Why I just love Photojournalism!


At university, I study journalism (amongst some other things) - and more than ever before, I'm realising that I am truly passionate about journalism and communication, and the power it possesses. 

There are so many things I could talk about relating to this - and I feel that over time, I will - but today's post relates to my yesterday! 

Yesterday, I ended up randomly (or fatefully) watching a documentary about a magazine and journalism.  One part of it talked about photojournalism, communicating news through photographs, and it reminded me just how much I love photojournalism. I only (naively) properly became aware of Photojournalism as a practice at the beginning of last year - when I learnt about it and completed a piece of work on it.

After discovering it, I decided it was probably one of my absolute favourite news forms. I could write more and explain more about what Photojournalism is, but in the spirit of it - I'll just show you :)

Because of an assessment, I found this website:


 I mean it when I say, this is legitimately one of my absolute favourite websites. I look at it ALL. THE. TIME. And you'll see why.













As you can probably tell, I really had to restrain myself from showing you every story's cover photo :P.  I so strongly encourage you to check out this website every now and then!

The thing about Photojournalism is it shows you the good, the bad, and the ugly, in its truest form possible. It's SO easy to understand the news story from it.

The other website I love is:

TIME Lightbox

"Each week, TIME LightBox presents one news photograph selected from among the thousands shared on the news wires. Published in the magazine, these images, now featured in this gallery, offer a close look at the world’s most impactful events..."

They select the most striking photograph of the week...and I just love this one!


Do you guys get what I mean when I say I love Photojournalism? 
Photographs are powerful. 
They can instigate emotions, change behaviour and impact the way society operates. 

As for the story I did my assessment on that cemented my love for it?
My piece of writing on it follows below:

This photojournalism series composed by Lloyd Young captures the day Boston marked a year since the attack at the Marathon with tragic and uplifting photographs.
The news values evident in this story are entertainment, surprise, bad news, good news, magnitude, relevance and follow-up. As a human interest story it has elements of entertainment. It is simultaneously bad news through the tragedy it documents, and good news through the healing it depicts. The photographs reiterate a sense of surprise by highlighting the calamity that had occurred, and contrasting that with the present anniversary. Much of its significance rests in its relation with the bigger news story of the Bombings, demonstrating its follow-up value. It also has values of magnitude and relevance, as terrorism affects everyone who hears about it and is relevant on an international scale.


The story angle is set on the symbolic events associated with the flag-raising ceremony and moment of silence, suggesting a focus on triumph over adversity. Although melancholy is an overall theme reinforced by images of grief, the story also represents the anniversary positively in the context of unity. Unity is signified by the masses of people at the commemorative ceremony and the ‘Boston Strong’ blue and yellow banners. Moreover, courage and hope is represented in the images of bombing survivors standing at the finish line – creating an uplifting sentiment. Capturing the movements of the masses – their sorrow and healing – evokes compassion and empathy from the audience. The story suggests we should think about the event in terms of strength and resiliency now, exemplifying the ‘Boston Strong’ slogan.


The medium is significant because visuals affect how people perceive a story, correspondingly photographs capture the subtlety of situations whilst creating immediate emotional impact. Moreover, a series of photographs can encompass several themes. For example, one image accentuates the distress experienced, by positioning a crying individual in the centre of the image. In another example, a low, close up shot of shoes reading ‘Boston Strong’ and a prosthetic limb represents the situation in its entirety of despair, heroism, recovery and unity. The visuals provide the experience of the event for the viewer to see for themselves.



Hope you guys enjoyed this post, even though it turned into a essay...I tend to do that a lot, whoops :P

New blog post will be up next Tuesday!
Until then, you can follow me on - 
They're all linked so you should just be able to click on them! :)

Have a great rest of the week!

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What I've been upto! (A.K.A. Food Adventures! :P)

Hi guys! Hope you all had a lovely weekend and a nice start to the week! ☺️

I'm about to head into a few study-heavy, busy weeks now…so I thought I would use this opportunity to reminisce on some recent, random, fun moments from my mid-semester holidays and the first few weeks of University - before I head into social oblivion, that is :P.

