Book Report: “It’s What I Do” by Lynsey Addario

 In the book “It’s What I Do” by Lynsey Addario we follow Lynsey, who is a photographer during some of the twenty-first-century war. One of my favourite moments from this book was when in March 2011, Lynsey was kidnapped in Libya while she was covering the fighting between the director Moammar Gadhafi's troops and rebel forces, why I found this interesting is because this is covered in multiple chapters and the final two chapters we figure out where Lynsey went while she was kidnapped. Another event that I found interesting is in chapter 9 titled The Most Dangerous Place in the World, Lysney and her partner were covering a war, and Lysney found out that her partner was pregnant, I found this to be interesting because Lynsey’s partner continued to help Lynsey with her work even though Lynsey wanted her to leave. How I would describe Lynsey compared to others is that she likes to get right in front to show us what is going on and to also show people's emotions, for instance, when she was taking a photo that had a lot of flags in the background I person's face in the pictures, but it was only focused on the flag so the person's face was all blurry creating an interesting picture. 

Another photo that I would use to describe her photojournalism technique is the photo that she took with a group in chapter four where multiple people are sitting down and one of them is lighting a friend's cigar. I found this photo interesting because it showed most of the faces but is mainly focused on the person and his friend and the flame was all blurred out. 

I can not personally relate to Lynsey's photos since it takes me a while to take pictures with many people around, but I appreciate her work. One thing I like about her photos is that she is not afraid to take pictures of groups and show emotion. I also appreciate her war photos because they show you exactly what is going on in her photos even though they take multiple days. 

One last thing I like about Lynsey's work is that even though she is worried about taking photos and getting told to not publish that photo, she will move on and continue to take pictures. 

I was able to learn a lot from this book, for instance, to never be shy about taking photos with a big group of people and getting their names, to make sure to show emotion, and to make sure that people can tell what is happening in the photo.

One of my favourite pictures from Lynsey is the one when she was able to get a picture with the army where they are rushing toward Lynsey trying to get to a helicopter to take their friend away. The reason why I like this photo is because it shows a lot of emotion. 

I would recommend this book to anyone interested in photojournalism and want to see what it is like.