In 2010, a young man named Brandon Stanton lost his job as a bond trader in Chicago and decided to move to New York City to photograph 10,000 New Yorkers he encountered on the street. What started as a pipe dream barely financed by unemployment checks and the largesse of friends became "Humans of New York," a wildly popular project that evolved into a Facebook page, a bestselling book, and a 50-day United Nations-sponsored trip to photograph people around the world. It was a long way for an unemployed bond trader to come--and it happened because of photography. Brandon Stanton's pictures created connections between viewers and subjects worlds apart, and they were simple portraits of normal people accompanied by brief captions with tidbits of their lives.
Photographs can build empathy and emotional investment, which is crucial for effective communication. When you think about documentation for your next program or activity, consider making photography a part of it. You don't need an expensive Nikon DSLR to use photography for documentation. And although case studies and reports that are dozens of pages long may be the standard image that pops into one's head when thinking of "documentation," it is important to expand the definition of documentation to include visual mediums.
Photographs can build empathy and emotional investment, which is crucial for effective communication. When you think about documentation for your next program or activity, consider making photography a part of it. You don't need an expensive Nikon DSLR to use photography for documentation. And although case studies and reports that are dozens of pages long may be the standard image that pops into one's head when thinking of "documentation," it is important to expand the definition of documentation to include visual mediums.
Using photography as a method of documentation involves finding filming, editing, and distribution tools.
Filming tools. High-end cameras like Canon and Nikon DSLRs will give high-quality shots, but you can also use more inexpensive cameras, or the camera on a mobile phone, and get great photos. Always try to move physically closer to a subject rather than zooming to maintain image quality. Take photos in good lighting. If taking a picture of a subject indoors in a room where there are windows, make sure that their back is not to the window (this will result in a slightly silhouetted effect).
Editing tools. The pictures you take are just the raw materials; editing helps bring out the final product. You can use software like Adobe Photoshop or Lightroom with a subscription to Adobe Creative Cloud. Free online photo editing sites include Fotor and Pixlr. Other free photo editing services can be found easily by Googling "free photo editing."
Distribution tools. You can upload photographs to a website like Flickr or save them to an online storage site like Google Drive, Microsoft's OneDrive, or Dropbox. You can also place photographs into a Word or Google Docs document (great for case studies!) and easily upload specific photos to your website, blog, and social media channels, as long as the photographs are in a commonly used format (e.g., .jpeg or .png). Try posting your photos on your organization's Instagram page. Check out other organizations for inspiration; UNICEF regularly posts on its Instagram account. This is a list of some of the best Instagram accounts of non-profit organizations.
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