Link: Ivory Coast defeats Ghana in African Cup of Nations
10 days ago, the African Cup of Nations came to a conclusion on the “Dark Continent” as some call it, with the Ivory Coast (or Cote D’Ivoire for you politically correct folk) defeating Ghana in a penalty shootout after the two teams drew 0-0 in regulation and then subsequently extra time.
This picture sets the scene based on what the game was all about. Frederic Kanoute and Mohamed Aboutrika bring in the 2015 African Cup of Nations trophy, and that is what these two teams were playing for.
These two pictures capture some of the action that occurred during the matchup, including one player trying to attempt a bicycle kick in defenders and another where Wilfried Bony attempts a penalty kick that he ends up missing.
Both of these show human emotion. Above, the Ivory Coast’s head coach reacts to a bad call against his team. In the bottom picture, the Ivory Coast’s goalkeeper Boubacar Barry reacts after scoring the winning goal.
Both of these shots show the jubilation of the Ivory Coast team after they won the tournament. This wraps up the story, showing the championship team picture and the head coach showing his happiness by taking his shirt off and dancing.
The media company, the Daily Mail in the United Kingdom, used social media in the sense of vines. Taking action from the game and putting it onto their page to get people engaged, like the one below.
What works with sports photo galleries is the fact that there is a lot of action and celebration going on at once, and this photographer did a great job of capturing a lot of the drama and the torture of the players and coaches that participated. One thing I did not find that I would have liked to was a crowd shot of fans celebrating or something of the nature to try and get an atmospheric sense into the gallery.
As far as if this is journalism or not, there is no question that it is. The typical journalistic style that we know as sportswriters is going to a game, taking notes, interviewing the coaches/players, going back and writing a story. I like the photo galleries more because it is more intriguing to the reader and more people can understand it. It is much easier to show somebody what happened through pictures, than to write it and use words.
Seawolves Speak 