I've already done two photo journal-y blogposts on the main things I did these past holidays, Our "Camping" Trip and My Melbourne Trip - you can click on the links if you haven't already seen them!
  
But, here are some other bits and pieces! ☺️

Disclaimer: While I was organising the photos for this post it's almost embarrassing how many of these photos are photos of food :P. BUT, notice how I said almost hehe - food is the best so I don't even regret it haha, no shame whatsoever.



Am I right, or am I right? :P

Plus - most social interactions are based around food, and since I haven't got proper approval to put photos of all my friends and I on here yet, photos of food is not a bad way to show you guys what's been going on (or more like what I've been eating…maybe I should just succumb and make a foodie page/instagram/blog :P), anyways - here goes some random photos!


Some of my friends and I went to a place called Doughnut Time (it's gotten super famous in our city, and for good reason! It's YUM!)

I also attempted cooking a bit these holidays, vegetable pies... 


And a homemade Italian feast for my mumma's birthday!


Crumbed Pepper Poppers, Napoletana Penne Pasta, Pumpkin, Rocket and Feta Salad, and Garlic Bread of course!

With a pistachio and cinnamon cake with cream to finish off!


Speaking of my mumma's birthday, since it was on a weeknight I just cooked dinner at home on the day (as you can see above) - but we had a very food-filled celebrating weekend as well! :P

We went to this place called Shouk Cafe for breakfast.




Needless to say, I wasn't mad about it :P.

Later on, I took mum out for a fancy birthday dinner ☺️


A photo posted by Raashi Agarwal (@raashiagarwal) on

Mum is vegetarian so I had booked a vegetarian degustation dinner (a tasting of small signature dishes) at a restaurant called Bacchus.







The food looked SO beautiful, but it was so, so yummy too!


A random photo I took - I love, love, love beautiful scenery.

Just before the end of the holidays a bunch of us went to something called the Noodle Night Markets!




How cute! Hehe.

Along with all the Asian food there, they also had waffle sticks!? 
We had never seen these before and felt that was good enough justification for us to have to try one! :P



Let's just pretend this photo isn't blurry, ok? :P

After that Uni started back up and that weekend some of us went out, because we just knew it would get harder to do this later on!


How pretty is that tree! 
(Anyone who knows me knows I'm obsessed with fairy lights...or anything sparkly, to be honest :P)

A photo posted by Raashi Agarwal (@raashiagarwal) on

And now to this past weekend!
One of my best friends turned 20!




  We went to this place called Spaghetti House and it had such a cool ambience! I've definitely explored Brisbane's eating scene more than ever this holidays haha, as you can see :P 


I probably could just stop studying business/psychology/journalism and become a food blogger? :P

Anyways, just one last thing, a while back I wrote a post on how lovely it can be when strangers capture random moments, and the other day I was meeting up with some of my friends and saw this! 



The person was, I'm assuming, waiting to meet one of their loved ones to celebrate their birthday and I thought it was the cutest thing ever! 
Just loved knowing that someones' day was about to be made!

Anyhow! Hope you guys enjoyed scrolling through ALL the photos (of mainly food :P)!

P.S. My blog's regularly programmed scheduling has shifted to Monday night postings (in Australian time :P), so wherever you are in the world they will be up by Tuesday mornings ☺️

New blog post will be up next Tuesday!
Until then, you can follow me on - 
They're all linked so you should just be able to click on them! :)

Have a great rest of the week!
❤️, Raashi

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When life gets busy!

Hope you guys are having a great day!!! ☺️
It's been a while since I've done a more personal post, maybe at some point I'll do a compilation of random photos from my holidays, but as for now I am back to routine!


I FEEL SO BUSY RIGHT NOW. Haha. I have not had a day off for the last two weeks (university and work during the week, and work during the weekends as well haha) - I'm surprisingly holding out pretty well actually, but I'm definitely having to dig deep now!

Hahahaha, this made me laugh a lot!

