Characteristics of documentary photography characters

Documentary photography is a group of pictures with political, economic, cultural, social and historical significance that photographers have long paid attention to and conducted in-depth investigation and interview on the subject matter.

The quality of documentary photography lies in the challenge of choosing the theme, the difficulty of shooting, the expression technique, the social influence after reporting and what lifestyle people have changed.

Documentary photography should not only be unique in photography form, technique and expression, but also be a relatively important social theme. After documentary photography reaches a certain level in operation, it depends on the social significance, historical significance, political significance, cultural significance and economic significance of the subject matter you shoot, as well as the degree of revealing the subject matter. In recent years (the second edition of this book in February 2007-typist's note), the better documentary photography works in China include Project Hope by Jie Hailong, Xihaigu by Wang Zheng, Rural Catholicism by Yang Yankang, Mental Hospital by Yuan Dongping, Mike by Hou Dengke, Liukeng by Zhang Xinmin and Yellow River Beach by Huang Liping.

When editing a set of documentary photographs, the following questions should be considered:

Each photo has a good visual effect when viewed alone. It can stand alone or appear on a page of a book independently.

The visual expression in the works should be diverse, and there should be different visual compositions between photos.

The visual content in the photo should take care of all aspects of this event. Don't repeat the visual information of each photo. Different photos should be different information in the reported events.