IAIJ
Joined: 01 May 2011 Posts: 125
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Posted: Mon Jul 11, 2022 2:40 pm Post subject: Vehicle Fire Disrupts Canada’s Largest Freeway! |
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Vehicle Fire Disrupts Canada’s Largest Freeway!
By Maurice Ali (Toronto, Canada)
On Saturday July 9 (2022) at approximately 13:30 on the 401 freeway (westbound express lanes) in Toronto (Canada) at Warden Avenue, there was a multi-vehicle accident where one of the vehicles was on fire! It appears everyone involved escaped the fire and the visible evidence suggests that the vehicle on fire rear-ended the car in front and was also hit from behind, so a pileup during a busy Saturday which is a common occurrence on the highway unfortunately.
Check out these photos of a car on fire as we saw it traveling eastbound in the collector lanes:
Usually I get there after the fact but this was a fresh accident and the car was still on fire. I think this is a teachable moment or a review of how to handle photos at an accident or any other unforeseen event that you may come upon. In a nutshell, crops are ok unless the crop misleads the situation. Always keep the original shot with all the exif information intact. Call in the situation to the authorities and give them the W5 information (who, what, where, when and why) if you are one of the first at the scene; do not assume it was called in as these days everyone is more interested in their Instagram posts than doing their civic duty to call it in, be more professional than the others.
With the photos the desire is to get the photos posted to news or social media immediately, but a few suggestions on how you process the photos makes a huge impact on your credibility as a journalist. As stated before, I would only crop the photos you have and I would keep a copy of the original with all the exif data on it or at least use non-destructive editing so you can revert back to the original photo after cropping. Do not flip the image to make it look better or apply a filter to give it more colour or contrast, let the image as shot be presented to the viewer. AP guidelines for journalist photography are as good as any and can be found here:
https://www.csus.edu/indiv/g/goffs/135%20photojournalism/associated%20press%20ethics%20code.pdf
For video as with photos, I would not add any filters and no background music, only adjusting the trim and the resolution to match the practical realities of uploading the video.
Realize in the end, my photos were just an accident with no major injuries, so you take the photos if it can be done safely and move on. Hopping out of the car to take a few proper shots and making matters worse on the freeway is just bad journalism. Anyway, those are my thoughts on ”spur of the moment” journalism. News happens when it happens and usually unexpectedly, so you should be prepared in advance to take advantage of these moments and not do anything unprofessional.
From files of Maurice Ali |
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