Safety first, and at a strike site the specific dangers are unexploded ordnance, secondary strikes on responders, structural collapse and fire. Unexploded submunitions do not look like bombs; they look like small objects on the ground. Do not touch, do not move, mark the location and tell the authorities.
What to record, and roughly in this order:
- Where you are, provably. A GPS reading, and separately a photograph that includes a recognisable fixed landmark — a street sign, a building number, a distinctive skyline. Metadata can be stripped or doubted; a landmark in the frame cannot.
- When. The time on your device, and if possible something in shot that independently fixes it: a clock, a newspaper, the position of the sun and shadows.
- The wider scene before the detail. Walk the site with continuous video before taking stills. A continuous unedited walk-through is much harder to dispute than a set of separate photographs.
- The impact point — the crater or the point of entry — with a scale object beside it. A ruler if you have one, a common object of known size if you do not.
- The direction of travel. Crater shape, spray pattern, damage on surrounding walls and the direction of fragmentation all indicate where the munition came from. Photograph the pattern rather than interpreting it.
- Remnants. Fragments, tail sections, markings, serial numbers. Do not pick anything up. Photograph in place, with a scale, from several angles, including any lettering or numbering.
- What was there. The nature of the building and its use. Signage, entrances, a hospital or school sign, playground equipment, shop fronts, the presence or absence of military vehicles or positions. This is what later distinguishes a lawful target from an unlawful one, and it is the part most often not photographed.
- The people. Casualties only with the dignity the protocols require and with consent where consent is possible. Witnesses' accounts, recorded separately, with the safety rules of the previous lesson.
Do not tidy, move, or reconstruct. Do not stage a photograph. A single arranged image discredits everything else in the same file.
Sources. OHCHR, Berkeley Protocol on Digital Open Source Investigations, https://www.ohchr.org/ ; OHCHR, Minnesota Protocol (site and scene documentation), https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/Documents/Publications/MinnesotaProtocol.pdf ; Eurojust and Genocide Network, Documenting international crimes and human rights violations.