Shooting Documentary with Intention

Documenting the everyday moments will always be my first love. When I first adopted my husband’s camera back in 2017, I brought it everywhere with me, afraid of missing a single moment. Some of my favorite images ever are from that year because of the raw emotions and connections. However, I knew nothing about light or composition and struggled to figure out why I liked some images but not others. Today, I pick up my camera far less but have more images that I love because I try to be more intentional when I do pick it up. In this post, I’ll share six tips on shooting documentary with intention!

Rules of Documentary

First, let’s do a quick run through of the rules of documentary photography. Ultimately documentary photography is about an authentic representation of the scene you encounter, without the photographer changing or directing the scene. I shoot a blend of lifestyle and documentary, but when I classify an image as pure documentary, it must adhere to specific rules.

If you submit your images to documentary photography contests, these are usually the guidelines laid out:

• No directing your subject. You can’t tell your subject to smile, look in a specific direction, point somewhere, “do that again,” etc. You let your subjects interact naturally, without interference. 
• No setting the scene. Often, when I shoot lifestyle, I will push clutter out of the way, move furniture, or clear off a table. Documentary shooting means embracing the scene as you encounter it, messes and all. 
• No removing pixels in post-production. While you can adjust exposure, white balance, dodge and burn, you can’t remove a light switch or cords. You can’t change the color of someone’s shirt or remove logos from clothing.

While in documentary photography, you don’t direct the subject or the general scene, by being intentional about shooting, you still have a lot of control over the final image. 

Shoot more, but do it less often

I no longer shoot every moment all day long, but I wait for interesting moments. 

There are reasons to capture the mundane, the everyday. These images can be beautiful memories. Over the years, I have literally hundreds of photos of my oldest child (now 7) reading as that is something he has loved since birth. But I don’t need to capture it every single day. Now, I will choose to capture that moment when he’s reading in beautiful lighting, or when he’s doing something crazy like lying down reading literally in the middle of the stairs with his stuffed dog. 

Playing in the backyard is a daily occurrence around here and I could have endless shots of my kids kicking soccer balls around or playing catch with a football. I often choose to leave my camera inside and only pull it out when I anticipate something different will happen. When we got a dusting of snow, for example, my older boys pulled out hockey sticks and a ball to play “ice” hockey. Or when they started bringing out cups from the kitchen and scrap wood from the tool shed, I knew that something out of the ordinary was happening. Or when my daughter started yelling for help from the top of the playhouse, I knew I would be able to catch a good moment of her big brothers coming to her rescue.

 

In these moments, I shoot more in anticipation of capturing a great moment and memory. Because I don’t have my camera out constantly, my kids are also more tolerant and don’t get frustrated. 

Shoot through the moment

Related to the above tip, if you shoot through what you think the moment is, you can often be rewarded by a surprising bonus moment. Sometimes, my favorite images are not the ones I thought I would capture. If I had put down my camera the second I thought I had gotten the moment, I would miss something unexpected. Other times, the moment is unchanged, but I’m able to catch a better expression. So even though shooting through the moment doesn’t always yield results, there’s really no harm in taking a few extra shots.

In the image above, my older boys were happily pushing the cart together and their little sister was enjoying the attention. I thought I had captured the moment by continuously running a couple aisles ahead and waiting for them to pass by. On my third go round of the image, my oldest decided he wanted to reverse direction and my middle son wasn’t having it. By shooting through the moment, I got an even better moment of my boys fighting over the cart and my daughter still enjoying herself. 

Anticipate the moment

I love the moment above all else and while sometimes I find myself chasing after the action out of necessity, oftentimes my stronger images occur when I anticipate it ahead of time. Chasing after the moment sometimes results in disappointing shots because my settings aren’t correct or the composition was off.

When I’m shooting in my own house, I know in advance how I’ll want to compose a shot even if there is no one else in the room at the moment. For example, I knew exactly how I wanted to compose the above shot of my eldest climbing onto the counter because I’d seen him do it before when I didn’t have my camera handy. The next morning, I grabbed my camera and figured out how I wanted to frame the shot, mostly to avoid the ridiculous mess on the counters, then I waited until I knew my son was going to be in the kitchen. By composing and adjusting my settings first, I was able to wait for the moment and focus solely on shooting when the time came. 

If you anticipate where the action will (eventually) happen, you will have your settings and composition the way you want and can just focus on capturing the moment when it happens. Anticipating the action is sometimes a guessing game – I predict my kids will come over to this part of the backyard because that’s the natural path they’ll take. Other times, it’s knowing my kids’ patterns and the behaviors I know they’ll repeat and waiting for that action at a time where there’s pretty light or nothing distracting in the way. 

Embrace the mess/chaos

Sometimes, the mess and chaos add to the story. Our living room was a full on disaster zone on Christmas Day because we laid out train tracks for my daughter that snaked across the room and my older kids suddenly forgot that wrapping paper should be put into the recycling bin. The mess was part of our Christmas story: the excitement of my children, the train tracks all over the living room, the interest in the gifts.

Similarly, the milk and cheerios spilled next to my two-year-old’s chair, the magnatiles strewn about the floor, or the colored pencils strewn around while my middle child does his art projects all add to the story I want to tell. In these instances, I intentionally capture as much of the mess as possible to show the chaos, highlight the moment, or add to the story. 

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Change your perspective 

Remember that one of the rules of documentary photography is no moving clutter and no removing of things in post-processing? Either you need to embrace the mess, be okay with a light switch in the background, or find ways to compose your image to avoid the unwanted items. 

One way to avoid the mess is to change your perspective. If I find the background to be too distracting or that the chaos doesn’t add to the story, I often will shoot from above and capture only the relevant action. Other times I will get down lower to the ground and use tables or cabinets to block out the mess on the surfaces of tables and counters.

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Changing your perspective not only helps clean up the mess around you, but it also helps you tell the story in a different way. I love shooting the same scene from at least four or five different angles. Sometimes, these end up as a series to tell the whole story from different perspectives. Other times, I keep only one image from the perspective I liked best. 

Microcompose

Microcomposing, making very subtle shifts with your position, can make a world of difference in documentary photography. Microcomposing can help avoid merging of subjects, allowing each subject his or her own space. It can also be used to hide electrical outlets or items you don’t want in the frame. When you’re shooting, notice whether anything is merging with your subject(s). Are multiple people overlapping? Are there objects like tree branches, light switches, lamp posts, or other background items sticking out of your subject? If so, very subtle shifts of your angle and camera can often resolve these photo merges, even when you keep the same perspective. Allowing subjects to have their own space makes it easier for the viewer to understand the story without unnecessary distractions.

In the image above, I took several frames. In some, I changed my positioning ever so slightly so that my kids’ heads were blocking out my husband or the angle I chose eliminated him. I ended up liking this one where you can just see a bit of his face between my kids as they were watching the iPad. I had to be careful though because just the slightest movement to the left or right meant that he merged with my kids. 

Being intentional about shooting documentary images, including choosing when to shoot and how to compose your frame, can make a huge difference in the strength of your final image.

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