply at least a dozen pictures and sometimes several times that many, for each story. We'll go into that more thoroughly in a later chapter, but it's something to keep in mind because every newspaper feature is a potential magazine feature at a much higher price.