Photographs from the Field

This article from LEISA Magazine, Vol. 22.1, describes how photos from the field have been used for many different purposes with farmers, project partners and colleagues. The author describes using photos to stimulate conversation rapidly on visits to unfamiliar projects, to focus questions in new situations, and to show groups how they work together during facilitated activities and in interviews. The critical points of photography in the field, as detailed here, are skill and practice, awareness of cultural and social sensitivities, and subtlety. The author observes that when multiple cameras are present at an event or meeting, a photo camera could be handed over to one of the farmers to document the activities. Photos are also useful to show colleagues who are not in the field both as information for them and because they may see things that the photographer didn't notice.


In using photos with farmers, the author presents this list of possible results:

• Stimulate pride - validating farming innovations through making a visual record of them.
• Enhance creative thinking - in the article's example, women presented the advantages and disadvantages of seed drying tables, stimulating the thinking of other women, and then showed photos of their tables. As a result 60 - 70 percent made their own tables suited to their own purposes.
• Encourage women-to-women networks - though, not explored by the author, a participant in the seed drying project claimed that, with a photo to carry with her, she could persuade more women in other villages to replicate the project.
• Encourage ownership in participatory research - in another example: "...staff took regular photos of farmers at their "Insecticide" and "No insecticide" plots of their field. They were glued into the farmers’ field note books to visualise differences in crop performance and to stimulate ownership of the trials."

In conclusion, the author recommends assigning part of the monitoring and evalutation budget of projects to providing a basic digital camera along with a training on how to take good photos, file them, and use them as a learning tool, as well as an addition to reports.