Documentary photography is telling people or animals or a past, observing and illustrating the region in the places and environments where they live, sometimes under very difficult conditions, and telling the breakdowns about that place or subject, sometimes in the form of scenarios and sometimes as a story. Documentary and document photography should not be confused with each other.
What is Documentary Photography?
Documentary photography is one of the most difficult branches of photography. In other photography branches, while studies for self-expression or visual aesthetics are carried out, documentary photography, it aims to capture the reality impressively and to express and show the frame. Most of the time, you are unfamiliar with the region you are photographing, and with the different or expensive camera you have, you will immediately stand out in the community depending on the social structure of the environment, often they may even ask you why you took it. Documentary photography is the act of creating a photograph that accurately represents its subject. But documentary photography itself is more complex than what you can understand just by hearing its definition. Documentary photographers, like news photographers, must capture the everyday world as it is seen, without staging, editing, or controlling the scene.
While doing our Documentary Shoot, we can generally encounter three formations
- Unplanned Shooting (Spontaneous)
- Planned Shooting
- Instant Shot (when faced with subject or Object)
Unplanned Shooting (Spontaneous)
Although it is called the unplanned shooting in our topic, it does not mean that the photographer takes every shot he sees. In this sense, it is a process that needs to be thought well and having camera equipment knowledge. This type of unplanned (spontaneous) shots is the idea of obtaining images without holding the camera at the eye. In this way, it is not possible to understand that you are taking a photo too. By holding the camera on your chest or hips, you do not show that you are taking a photo.
Another way to shoot in an unplanned way is to expose according to the current conditions of the light without focusing the camera on the subject. If you do this using exposure lock, too, the exposure values will not change when editing. Don’t forget to set the focal point to the subject you want to capture, too. If you want to be guaranteed, you can also use the machine’s multi-frame feature.
Planned Shooting
Unlike unplanned shooting, the method here is to program a certain time period, just to press the shutter as soon as the moment comes. You have time to do all the preparations for the photo to be taken in this type of shoot before taking your camera to your eyes.
We can discover the place where we will shoot in the planned nature frames, and we can adjust ourselves according to the soft light and other conditions. Even though the space we will shoot is planned, the camera is insight, and we are waiting for the right moment, the people in the space can move and change their positions when they realize that their photo is taken. They may want to pose or not at all. Capturing the right moment for him is important in this position.
Shoot Shot (when facing the subject or the Object)
Sometimes, you cannot hide the camera in your hand, you may suddenly come across what you want to shoot. People sometimes love to be photographed and even ask if you will take it. But a frame that sounds interesting to you can often be out of these timings, and then you will have to move fast. If this is a human portrait (Often so), you should choose the method to soften the background and focus on the eyes or face.
Documentary photography history
The origins of documentary photography go back to the human interest in influencing social change. Some of the earliest examples of documentary photography well illustrate this interest. In the early 20th century, Joseph Reese used photographs to initiate reform in New York’s slums. In the 1930s, Dorothy Lang also took photographs of the Great Depression (popular photographs such as The Immigrant Mother).
How to start documentary photography?
- Develop your social skills
Technical photography skills have only a supporting role in documentary photography, and more important than technical skills are social skills that have nothing to do with the camera. Many of the things we need to do for documentary photography are done before we take the camera out. Documentary photography is more about talking, learning, researching and understanding what is happening around you.
- Spend time with the subject
Part of understanding what is going on around the subject is spending time with the subject. Most news photographers have to act very fast to capture events that are happening very quickly. But in documentary photography, you have to make the most of your time. A documentary photography project can take days, weeks, months or even years. Give yourself enough time to get to know the subject well. This intimacy allows you to create more meaningful photos.
- Take care of your photos
Your photography project may take days, weeks, or even years. That’s why you need a system to manage and organize your photos. It is recommended that you backup your photos daily and record their metadata. Ron Howie says he once traveled to Iraq to photograph the US invasion and did not have enough time to back up his photographs.
- Release your curiosity
Documentary photography can be a search for a subject that you like and understand. It can also be a way to convey historical events or a message to the whole world. A news and documentary photographer named Ed Kashi has used photography to show the realities and challenges of aging in American culture.
- Documentary photography should be natural
For documentary photography, you have to be in the subject’s daily life, talk to him for several hours, listen to his stories, depict what happens naturally. You should not portray something unrelated to the subject. Instead, you should be by his side and capture the moments that are very important.
- Draw the essence of the truth in documentary photography
This is not very different from the previous section, but let’s talk more about it. Just being in the subject’s house and seeing his living environment does not make you enter the subject’s soul and heart. If the subject is close to you (like a family member), think about which of his or her characteristics you want to portray. There are intelligence, calmness, humor and etc, that can be very evident in your photos. Is there anything unique about them? How can you portray this?
- Do not forget the details
When doing documentary photography a motivated person, make sure you think of three general views, medium distance and close-up. In other words, you have to get close to some things, and you don’t have to picture just the face or the whole body of the subject in all the photos. Details such as the way they hold the spoon can be very impressive.