Photojournalists are witnesses to the world’s stories – but how the photographer chooses to frame the photograph is a key part of the story. This week, photographers around the world highlighted everything from community gatherings to watch the solar eclipse to the devastating impact of war and climate change.
I’m a photographer and a journalist, and looking through the top news photos this week reminded me of the power of perspective.
Patterned sandbars emerge from the receding Danube River
A drought has pushed the Danube River to record low levels. This shot by Marko Perkov reveals some of the hidden sandbar structures that the receding waters revealed. While the pattern in the sand is striking itself, the huddle of umbrellas and beach towels, colorful swim rings, and swimmers in the water give what would otherwise be a landscape shot a human element.
Perkoc took this shot with the DJI Mavic 4 Pro drone near Ilok, Croatia.
A rarely seen perspective of a nesting stork
The nesting sites for large birds look like a jumble of sticks from the ground, but this drone shot by Nenad Mihajlovic offers an unusual perspective of a stork in its nest, photographed as part of a recent study that suggests that this urban site where the stork built on a pillar for an unfinished building in Novi Sad, is one of the largest of its kind in Serbia.
The light is hitting the nest just right, making the ground below fade into near darkness and drawing attention to the bird, which almost seems to be giving the camera a wary side-eye. The telephoto lens on the DJI Air3S helped minimize the disturbance to the animal.
Child’s play amid a war
Perspective in photography isn’t just about getting the camera to an unusual height – it’s about what scenes the photographer chooses to photograph to tell a story. This photo by Ahmad Hasaballah is a photo of a child’s football (soccer) match, and yet the story that it tells is one of the Israel-Hamas war.
The photograph comes from a game organized by the Palestine Amputee Football Association in northern Gaza City, Gaza. The photographer notes that the children have all lost limbs from the Israel-Hamas war and accidents.
A horse fleeing from a wildfire
This shot by Huw Fairclough is almost picturesque with the warm sunlight hitting the horse – except for the wildfires in the background. The photograph, taken on August 09 on the Llangynid Moor in Wales, shows the horse making its way away from the flames.
The photograph is just one of several striking photographs calling attention to the recent uptick in wildfires over the summer across the globe.
A solar eclipse in a sunflower field
What strikes me most about this shot from Palencia, Spain, by Leon Neal is that the solar eclipse seems to mirror the shape of the sunflowers. Choosing to make the subject the smallest part of the frame while filling a majority of the image with foreground elements is unusual, but effective at drawing the eye and making an eclipse photo that stands out.
The eclipse was the first time that Spain was in the path of totality since 1905.
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