DFM Guideline: Visual research

The collection of photographs and short video clips is an integral part of the research process. By collecting images of everyday activities related to dried fish processing, storage, sale, and consumption, we will be able to conduct a comparative analysis of dried fish value chains that builds on concrete evidence. Such documentation is difficult to capture consistently through interviews and fieldnotes, particularly when involving many fieldworkers across multiple sites.

Please refer to the relevant section in the ethics handbook for information on consent requirements.

What should we aim to document visually?

Try to capture the diversity and scope of activities and resources in each setting.

❏  The people who are present in this setting

❏  The various activities that are happening in this setting

❏  Stages in an economic process (e.g., each stage in cutting and drying a fish)

❏  The different roles in an activity or process (e.g., in processing fish: moving tubs of fish, cleaning fish, supervising workers, etc.)

❏  The material input resources (e.g., salt, raw fish)

❏  Tools and equipment

❏  The output products

❏  The scope of activities, resources, and products in this setting

❏  …

Making photographs usable

Unlike text, images need to be catalogued in order to be searchable by others.

The easiest way to add metadata to a bulk set of images is to use a spreadsheet, since you can easily copy information between fields without having to retype it.

If you are using Windows, hold down the SHIFT key and select multiple images in a directory listing. Then hold down SHIFT and right-click to get some advanced options. Select “Copy as path”, as shown in the screenshot below.

The result will be a list of filenames that you can paste into a spreadsheet, like the following:

While there are different standards available, the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative is the most widely adopted and offers users the greatest flexibility.

Consult the DCMI element descriptions (http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/) for standard descriptions.

The following fields are the most essential for our purposes.

Term	Information to provide
Identifier	The filename.
Title	A title for the photograph.
Subject	A list of keywords or “codes” that describe the photograph.
Description	[OPTIONAL] A summary description of the image and its context.
Creator	Name of the photographer / researcher.
Date	Date of the photograph.
Coverage	Location where the photograph was taken.