Photo Ethnography
Design Anthropology
Definition
Photo ethnography has long been a staple in design anthropology and has lead to many great cover shots in magazines, contributing to it’s widespread popularity.
“A whole view is the product of a breadth of samples that allows us to comprehend the whole through systematic analysis of those carefully selected parts”
— Collier & Collier Visual Anthropology
Procedure
Preparation
While it is true, the best camera is the one you have on you, make sure that you know how to use said camera. Ideally have one that can shoot in raw, which many smart phones can do nowadays.
Familiarize yourself with some sort of photo editing software, such as Lightroom.
Make sure that your camera has battery and that you have all other supplies such as a tripod and SD cards.
Make a plan of what you are going to focus on shooting.
In person
One of the most important things about photo ethnography is that the people you are taking pictures of know that you are taking pictures. Normally if you are using a camera that looks like a camera then it is safe to say people know what is going on, but be careful when using a phone camera because people could think you are trying to be sneaky or they may not have the opportunity to let you know they do not want to be photographed.
Furthermore if you are in a private area make sure that you get permission to use a photograph if there are peoples faces in it.
Then let your imagination run free and shoot whatever you want. Whatever seems like it might capture an interaction or meaningful moment. Pay close attention to how people use artifacts and how those artifacts influence their behavior and try to capture it.
Analysis
Start by dumping all of your shots into an editor and just go through and throw out all of the bad ones.
Then find the ones that really show the interactions you wanted to capture and clean them up. Put all of your cleaned shots in an album and flip through them a few times.
Lastly choose the pictures that tell a story and try and figure out what that story is and how it can be worked into your design system.
Use Case
While researching how people share culture through food my team decided to go around an area called 4th street and take some photos to better understand how culture and food interact. We then got food and found a particularly interesting menu.
Strengths
Photo ethnography can be very powerful because photos are easy to share and are emotionally impactful. After all, a picture is worth a thousand words.
Weaknesses
Photos can be misinterpreted, especially when they are not properly contextualized.
Photos can only capture so much.
