DRA encourages members deployed on operations to take photos of the experience. Members are advised to send photos to comms@disasterreliefaus.org for official vetting and application of our watermark for uploading to our official Flickr.
Yes
Here are some guidelines of how you can help build up our photo library and best represent our organisation.
- Action – members work hard, we want to celebrate hard yakka, be gritty, be sweaty be proud
- Engagement – talking and interacting with the people we help and engaging with our visiting partner organisations
- Skilled work – celebrate our members demonstrating all the various roles required to get the work done
No
Our key stakeholders and media have access to our official photos so we always try to keep the library focused on presenting our members at their best. Here is what we won’t vet for the official library.
- Disaster scenes or objects – some of the scenes of destruction our members witness on operation are very powerful and emotive. It’s hard not to record this on your device, but we can’t display scenes of destruction with no context in our official comms as it can be perceived as insensitive.
- Relaxing or standing inactive – members work hard and deserve a break to drink some water, have a snack and chat, but we don’t want to have these mixed in with our official photos. The aim is to show our members in action!
- Alcohol – again members deserve a drink at the end of the day if they want to but we won’t include these photos in our official gallery
- Selfies – it’s a skill to take a good selfie but often they come across as too casual, these will generally not pass muster
- Broad smiles – for sensitivity sake we prefer photos to reflect our members stoic determination to help the community. This is a hard one, we use our best judgement to present photos displaying our sincerity, we will not vet photos that appear too informal.
If you’ve taken a photo of something that might provide additional context for a community story/member reflection, tell your PRO and they can take note and include it in their daily sitrep.
Some other helpful tips:
- always landscape where possible
- rule of thirds make for great shots
- think about where the light is coming from to avoid dark shadows and glare