Photos as illustration

Illustration often loses turf wars to photography; I wish it weren't so. For some venues, though, photography is the more appropriate choice. In news coverage, for example, you often want the literal reality that a photograph can provide.

Lately, I've found myself noticing photographs for their illustrative qualities as well. Many news photos simply provide a window into the story, and that's fine. But some news photos are more conceptual; in addition to showing literal reality, they encapsulate the idea of a story. The New York Times frequently uses this sort of photo, especially for the front page.

These photos, which accompany a recent New York Times story about a rare snowstorm in London, provide a decent example (the first image is from Reuters; the second, from Getty):


Why are these photos also like illustrations? One of the main ideas of the article is this: "It snowed in London." They could have used any number of snow scenes: children playing, people struggling down the sidewalk, backed-up traffic, snow-covered trees. We often see photos of these things after local snowstorms. But these snow photos contain iconic London buildings: Buckingham Palace and Big Ben. Even better is that British flag umbrella, which contains the ideas of "Britain" and "foul weather" all in one swoop and provides a nice graphic punch to boot. These are elements a conceptual illustrator might use.