BIG SHOT : Photographing People

Photography is not about the camera. It’s not even about the beautiful images we create. It is about telling powerful stories. Photography is a tool for creating awareness and understanding across cultures, communities, and countries; a tool to make sense of our commonalities in the world we share. I believe the way to find common ground is by seeing yourself in others.People are not ‘Sites’.

One realization that I had a number of years back after a trip was that I was actually thinking in terms of ‘capturing’ photos of people. In a sense I was photographing them in a similar way to the other tourist ‘sites’ that I was photographing along the way – almost as trophies.

I realized that my approach was totally arrogant, disrespectful and very rude. People are not ‘tourist sites’ – they’re people and they deserve to be treated as such.

A much better approach is to take photos in a relational way. This doesn’t mean you need to have talked to them for hours, swapped numbers and told you deepest secrets before photographing them – but it does mean that taking their photograph can actually become a friendly interaction between people from different cultures.

Learn a few words in their language, smile lots, tell them something about yourself (or show them a picture of your family at home), take an interest in their work, home and family, show them the pictures you’ve taken of them on your LCD, tell them that they look great, shake their hands and generally be polite and warm and you’ll find that photographing them is a much richer experience for all.

Also knowing a bit about the culture and what is and isn’t appropriate in terms of your dress, interactions between genders and more can be very useful to know.

The results of this approach are that not only do both subject and photographer potentially come away having experienced something of value – but the photographs you take are generally better as the subject is more relaxed, you might have been able to get a little closer and there is some kind of connection between the two of you.