Guardian Global Development / Discuss

The Guardian on Flickr    says:

We've just launched a new challenge on the site, please take a look there and below, and get involved!

Readers' voices development photo challenge: document your 2012

In 2011 we had fantastic pictures from readers on our Flickr group. Some of your messages and images went on to make great galleries on health, education and International Women's Day. We'd like you to choose something important in your life to document over the year, so that at the end of 2012 we can share your stories on the Global development site, through galleries of your pictures.

The project: You document a theme within your year. You can choose anything you want, which you think tells a story about how life is developing in your country. Here are some examples to get you thinking:

– your harvest
– the changes in the area you live, your city, or village
– your school year or training, or religious year
– your activism or campaigning - an election perhaps
– your business, job or job search
– your pregnancy or your children's year

We'd like you to tell us what you are doing at each point. Are crops growing when they should? How are the exams going? We'll need good captions for each photo to be able to tell your story. But as this is a long-term project, we can help you develop those if needed – what we want is for you to start taking pictures. There are futher guidelines below about what might make a good project.

Criteria: Unlike our other Flickr projects, this is only open to people resident in developing countries in 2012. There will be plenty of other global Flickr projects from us throughout the year, which will be open to anyone, anywhere. You may be a reader working somewhere relevant, you may live somewhere that is changing rapidly, you may prefer to get together with colleagues, friends or family to submit photos - we're just looking forward to seeing what you come up with.

Timing: We'd love to see the first photos submitted as soon as possible, and then ideally receive a few of your best photos as an update each month through 2012.

Submissions: If you are on Flickr, you can submit your photo to this group. If you are not on Flickr, you can email your photo to development@guardian.co.uk with the subject line 'Reader photo 2012' and we will add it to the Flickr group for you. Please add some information when you post or email your picture so we know who you are, where you're from and what's happening in your photo. As mentioned above, good captions are important.

Please note that by posting your pictures in this group, or sending them to us in response to this request, you agree to let us use them on our site and potentially in the newspaper (though copyright remains with you at all times, and you will be credited).

Guidelines for creating a good photo story

Some example galleries to see the sort of photos we use:
You can look at all our galleries here, and these are some good examples:
- How to document your changing city, or your business
- How to document farming - this introduces lots of people and elements of farming life
- How to name and quote people – this includes good quotes and person profiles
- How to document elections or activism
- How to document a pregnancy – this introduces lots of relevant people and places

1. How often to submit: Please choose a few of your best photos every month for us to choose from. If there's a reason to take them more or less regularly, because something interesting is happening, please do skip a month, or take them more often. Five to ten photos a month should be enough.

2. How to submit: Ideally please upload to Flickr, if you are not on Flickr, you can email your photo to development@guardian.co.uk with the subject line 'Reader photo 2012' and we will add it to the Flickr group for you.

3. Choosing what to photograph: Choose something that is easy for you to do, will change through the year and you're interested in. This might be your pregnancy, job search, church, election campaigning, growing season etc. Think about including a photo of everyone connected to this – family, friends, colleagues, teachers etc

4. Photographing a changing landscape or harvest: You might want to approach this by always taking a picture from the same shot, to show how it's changing over the year. For example a view like this

5. Photographing a personal theme: Something like documenting a pregnancy, or your child's year might be best told by showing different places and people each time – your home, office, health clinic, school etc, and husband, wife, mother, child, teacher, boss etc. A variety of relevant people and places introduced over the year would tell your story well.

6. Information to gather about each photo: Please tell us who and what's in your photo. Full names, locations and a description of what's happening in the image and why it's important, are really valuable to help get the story across. Think about the who, what, when, where, why and how when gathering information about each photo. Look for example at all the information we learn about Epiphanie in this gallery. Please send us as much information as you have, and we'll edit what we use on the site. If you're submitting a range of photos at once, feel free to just put all the information on one, no need to repeat it.

7. First person quotes: We want to hear the real first-person comments of those being photographed though, so please gather quotes for your photos where you can. Or if you're documenting a changing area or similar, then gathering quotes from locals about the changes would also be great.

8. Working with someone to take pictures: You may want to ask a colleague, family member or friend to take some of the pictures for you, so you can be in front of the camera. This might be the case also for people submitting images for their job, which is also fine. Please make sure in this case that you follow the guidelines in point 9.

9. Submitting as a charity or for your job: We expect some charities, businesses, or people who work in relevant areas to want to submit photos. We do want to hear the stories of real people but are happy for you to submit if you keep focused on this idea. What we're keen to see is the changes for the community, not the experience of the development worker. Please be aware not to include obvious branding in your images as this will make it difficult for us to use them. If your photos are used on the Guardian your organisation will be mentioned and linked to in the caption, and you and your employer will be fully credited for the image.

10. Questions? Please email development@guardian.co.uk with any questions and put 'Reader photo 2012' in the subject. We're very happy to help you with any part of this.
Posted at 5:31AM, 26 January 2012 PDT (permalink)