Storytelling Photography Tips & Examples

5. Use Narrative Structures

Movies, novels, and everything else that involves storytelling has plots and so does storytelling photography. In the same way that movies are expected to have a cohesive, chronological narrative structure, photos are too, when you want to get them to tell stories.

For your photo essays, establish a clear narrative pattern and structure from your first photograph in the series to the last. Stories are a lot more engaging when there are illustrations to back them up, so ensure that your photo essays leave an impression on your audience by properly mastering the use of narrative techniques in your photographs.

6. Decide Which Method To Use

Storytelling photographers often have to decide whether a single shot is enough to capture all the elements of a scene (including the emotions), or if it’s better to take a series of images. It’s not an easy decision to make.

Deciding what type of story you want to tell can help make the decision easier. The two options are open stories and closed stories. When you get your photos to tell open stories, you leave room for your audience to interpret the photo in their own individual ways.

The way people interpret open stories depends on their unique experiences and emotions. On the other hand, closed stories leave no room for arbitrary interpretations. They are pretty straightforward and viewers will draw similar conclusions from them.

Sometimes, single images do not reveal the complete truth, because they are parts of a larger picture. In that sense, it’s impossible to get a single photo to reveal everything. Photo series, in contrast, let your viewers see the much broader picture, helping them progress through the scenes and connect the images into a complete storyline at the end.

A triptych or polyptych gives the creative and the viewers even more context to form their version of the story. One just one photo isn’t enough to illustrate the complete story, try using a short series such as triptych or polyptych layouts.

For those who haven’t come across the triptych term before. A triptych generally consists of three artworks or photos that are closely related or have contrasting themes.

6 – Pay Attention to Your Compositions

Drawing the viewer’s attention to the subject and crucial aspects inside your tale is the key to a successful photo story. Knowing exactly what information has to be in the frame and where to put it in the frame to guide the viewer’s eye to your subject is all part of the composition. It is required to use a variety of focal lengths. If you need to accentuate something or compress depth, use a telephoto lens, and use a wider focus if the setting or environment is important to the story.

There are numerous composition guidelines. Knowing these criteria will help you practice telling photo tales in the most effective way possible. The “Rule of Thirds” is perhaps the most widely utilized picture composition rule. Important subjects in your frame should be arranged along rule of thirds intersections or lines, according to this theory, as the human eye usually divides a scene into thirds.

7 – Use Colours Creatively

Having a solid knowledge of colour theory will help make your storytelling photographs more impactful and poignant. In our article about the role of natural light in photography, we included the complete lowdown on light colours and temperatures. That resource may be a good place to start if you’re unfamiliar with the relationship between light and colour in photography, and the types and examples of colour.

If you’re trying to project a warm feeling through your photos, it’s a smart idea to use warm colours or colours that are close to the red on the colour spectrum. Cool colours or colours that are close to blue on the colour spectrum give off calm vibes, adequate for calm contexts.

8 – Be Open to Learning From Others

Photographers need to grow and evolve constantly. As a storytelling photographer, it’s important for you to cultivate the habit of consciously seeking out opportunities to improve your craft. These opportunities can manifest in various forms, with the most common being from the works of other artists and photographers.

Don’t hesitate to give and receive constructive criticism wherever and whenever you can. Checking out the works of your peers can open up your mind to several opportunities which you may then explore.

9 – Focus on a Single Theme

Expanding on the other tip that advised against visual distractions, overloading your composition with a lot of different themes isn’t the way to go at all. When there are too many themes in your storytelling photograph it becomes confusing and difficult for your viewer to focus on a single message or story.

Instead of including too many motifs in your photograph, focus on a single theme. This will give your audience the opportunity to commit all their attention towards that direction and help them engage better with the story.

Blurring the background is a great way to get your audience focused on the part of the photo that you want to highlight while simultaneously creating dramatic and aesthetic effect.

Events provide the perfect opportunity to tell stories within the main story. All types of events such as weddings, Networking Events, Industry Summits, Corporate Parties and sporting events. All have the main theme and many moments to capture side stories.

Wedding Story Examples

If you’ve either been to a large wedding or photographed one you will have noticed how the bridesmaids huddle together, help each other with clothing, accessories and importantly support at this very emotional day. These are examples of a story within a story.

At weddings kids run around creating their own adventures. Sometimes these single photos capturing a single theme within the main narrative provides a wonderful look at the lives and experiences of people at a moment in time. The kids will grow up looking at these photos and with part imagination come up with their own narrative of the time. Think of them as episodes of a series.

Corporate Event Photography

In corporate events the same opportunity can present themselves. The Managing director meeting with a State Minister for example. This single picture will be shared the most in press releases and a single photo will say a lot to the people interested in the company or politics.

As an example, the Prime Minister of Australia meeting with the President of the United States Joe Biden. One photo tells many stories when they meet face to face.

We also often see a single photo of a celebrity at an event and there’s a full write up in an article dissecting every last minute detail.

Events are a treasure in finding single photos that can be used to create an impression on the viewer that does not need numerous photos or video to provoke deep thought or evoke an emotion.

Here, we’ll take all that we’ve learned so far about photography storytelling and lay them out in simple, actionable steps. These steps are practical, so they’re made for you to practice with them.

1. Make a Plan

Before you head out with your camera, you need to have a solid idea of what visual story you want to create and this involves answering a few questions. First and foremost, who’s going to be in your story?

Remember, the “who” does not have to be human beings. Next, understand what is happening, where it is happening, and when it is happening.

Finally, knowing why it is happening can also help your viewers understand the same thing too.

2. Prepare A Story Structure

If you’re shooting a photo series, you need to organize your photos in a coherent structure so that it tells a story in much the same way that movies do.

Since narrative is an important element of stories, and your aim is to get your photos to tell a story, it’s necessary to incorporate narrative into your photography storytelling. Coherent narrative (or plot) is broadly divided into introduction, main plot, and conclusion, and this is how you should structure your photographic story too.

Remember that it’s more impactful to use only a few of your best shots to create a logical progression of events rather than providing hundreds of shots of the same scene.

3. Think About Context

Context refers to how the images relate to each other and it provides the framework of the story and guides how the story is viewed and understood. When you’re creating your photography story, you should already have a solid idea of the context to frame it within, so that your photos do not come off as a series of unrelated photos.

While providing textual context at the beginning of the visual story is an option, it’s even better to make sure that your photos are enough to tell their own story.

4. Framing is Key

You can confuse your viewers by stuffing too many details into a photograph. To avoid this, frame your story into a sequence of events.

If you were planning to take a single shot, examine your scene and determine whether breaking it down into a photo series would be a better option. If you decide on the latter, shoot several specific shots that relate to each other and tell your story that way.

Final Words

Storytelling with photography is a way of taking and presenting photos that viewers can admire and connect with at the same time. Instead of receiving dispassionate appraisals, storytelling photography aims to trigger the emotion of the audience and make them want to explore the world weaved by the photograph.

If you’ve mastered the fundamentals of photography as a photographer, and can create visually appealing compositions, you may want to take the next step and learn how to make your photographs emotionally stimulating as well.

Reread this article a couple of times to absorb all the main objectives.

As we keep saying, however, don’t let anything take the place of constant practice. It’s one of the surest ways to improve your skills as a photographer.