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Introduction
They say, a picture says a thousand words, and when it comes to journalism, which is often a war of words, images are powerful and deadly weapons for sure.
Photojournalism is a branch of journalism that involves collecting, editing and publishing the images to convey a news story, generally along with the text material. Not only photographs, but even video clippings have become an integral part of photojournalism these days, taking into consideration of the diminishing line between print and electronic media.

History and Photojournalism today
At the initial stages of journalism, in Nineteenth Century photographs were rendered as wood engravings before printing. The alternate to which was exhibition of the photographs in original or copying them photographically in limited numbers. Then photography was mainly used for coverage of the wars or the other such politically important events. Then came the halftone reproduction of the photographs, which could be printed in the printing press along with the text material. Around second decade of Twentieth Century the invention of wirephoto made it possible to transmit images along with the news itself. Photojournalism entered a new era, with the invention of 35mm Leica Camera in 1925 and, flash bulb afterwards. But even then the images on the newspapers that used letterpress printing technology using oil-based ink and low quality newsprint paper, could not be reproduced properly. The ink smeared and made the images indistinct. Only after the introduction of offset press for printing in 1980s, the images could be reproduced in print media with high fidelity.

The introduction of new smaller and faster cameras from Japanese companies made the photographing process much simpler. And today we stand among the high resolution digital cameras, powerful lenses, high capacity flash memory cards, laptops and palmtops, and connectivity to almost anywhere in the world through GPRS and World Wide Web.

Scopes and risks involved in photojournalism
Photojournalism as a career is fascinating, though has its own highs and lows involved. It can be greatly rewarding if one is present in a right place, at the right moment to capture the event. A single shot can make one famous overnight, but that is not what photojournalism is about. One has to deal with fury of nature, devastation of war, unreachable terrains, unattainable permissions from some Dictator or an Army chief, unmanageable situations, and moreover rude public or rage of a mob. Photographers are often uninvited and unwelcomed guest in a common man’s territory. One can happen to achieve unattainable highs and loneliest lows in this career, but all the risk is worth, when you are capturing history with your lens.

The ethical and legal standard to be maintained is a very important consideration in photojournalism as any other field of journalism. The code of conduct or the legal considerations in journalism is often defined by a National body for Journalism. But these days with advancement of technology, and world being a very small place to live in, image captured in one country is often published in other countries, which leads to some ethical/legal complications at times.
And there is a very fine line distinguishing photojournalism form some other forms of photography such as; street photography, documentary photography or celebrity photography, that might lead to controversy in some situations.

While capturing and editing the images, the journalist has to be honest, truthful and objective. Photojournalism is being sensitive to an issue or event and at the same time being candid. The images should convey the emotion of the subject to the viewer.

Future
All the new technologies today seem to have made the job of a photojournalist much easier, at least the capturing, editing and presenting the news part. At one point the future seems to be very bright, with increasing demand of quality work in imaging in both print and electronic media, taking into consideration the reliance of the newspapers, magazines and journals on images. But then, the advancement of technology and easy accessibility of all the imaging tools to common public might be a threat to the profession of photojournalism. Well, still then it is not only the photographing tools, that all it takes to become a photographer or a photojournalist, being specific. It takes a lot more, a lot more passion, endurance, exuberance to become a photojournalist. So photojournalism is there to stay.