What are the "rules" of photographic story-telling?

I

Iron Flatline

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I am wondering about what some of the traditional guidelines are to telling a story photographically. As some of you know I've been on some recent trips, and even though I like my images I'm finding it hard to "tell a story." In part, I'm missing key shots, and now I find myself wondering what the "rules" are.

I remember reading that in the hey-day of magazine coverage (late 1960s through the late 1980s) a typical editor would seek an average of six shots to cover a story. Exotic travel magazines like National Geographic used 12 to 15 images.

Are there guidelines? Are there "templates"? Are there rules? What is the outline for a photo-reportage?

I would love to know them, in part to acquire the discipline of "getting the shot." I find myself overwhelmed by a location and the subjects within it sometimes, and am disappointed when I get back home, only to find I never shot the door, or the stage, or something else that's actually vital to the story.
 
Actually you will find them in a probably unexpected place. Scriptwriting and story boarding for television. Both skills require the writer to specifically detail using stills the story that will be produced in motion using film or video. Television production also deals with shooting to create drama and effect in storytelling. Establishing scenes, transitional scenes, camera angles and their effect, etc., everything in this area can easily be applied to still photography and story telling.

skieur
 
Actually you will find them in a probably unexpected place. Scriptwriting and story boarding for television. Both skills require the writer to specifically detail using stills the story that will be produced in motion using film or video. Television production also deals with shooting to create drama and effect in storytelling. Establishing scenes, transitional scenes, camera angles and their effect, etc., everything in this area can easily be applied to still photography and story telling.

skieur

Exactly. As a part-time writer, I can say the biggest thing to remember when telling a story is to have a beginning, a middle and an end. That goes for picture storytelling as well.

I met a casting director for the movie "Splash" once when I was acting in highschool. He passed along some advice Ron Howard (supposedly) passed along to him. He said that they key to a really good scene is to "get in" after the action has already started, and "get out" before it's over.

So let's say the story is a woman eating icecream and dropping the icecream, only to lick it up off the ground (no idea where that came from, just popped into my head).

We don't need to see the woman get up, go to the park, and actually purchase the icecream. We can start the scene when she is eating the icecream. Then we can move on to the climax, the moment right before the action, and then the we see the action, and finally the resolution.

If you were photographing this event, I would say this would suffice:

1. The woman walking away from the ice cream stand.
2. The woman eating the icecream, greedily.
3. The woman eating so much she doesn't see the top scoop leaning to the left.
4. Closeup on the top scoop, as it's about to fall.
5. PLOP! The scoop has landed on the ground.
6. A reaction look from the woman, dismay.
7. Now she's on all fours, eating the icecream.

We don't need to see the ending of the scene, her finishing the icecream, we got the gist of the (really bad) story from those 6 shots.

Use that when setting the tone of your photography, or at least when presenting the shots you want to use to tell the story.
 
I can see how the storyboarding technique would work for a preconceived, or designed story, but what about a more spontaneous photojournalistic story? What if you're sent out to find a story rather than visually represent a written story?

Audio slide shows are becoming very popular on the web. Most I see are obviously constructed as a story in editing and held together by the sound track rather than a chronological sequence of events.

As a photojournalist I guess it depends from which side you're telling the story.

I'm not entirely sure what sort of story Iron Flatline is trying to tell, but hazzard a guess that it's some sort of travel story. Road trips work very well as photo stories with an obvious start and end. I recorded a journey from the heart of traditional Andalucia in a mountain village and simply worked my way down to the coast recording everything as I went. The edited sequence of photographs are displayed in chronological order and show the slow degradation of old values as they're replaced by a disposable culture with a very temporary foresight. On that level photographic story telling is very easy.

Many different approaches for different stories and different aims.


An Andalucian Road Trip: http://www.thelostphotographer.co.uk/website/gracias/index.htm

The navigation isn't obvious. You need to click on the negative image to see the photograph as intended. I'd be interested to know how many people see the set of photographs as telling a story, or just a random set of photographs.
 
The first thing that came into my mind was The Photo Essay: Paul Fusco and Will McBride by Tom Moran. I haven't read it since it was published back in '74, but I do remember it as being a useful book at a time when I was starting to look at how to approach essays, not necessarily stories, in both still and motion pictures. That's one of the decisions. Are you doing a story, or an essay?

Just looking at photo stories and essays, whether overt essays or not (eg contrast Hamish Fulton's journey books with a Nat Geo article on an expedition), is a good thing to do.

As TheLostPhotographer says, it depends a lot on which story you are telling. Is it the story outside you - and if so, how much do you already know? How much preparation have you done?

Is it the story of your experience, your actions?

There are a few other things I'm trying to say, but not managing to get into a concise, written form. Something about it being an approach, a mindset. A search for evidence. I think that's it. It's not about pretty pictures, it's about evidence. Is this a piece of evidence?

