As a parent, I desperately wanted a way to pause time, a way to remember the big and little events that would be my kids’ childhood. As a creative, I also needed a creative outlet that wouldn’t require a lot of extra time away from my family. Documentary photography became both of those things for me.

Documentary photography is about real life, the chaos, the mundane, and everything in between. It’s more of an approach and less of an aesthetic.  As the photographer, you may not alter or interfere with the scene in any way. This includes adjusting the lights, moving objects, posing or directing your subject. Pixel manipulation is also not allowed.

If you can’t control the scene or the subject, what can you control?

You can control the elements:

• the composition
• the way light enters the camera
• the precise moment you click the shutter
• camera settings

Composition is where you can elevate a candid snapshot to an intentional documentary work of art. Composition is important in all genres of photography and more so in documentary.

Quick tip: get eye level with your subject. This helps the viewer feel as if they are in the frame with your subject.

A few of my favorite ways to compose a shot:

• Rule of thirds: mentally dividing the frame with 3 vertical and 3 horizontal lines and placing your subject in the frame where the lines intersect.
• Leading lines: using the lines in a scene to lead the viewer’s eye to your subject
• Fill the frame: get close and fill the frame edge to edge with your subject
• Symmetry: an equal balance of weight within your frame
• Framing: anything in the frame that can create a borderer frame around your subject to draw the viewer’s eye
• Layering: adding depth to your image by maximizing the use of the foreground, middle-ground, and background of the scene

Harness the light:

Learning how to utilize and harness the light available to you is a huge part of documentary photography. Life is happening in harsh light, artificial light, low light, and golden light.

Quick tip: Don’t be afraid to increase your ISO to capture a moment that is happening in a dimly lit room.

Moment

The precise moment you click the shutter is also known as the decisive moment. This phrase was coined by Henri Cartier-Bresson. If you don’t know his work, I highly recommend a study of his images. Moment driven photos are images where the moment is the most important element in the frame. Once you begin shooting for the moment, you will begin to anticipates your subject’s next move.

Quick tip: Shoot through the moment. When you think you have the moment captured, keep shooting!

Camera settings:

Just like learning compositional elements and how to harness light, learning your camera settings is an extremely important part of documentary photography.

Here are a few recommendations to get you started:

• Shutter speed: A minimum of 1/250 second if photographing moving subjects and you want to freeze the action. Slowing the shutter is another option if you want to show the blur of moving subjects.
• Aperture: The background is important in documentary photography. Narrowing your aperture to 3.0 to 5.6 or even higher, ensures that the background is in focus.
• ISO: varies depending on available light. As mentioned above, don’t be afraid to increase the ISO for low lit images and embrace the grain.

Quick Tip: When composing your shot, ask yourself, “What is most interesting here?”.

There are many different genres of documentary photography, here are just a few

• street photography
• photojournalism
• found still life
• family documentary