Documentary Photography

To begin this project we were given an article about a documentary photographer, a photographer who's goal was to document things by taking photos. When reading these articles the goal was to pull out major ideas and take aways from what documentary photography is about, along with ways that make it special. One major thing that I took away from these articles was that for documentary photography to have being an be authentic the photographer must be invisible and totally emerged in what they are taking photos of. So I interrupted this project as were we had to take photos that document something that we has the photographer are totally engaged in and something that is a part of our life.

So for this project I chose to take photos of the barn and of horses, I chose this because horses are a huge part of my life and there is a lot that goes on in the horse world that not everyone is aware of. I went to the barn that night around 8 to take photos and to my luck the farrier Mark was there to put my horses shoe back on. So with his consent I documented the process of him putting a shoe back into the foot. This was a really interesting experience because all thought I know a lot about horses and the process of shoeing them it was interesting to sit down with Mark and have him explain the more complex side of shoeing horses. That made this project not only about taking pictures but also about learning more about what I was taking photos of.

Overall I really enjoyed this project because I got to learn more about taking photos as I had to deal with the weird lighting in the barn, and also not having the flash go off so my horse wouldn't freak out as she is a wimp. I thought this project was important because it helped show the importance of being infested in the photos that we take as photographers. To someone else these photos may look like random pictures of a dude and a horse but to me they have meaning and help explain the story of my life.