Best,
Helen
 
I can see how the storyboarding technique would work for a preconceived, or designed story, but what about a more spontaneous photojournalistic story? What if you're sent out to find a story rather than visually represent a written story?.

I was not suggesting using a story board. The "how to" part and the skills are the same. Assembling stills for a storyboard in quite similar to creating a visual story. Learn storyboarding and apply it to creating a photo story.

skieur
 
I was not suggesting using a story board....Learn storyboarding and apply it to creating a photo story.

skieur


OK. I understand what you mean now.

Thinking more in terms of the 60's and 80's magazines referred to in the opening post; I wonder how often feature writers and photographers worked together to create the story, or whether the words were simply handed over to the photographer for illustration.

A couple of years ago I took a Federico Garcia Lorca poem (poetry that very much tells a story) and took photographs to illustrate each verse. I guess that is pretty much applying the 'story board' theory to a set of stills photographs?

On an even more basic level, a few weeks ago I met someone in a bar who happened to be a photographer/artist. After a few drinks together we decided to document a very merry night in the fashion of a 70's style 'photo love' essay along the theme of the dangers of drinking with strangers in strange cities. All light hearted jokey stuff, but the end results are definitely a story that happened spontaneously without any planning whatsoever. Crap photographs (we had both drunk far to much), but great fun and great souvenirs of a fun night out. Another example of applying the story board theory in retrospect rather than planning in advance?

I guess there are many ways of approaching the production depending on many different aspects and goals.

Also worth appreciating that the features we see in National Geographic are photographs accompanied by extremely good writing. The pictures alone may not even tell a story.
 
Not being proficient in either storytelling or photography, I can't say much other then I like the ideas and concepts of what is being said. I would also like to point out out the common strategy of knowing the rules, then bending or breaking the rules to enhance what you are doing.

Take a look at photo.net's travel section and see what's others have done. "Travels with Samantha" is a personal fav.

-Fitz
 
I was not suggesting using a story board. The "how to" part and the skills are the same. Assembling stills for a storyboard in quite similar to creating a visual story. Learn storyboarding and apply it to creating a photo story.
Right, but I can't storyboard if I'm missing shots. In movies, we used to do Establishing Shot -> Two Shot -> Close-Up... I wouldn't propose that for an image sequence, that would be boring.

I'm finding that I'm irked by my inability to show a wide shot of the market place as a quasi Establishing shot. I've got lots of stands and people within them, but none of the surrounding area. Does that just bother me? I guess landscape photographers are less concerned with such issues, but I primarily shoot people... and then I can't establish context. At least not with images, I can describe it no problem.

Does that matter? Do I even need a context shot, or do most people just want to see people? Am I spinning myself out over something that only matters to me?
 
OK, why can't you get an establishing shot of a market place? I have got permission to go up on roofs to get aerial shots or to use cat walks etc. Wide angle lenses as you know are very flexible. Even a shot of a sign that establishes the scene might fit.

skieur
 
Of course I can get an establishing shot of the market. It was supposed to be an example. I was wondering if there are any "rules" to telling a photo story, meaning does it even typically require an establishing shot.

Thanks everyone else also, this is helpful. I know storyboarding and scripting, I was a film student. This is familiar to me, that's why I'm probably too worried about having every shot.
 
I think that the general technique isn't really important (establishing shot -> small details), I just think that each image needs to be related to eachother and visually distinguishable in the sense that a viewer can read them and connect the dots.

For example, If you went and shot Chernobyl, use the same film for all your images (visually distinguishable), and have images that show the abandoned plants with dead vegetation along with other images of radiation victims (connecting the dots), it doesn't matter what order they're in, as long as they're in the same series.

The images in themselves tell the story of the Chernobyl meltdown. I don't remember the story, but I remember the images from an issue of National Geographic that covered just that.
 
As a former photo journalist ... and skimming through these posts ... a few remarks:

1) Photo journalism is similar to written journalism ... often when writing one writes to create an image while with photography one shoots to tell a story.

2) In both cases one does not go blindly shooting and writing a story ... developing the story in real time as it unfolds.

Just as the reporter will do research on the subject, making notes, following leads, then when he/she is comfortable that they have sufficient facts they write the story. So too the photog. As the reporter will discard facts and leads which at the time seemed important but later find to have little impact on the story ... the photog will discard some images in favor of others which in the end better reflect and document the story.

3) In the case of the OP it seems that you are winging it ... lacking the backup research of the journalist. On fast breaking news a photo journalist is trained to be able to quickly ascertain the situation ... then previsualize the image(s) required to tell the story ... then do whatever is required to get the previsualized shot(s), (position, lens, settings, et al).

On feature type stories the photog will shoot images which reflect the written word.

Okay ... I just re-skimmed and this is your answer...

4) You gotta have context ... photos of faces, while very interesting ... won't tell the story without context. Photo journalism needs to convey/tell the five W's - Who, What, Where, When and Why. Without the W's you don't have a journalistic story.

Gary
 

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