thebitterguy

When I was in Journalism school, photography was one of the compulsory courses. Of course, they were all compulsory courses, but that’s beside the point.

There were no textbooks for the photography section; we just had to bring our cameras and a notebook to record stuff like film speed and shutter speed and aperture.

One of the guys did bring in a book on photojournalism, and inside that book were a selection of boring photos. Photos that had been done, and should really be avoided, if possible.

These were all staged photos; generally, you're not gonna ask some guy to throw his molotov cocktail underhand so it would be more interesting. So whenever I had to stage a picture I’d try to avoid them.

Anyway, they all had various names, like "Guy at Desk" which was a picture of a guy sitting at his desk, a picture type that's both common and dull.

My favourite of the 'photos not to take' was the one where a group of people were photographed standing in front of a wall, usually handing over a check or shaking hands or something. The title for this pho-pas was "The Execution Will Be At Dawn". Since then, every time I see a photo like, say this one, I giggle furiously.

<a href="http://www.androidworld.com/saika3-group.jpg'>This one is particularly funny</a>, since I then wonder “What could the robot have done to deserve this fate?"