This week the tenth group of SAJ students have carried out their first photographic projects. To complete the assignment, they traveled to the community of Colonita accompanied by their trainer, Nicolae Pojoga.

Equipped with cameras, the students have attempted at capturing through images the stories of the people. They met the locals, talked to them and took photographs, which were later included in their course projects and submitted to the trainer for assessment. 'I noticed that people were engaged in road repair works. I approached the road workers and talked to them. They were quite friendly and we discussed the problems they were facing. I learned then that the man I had photographed earlier was a former war veteran and father of five children ...', said Natalia Ghetu, one of the students.

The first thing to learn during the photojournalism course was how the camera worked. Along with acquiring technical knowledge, the students engaged in a number of hands-on exercises that helped them learn the rules of composition and photo editing. Besides, much attention was paid to the art of writing captions. 'The text makes the difference between a simple photograph and a journalistic one. The text must be written following the rules. Namely, captions must contain enough information to render the message. There are international rules of writing captions; therefore, we focus on caption writing at our course,' said Nicholae Pojoga, the trainer teaching the art of photojournalism.

Another element of the course was the discussion of photographs taken by famous photographers. Again, special emphasis was placed on ethics in photojournalism. The course lasted five days and was held at SAJ during September 14-18, 2015.