Smile!

For someone who hates having their photo taken, I quite enjoy photography. And pictures are usually what keeps me interested in news stories because I'm easily distracted.

And as cliche as it sounds, they describe things that pictures can't. Can anyone here really describe these pictures?

Back to the boring stuff, the first time an actual photo was included in a news paper was in 1879 and since then they've become an integral part of the news story telling process.

I guess what you can say is that even though visual news has had a fairly long history, there hasn't been much change in terms of production. But what we can say is that there has been a change in what we value in visual communication. This clip pretty much says it all.

The point of photography and visual communication is to show life from a difference angle. However, people in media manipulate and distort our perception of reality. So I guess this leaves us wondering what we can trust in the media.

I still believe that there are people with good intentions conveying news and ideas through visual means. Take for example these pictures that have received the Pulitzer Prize.

I guess my beliefs in visual communication can be summed up with the words of Finnish photographer Eetu Silanpaa:

"A picture has no meaning at all if it can't tell a story."

Some of the pictures I've included in this post have been quite depressing, so I'll leave with this. I don't know if this is considered photography as such, but it's pretty amazing. These photos were taken by Suren Manvelyan, an Armenian physics teacher. His work is definitely something to have a look at.