Let us start with diving to the photography. Even though, there are different styles and techniques, we focused on “documentary photography” techniques due to the nature of our project. We have tailored the techniques to facilitate the understanding of young people concerning to photography with DSLR machines and mobile devices. In this regard, we have introduced the Lightroom Programme and how to edit a photo by using the lightroom in both computer and mobile devices to ease the burden concerning to the photo editing and publishing of photos.
Documentary Photography is a style of photography that provides a straightforward and accurate representation of people, places, objects and events, and is often used in reportage[1]. Documentary photography is often used to promote the social issues and inequalities in our communities. As in our previous example, “Migrant Mother”, helped the raise awareness on the issue of migrants and pave the way for provision of aid to the people in need. In 60s, the documentary photography helped the visibility of the marginalised groups in the communities. In addition to that, Photo Voice takes it root as well from the documentary photography, thus we have focused in this chapter on the documentary photography targeting the audiences to bring social change and promote awareness.
Adobe’s Beginner Guide to Documentary[2] underlines 4 main points before starting to shoot documentary photography:
- Learn your camera : . Understand the purpose and effect of each setting, and practice taking all kinds of photos in all kinds of conditions.
- Learn what makes a good photo : Pay attention to composition, light and shadow, the story that an individual image can tell, and how a few great images can expand that narrative.
- Research your subject : Documentary photography really blends with research and interviews.
- Be ethical : No matter your vision, you have to pay attention to the stories of the people you’re photographing.
From this aspect, we will focus on the first two aspects in this chapter : Learning our cameras and learning what makes a good photo. Firstly, we will explain the differences between the cameras, lenses and mobile phones and how to make the most of them, later on the manual settings of a photo camera and composition techniques.
Here is the sub-chapters for you to work on concerning to the aspects that we have touched upon above:
[1] Documentary photography | Tate https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/d/documentary-photography
[2]Documentary photography: A beginner’s guide – Adobe https://www.adobe.com/creativecloud/photography/discover/documentary-photography.html
