Behind the picture: technical description (Mar. 7/14)

Niclas Hammarstrom photo
A technical breakdown of this picture reveals courage in both the photographer and subject.

Behind the boy named Aladdin is a washed-out grey war landscape where the buildings are blasted away and a dusty road leads away from the subject, who holds spent bullet casings. The boy wears a faded brown sweater with a checker pattern. The squares contain an X within them. Aladdin's hands are dirty, so is his face, and his hair dishevelled as he looks straight into Niclas Hammarstrom's camera on a January day in the Middle East.

Over the years, I have been told many different things about what constitutes a good news photo. At the top of my list is clarity. A photo needs to convey a story. Here, Hammarstrom presents us a story of one of the civil war's byproducts -- starving, emancipated children who search out used ammunition shells presumably to sell for food. I often hear criticisms that this kind of photo exploits the subject, and treats people like animals in a zoo. This photo does nothing of the sort. This photo conveys the tragic story of the Syrian people by allowing the subject to look in the face of the camera. Maybe for the boy, it was an act of defiance -- his way to flip the bird to his oppressors. 

Hammarstrom had to be close to the boy to get the shot. Using a 50 millimetre lens requires the photojournalist interact with their subject. It's hard to say what the photographer said or did in that particular moment, but whatever it was, it evoked a response in Aladdin that is immediate and unavoidable. Of course no flash was used, which is common in photojournalism, because after all, it's not fashion photography. But also, it looks as if it's shady and the photo was taken at 3:30 p.m., so with no shadows, if Hammarstrom even thought about it at all, he probably thought there was no reason to use a flash. Full camera data is available on Flickr, and it provides a comprehensive look at how the shot materialized in all aspects of its production.

The technical aspects of the photo are as follows:

Model: Canon Canon EOS-1D X
Date-Time: January 14, 2013, 3:30 p.m. PDT
Shutter Speed: 1/160 sec
Exposure: Manual
f-stop: 5.6
ISO: 400
Lens: 50 mm

What is photo gazetteer?

The story behind the photograph is just as important as the photograph itself. This is a blog that will look at the stories behind the photographs shaping our world, everything from the small and mundane, to the big and spectacular. Feel free to comment on photos and share your own.

This blog is managed by designer and journalism student John King