I compared Seth’s story and Mary’s story. Seth’s story was about the damage from the fires that have recently been burning through Santa Rose in California, and Mary’s was about what it’s like to live in the Russian border. I think that the photo story Seth found was better because it conveyed exactly what the story was trying to tell. There were side by side photos of buildings and the landscape before and after the fire damage. Although some of the first photos weren’t very high quality, the whole story all-together was totally striking and well formatted.
There were a few issues with Mary’s story in my opinion. Although it was fascinating to read, the pictures did not strike me. Some were good but most were quite boring. And maybe that’s fine, because photojournalism should mirror life — life in towns on the Russian border is gray and perhaps kind of boring. But I think the photographers could have done a better job finding interesting things to photograph. A lot of the pictures were boring but necessary; for example, pictures of the actual border and remnants of the various relics of Russia’s military past. These photos could have been made more interesting. I also wanted to see more life. The word “life” was in the title so I thought I would be seeing more about the everyday life of people on the border, which would make a really interesting story, but this story seemed to be more about the border than the life on the border.
I also did not like the way the photos were dispersed throughout the story. Although I understand why they were broken up by descriptive text, I think it would have been more effective to put them into a photo album. This is a story focused on comparison, and I think it would’ve been easier to compare the photos if they were in an album format.
The photos from Seth’s article worked on their own to tell a story. The photos from Mary’s article did not. The articles were telling different stories, of course, but I think Seth’s hit the nail on the head and Mary’s didn’t tell the story it could have.
Clare Elena Roth 