Capturing Compelling Photos from the Field

October 2009 Newsletter
Center for Sustainable Development

In the September Newsletter we looked at the importance of using compelling field stories in reports, proposals, and newsletters. This month we will look at the complement to those compelling stories—compelling photos that capture by illustration the impact of the project. If you haven’t read the September Newsletter, it presents the contextual background to this newsletter and would be a recommended first read.

Compelling Photos: What are they?
For our development purposes, a compelling photo paints a picture that makes the reader feel ‘I was there’. What might capture a reader’s imagination? Almost any photo from the field for the non-travelling audience will be interesting, but children and adults performing intriguing tasks or showing off something that they are proud of rank right at the top. In short, high-quality, graphic images of active, enthusiastic, smiling people will resonate with your audience and help them to connect with the universal potential of mankind—and with the potential of your projects.

Collecting Photos During Site Visits
In the field, the photographer’s first job will be to find the compelling story line. Once found, their second task will be to collect a color palette of locations, people, objects, colors, sights and activities with which to paint a picture that brings the story to life. These are your compelling photos.

For photography, informal site visits are better than formal ones. I’ve felt that when I’m taken on a planned tour, I’m led through canned presentations and staged interviews. People are stiff and interviews are cautious. Your handlers are purposefully engaging you; you don’t really have the free time to think, snoop around and meet people in their natural setting.

Photography demands solo time alone with subjects—and sometimes it demands quite a bit of time. It is difficult to get really good shots if you are surrounded by friends, handlers, or a group that you may be travelling with. Your job as a professional is the find the compelling story line, engage with your subjects, and identify the patterns from which to entice compelling photos: hard to do when you are competing for your subject’s attention with other visitors, when you are being distracted by other visitors, or are being asked by your handler to move along with the rest of the group.

To avoid this, I ask if I can just tag along alone with a field staffer on a normal day of normal rounds. Staffers do incredibly interesting things with even more interesting people. Since I’m not ‘working’, I’m free to observe, be curious, think up questions, roam a bit, talk casually to people—and take photos.

Beneficiaries will be very curious about you if you arrive unannounced. They will have lots of questions about you, which in turn give you permission to ask lots of questions of them—and begin the process of engaging with them. These are real people with real lives: this is humanity. They are the wellspring of your compelling photos and they are momentarily allowing you into important spaces within their personal lives. At these moments in time I can’t believe how lucky I am; it simply doesn’t get any better than this. Ask if they will show you around their house or their compound or their vegetable garden. Ask about their work, their children’s education. Play with children and make them laugh; if children laugh, parents laugh too, and soon everyone is relaxed. Have fun keeping everyone relaxed and carrying on conversations, but keep an eye on the Staffer in case she suddenly starts doing something incredibly photogenic!

Capturing Photographic Images
If you like taking photos, here are some fun, non technical ideas for progressing from snapshots to compelling images: (to read the rest of this newsletter).