This week I'm working 30 hours in the retail store I work in, doing full-time university, organising group presentations, tutoring sessions, planning birthday and work dinners - I'm not even going to finish the list just to keep my sanity haha. BUT - only four more days and I will have a complete day off, YES! SO EXCITED! (I'm probably going to celebrate it with a blogpost haha, I'm thinking of changing my weekly posting scheduled day to Mondays for the rest of this year ☺️ )

ANYWAYS - enough about me! The thing is, this week got me thinking that sometimes our lives can get SO busy, and SO hectic - and it can be good and bad.

GOOD: I have obligations, and responsibilities, and expectations to meet - and I need to uphold them. This teaches me so many things:


BAD: I can get so caught up in getting everything done for everything and everyone that I forget about myself and taking care of myself, I make myself the last priority. 

"Busy is a drug that a lot of people are addicted to."



I think every individual can relate to both situations. 
We all benefit from, and/or sometimes get disadvantaged by, being so busy.
And yet another double-edged sword in our lives, haha.

Two things are for sure: For now, personally, I am embracing the chaos, trying to have fun and taking it day by day; and, I am going to appreciate Monday SOOO much next week! Hehe :P

New blog post will be up next Monday!!!
Until then, you can follow me on - 
They're all linked so you should just be able to click on them! :)

Have a great rest of the week!

❤️, Raashi
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Body Image Self-Descriptors and Diversity

Have you guys seen or heard of TEDx Talks before? They’re absolutely brilliant.  They are essentially short and poignant talks, on topics from society, to science, to global issues, and absolutely everywhere inbetween! They are dedicated to spreading and sharing ideas around the world (creating deeper understandings, changing attitudes, changing lives and eventually, changing the world).

It is one of my aims to try and listen to more, my goal at the moment is at least one a week! So, with that being said, one of the very first TED Talks I ever listened to is one that I find INCREDIBLY interesting.
  

Her first minute or so really caught my attention, challenged my ideas and introduced me to the concept of self-descriptors.  It also helps that her confidence is KILLER. 

I know that some of you may not get around to watching this talk straight away, so take a read of these:
  


Via

YES, LILLIAN!

She's right. We, as a society, place such connotations on specific words; I'm guilty of it, I am not the tallest person by any means haha, I'm most definitely a bit of a shorty - and although there are times where I will joking or genuinely complain about it, at the end of the day - it's a self-descriptor. Nothing wrong with that.

I think I found this talk incredibly interesting because, as much as I do believe that what she's saying is valid, not everyone is as confident as her when it comes to their "thing" that deviates from body image societal expectations.

For a while when people would say to me I'm short I wouldn't like it, even though it is a self-descriptor (I think I just wanted to be taller - society's typical beauty standards speaking there, I reckon), but I will say I'm definitely much better at owning it now. 

But, what the above has taught me, is even though something may seem to be a self-descriptor for another individual, be mindful of how they may feel about it. Be sensitive and respectful of potential insecurities. 

At the same time, maybe our society could be doing a better job in getting rid of those insecurities. She continues her talk to mention a study called, 'Visual Diet versus Associative Learningas Mechanisms of Change in Body Size Preferences'.  
Via

Basically, "The more we see one kind of body, the more we like that kind of body." I think we would all know that tall and skinny is the kind of body we tend to see in media all the time, but recently lots of people in the spotlight have been embracing curves and more girls are wanting that now as well. Lillian said, the more body diversity that is shown to us, the more it's normalised, the more people will feel comfortable in accepting whatever they are. ❤️ 

'Seeing body diversity, makes us more comfortable with diverse bodies'. 
Ultimately, her message that you can be happy with your body no matter what it looks like is a welcome reminder of just how important positive body image is. 

She is socially significant and she's sharing that, and that is so brave.

P.S. If you guys do watch the video, how brilliant is the idea behind 'Courage Reference' - can you think of one for yourself? ☺️



New blog post will be up next wednesday!
Until then, you can follow me on - 
They're all linked so you should just be able to click on them! :)

Have a great rest of the week!

❤️, Raashi
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