The Tools and Methods Behind a Long-Form Photo Essay

Starting with a walk, not a shot list

Every photo essay we make begins on foot. Before anyone raises a camera in earnest, our photographers spend time in the place the story is about, whether that is a harbour market, a church hall supper or a stretch of main street that is changing hands. We carry a small notebook and a single camera body, and we mostly watch. The aim is to learn where people actually gather, which hours are busy, and who is willing to be photographed.

This slow start shapes everything that follows. A shot list written in an office tends to produce pictures of what we already expected. A first walk tells us what the place is really like in mid autumn, when the light comes in low and golden across brick and water, and when the streets empty earlier than visitors assume.

We usually make two or three of these preliminary visits. Some of them produce no usable frames at all, and that is fine. What we leave with is a rough map of the story, a handful of names, and a sense of what to ask permission for.

• A notebook and one camera body for the first visit
• Notes on light, hours and gathering spots
• Names of people willing to take part

Cameras and lenses we keep in the bag

Our kit is modest on purpose. Most essays are shot with two camera bodies and three prime lenses, a wide one for rooms and streets, a standard one for most people pictures, and a short telephoto for moments we should not walk up to. Fixed lenses make us move our feet, and they keep us honest about distance. A subject who can see us coming tends to relax sooner than one being watched from across a square.

We prefer natural light wherever it exists. A small reflector and a spare battery are about as far as the lighting goes. Flash flattens kitchens and community halls, and it announces the photographer to everyone in the room.

Gear is only a means here. Margaret Doyle often says that the best camera for an essay is the one people stop noticing after twenty minutes. We choose equipment that is quiet, light enough to carry all day, and simple enough that our attention stays on the person in front of us.

Consent, conversation and the notebook

Photographs of people in their own homes and workplaces depend on trust, so the method includes talking before shooting. We explain what the essay is for, where it will appear and how long it will stay online. We ask whether there are rooms, relatives or moments that are off limits, and we write the answers down.

The notebook does more work than the camera in these exchanges. It holds the correct spelling of a name, the story behind an object on a shelf, and the detail someone mentions once and never repeats. Those notes become the raw material for captions later.

When someone changes their mind, we remove the pictures. This has happened rarely, but it is part of the method rather than an exception to it. A community will let us return only if it knows we mean what we said the first time, and that matters more to us than any single frame.

• Purpose and publication explained in plain words
• Boundaries recorded in writing
• Pictures removed on request

Editing: from several thousand frames to a dozen

A single essay can produce several thousand frames, and most of them will never run. Claire Beaulieu does the first pass on a large screen, flagging anything sharp, honest and not obviously repeated. A second pass is done on paper, with small prints laid across a table so the images can be moved around by hand.

Sequencing is where the essay becomes a story rather than a gallery. We look for a quiet opening picture, a few wider scenes that show the setting, close portraits that carry feeling, and a final image that does not try to wrap everything up. Variety of distance and of light keeps the reader moving.

We also remove pictures we love. A technically strong frame that repeats an idea already made by a better one weakens the whole piece. Cutting is slow and sometimes disagreeable, but the essays are better for it, and readers rarely miss what they never saw.

Writing captions and the introduction

Captions are written from the notebook, not from memory. Each one names what is in the picture, where it was taken and, where relevant, who gave permission. We avoid captions that tell the reader how to feel. If a woman is mending a net, the caption says so and perhaps adds how long she has done it, and the picture is left to carry the rest.

The written introduction runs a few hundred words. It sets out the place, the reason we went and what we saw over several visits. We keep it plain, in the first person where it helps, and we avoid sweeping claims about a town or a community as a whole.

Corrections are handled openly. If a reader or a subject points out an error in a name or a date, we fix it and note the change. A photo essay on a community should be something that community can read without wincing.

• Names, places and context in every caption
• Introduction kept to a few hundred words
• Errors corrected and noted

Layout, print proofs and what we deliver

Before an essay is published, we lay it out in the reading order we intend, then print a proof. Seeing the sequence on paper catches problems a screen hides, such as two similar pictures sitting side by side or a caption that runs longer than the image deserves. Pages are checked on a phone as well, because many of our readers will open them there.

Images are exported at sizes suited to the page, with descriptive alternative text written for each one so that readers using screen readers receive the story too. We keep originals and edit files organized by essay, so a subject can ask us for a copy of a portrait years later and we can find it.

For partners and community groups who commission an essay, the delivery is the finished piece, the captions and, when agreed, a set of selected prints or files. What it costs and what changes the price is set out on the Prices page.