An American expert in media literacy and photojournalism is in Samoa to run workshops for media practitioners, the public and university students.

Damaso Reyes, who is a media and information literacy expert and is also an independent journalist, has been invited by the U.S. Embassy in Samoa.

According to his LinkedIn profile, Mr Reyes trains educators and journalists around the world to empower their students and audiences with the skills they need to become engaged digital citizens.

He ran a workshop on Thursday at the American Corner on the second floor of the Nelson Memorial Library and spoke about the benefits and impact of journalism as a profession and how it can be pursued as a career.

In his presentation on photography, he said it is always good for people to capture what they see with a camera as it is accurate. 

"People tend to believe what they see and it is very important to take pictures of what accurately describes what you saw and what really occurred!" he added. 

He emphasised the benefits of accurate description and how it supports honesty as pictures remain while other things can be changed.

But there is always the challenge of having one or more pictures representing a certain period, Mr Reyes added and highlighted how the challenges can be overcomed. Local media personalities and photographers joined the discussion, expressing their views on the issues and shared their work.

Mr Reyes also demonstrated how to take great pictures but fair and accurate at the same time and demonstrated the use of different cameras and approaches when shooting. 

He will run two more semiras at the National University of Samoa (N.U.S.) for the students and lecturers.