Photography Tip .2: Tell a Story

A picture is said to be worth a thousand words. True, but that’s only part of it. The best photos can actually tell a thousand stories.

Broken Wings

Visual Story Telling

It might sounds funny at first: how can a still picture tell a story? A story should have a beginning, an ending, and a sequence of event in between. How can you capture all that in a single photo? Well, you can’t. But this doesn’t mean that a photo cannot tell a story, or even better: stories.

Look at this diagram for example. Do you see the floating white border-less triangle? You see it even though it is not really there. This optical illusion is designed to trigger you brain to complete the picture (even change it). So your brain “sees” in this graphic something which technically doesn’t exists in it.

Photos can tell stories in a similar manner. It’s not that the photo physically captures an entire story. Instead, the photo captures a single frame which triggers the viewer’s mind to create the story around it. And that’s why a good photo can tell many stories: the story lives in the mind of the viewer, and each viewer can see a different story “going through” the same picture.

Think of a story as a line — a collection of still photos. Your photo is a single frame — a single point on that line. There are infinite stories that can go through that point, just like an infinite number of lines can go through a single point in space. But not every single point drawn on a paper triggers the viewer to sketch a line through it. In the same manner not every photo triggers the mind of the viewer to create a story.

What is a “Story”

So what is it that makes a photograph tell a story? If you read my previous article Rule #1 - There are no Rules you can probably see it coming: right, there are really no rules for that. Except maybe one: if you don’t see a story in your photo, no one else will either.

The notion of a “Story” can be stretched as much as you want (or can). In literature there are many ways to tell a story. A story in literature is most commonly associated with a novel, or a short story. But a poem also tells a story. A poem is often less straight forward, but it can tell a story as good as a thick novel. Similarly, a photo can tell a pretty straight forward story, but it can also be more vague, or abstract. An abstract visual work is of course more open to interpretation and less obvious, but that’s what makes it (sometimes) even more intriguing.

Remaining of an Endless Dream

Elements of a Story

A visual story is affected not only by what you capture, but also by how you capture it. Composition, color, framing, focus, and any other aspect you can think of (whether it is done in-camera or using post-processing) can affect the story. As you can see in the examples in this page, sometimes even the title alter the story. Each such aspect can trigger different stories in the mind of the viewer. None of these aspects is the goal. None of them can do the work without a good visual to begin with. They are all tools in the toolbox of the visual storyteller — tools that can be used to enhance the experience of the viewer, just like metaphors, rhythm, and wording are all tools used by writers and poets to enhance a written story.

It is of course important to use the tools you have in your possession properly. Over-doing it will draw more attention to the tools than to the story. This does not mean that you cannot use tools to an extreme. You don’t have to keep it all “natural”. The key is to use a tool only when (and to the extent) it contributes to the story you are trying to tell. As you remember, the only way to “know” which tools to use and to what extent, is… to feel it.

The Devil's Waiting Room

The Viewer and You

A good story can be read at more than one level. A good story will say different things to different people. A visual story is no different. Don’t expect everyone to see in your photo what you see in it. Each viewer has a different mind, different feelings, and different life experience. This entire “luggage” affects the way the viewer “reads” the story.

That’s why I often refuse telling people “what I was thinking of” when creating a photo. I find this question meaningless. If the viewer doesn’t feel anything, nothing I say in response to this question will make a difference. On the other hand, if the photo touched the viewer, and maybe even interacted with some deep feeling or strong experience, anything I say will just reduce this experience — nothing I say will match that.

Consider it a natural evolution of the story. First, something in the real world triggers you to think, imagine, associate, and feel. These are the raw materials of your creation. But your creation is not the last stop. For the viewer, your creation is just another visual experience that together with other experiences might trigger her for feel, think, imagine, and maybe… create a story of her own. That’s the food chain of thoughts. That’s what makes it so beautiful.

***

When a photo tells a story, it interacts with the mind of its viewer. The viewer is not passively viewing it. The beauty of such an interaction is that it changes something in viewer’s mind, even if only for a brief moment. And sometimes, the impact stays with the viewer for a longer time. In rare cases, it stays with her forever.

Regret

– Lidor Wyssocky