Photography is crucial to our reporting

Anyone who has visited this site for longer than five seconds will see how important our photography is for Free Press. It’s one of the tools we use to portray what is happening in our community.

And, in the future you will see us doing far more with photography and video.

We have several commitments to our readers when it comes to still, single-frame photography.

First, we commit to using original photography in all reports we publish unless it is an extreme circumstance. You deserve to see unique, high-quality, unique photographs that originate in this community from our reporting, not from some stock agency in parts unknown.

Second, you deserve accuracy in how we portray an event. We have not used, nor will use Photoshop-type techniques that change the fundamental view of the original scene. An example would be where one person is moved from standing on the left of the mayor to standing on the right of the mayor.

This concern is not even a thought in various advertising and PR work, but it’s a violation of readers’ trust in a news story. Because most news environments are challenging, we do process our photos with some cropping, color-balancing, and size optimization to make the photograph as trouble-free as possible when viewing on your device.

Third, our effort will be to portray an event or person accurately as our first priority. That may sound like an obvious thing, but I see far too many photographs in news publications where editors have chosen a weird body position or facial expression to capture the readers’ attention rather than correctly reporting the sights of an event or the appearance of a person.

Fourth, we will prioritize still photography over video. Video is prominent on social media, but that kind of media favors those who have viewing devices capable of running the heavy tech demands of video. Optimized still photography delivers a visual portrayal without breaking, freezing or slowing down an old or budget mobile device. Free Press is for everyone, not just those who can afford this year’s iPhone every year.

With that said, I invite you to subscribe to our Youtube channel. We value video, too, and will be providing more of it in the future.

And, while you’re at it, will you sign up for a limited amount of emails? We would appreciate your using that box in the yellow band at the top of this page.

Author Profile

Founder, publisher, and editor of Oklahoma City Free Press. Brett continues to contribute reports and photography to this site as he runs the business.