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Telling A Story With Pictures

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Many photographers will tell stories on their blogs, whether it is about a trip, party, their weekend, or family. Why not use your images to enhance your story telling skills?

Photography Tips | Learn how to take pictures that tell a story.

Tips For Telling A Story With Pictures

1. Shoot From Many Different Locations

You don’t want every single one of your images to be taken from the same location. You should be working up a sweat moving around your subject and capturing every possible angle you can think of to tell the story. You will be surprised how one angle may tell a bigger story than another angle.

Shoot from:

Above

Photography Tip: Take your pictures from different angles. This picture was taken from above the subject.

Below

Pictures taken from below the subject don't always look great, but sometimes - like in this picture - it is the perfect angle.

The Side

Not only is this picture taken from the side, it also captures the child's reflection in the window. Great use of angles and light to capture a cute moment.

Behind

"Smile at the camera!" is a great thing to call out to your photography subjects, but sometimes you can get an even better picture when they aren't paying attention. This shot from behind perfectly captures the moment of this little girl and her dog going for a walk.

In Front

It is great to take pictures from fun angles, but sometimes you just have to do a traditional picture from the front.

Through A Door Or Window

Remember that the rules of photography aren't set in stone. Sometimes a glare on the glass is the perfect way to the story you are writing with your picture - like this dog looking longing through the glass door waiting for his master to come home.

2. CAPTURE THE DETAILS

What is the story you are telling? Think about what little details you could capture to help tell the story. If you are talking about a recent trip to the farmers market, capture the fruit, prices, scale, and the vendors. When put together, all these little details tell a pretty powerful story!

To tell a story with your photos, pay attention to all the little details. What might not be good in most pictures, having someone's photo in the shot, is perfect for this picture, bringing home the fact it is a parade without having to capture the whole crowd.

Choose the right details to include in your image, and you won’t have to give any extra explanation of what is happening when people look at it. The atmosphere and emotions will tell the story for you.

3. START FROM THE BEGINNING AND DON’T FORGET TO INCLUDE THE END

Don’t just start in the middle of your story. Capture the very beginning. If you are going on a road trip, capture everyone packing and loading the car. The middle is easy to capture, as that is normally where the bulk of the story is being told. And don’t forget the end. After your fun road trip, get everyone sleeping in the car or the pure exhaustion (kids crying is great!) of the fun day!

This picture captures my daughter being carried inside after a trip. That bit of shirt showing lets you know where were visiting, and the tired look on her face lets you know the trip was long (but fun).

Tired after a long trip.

This method is also a great way for food bloggers to share their recipes. Capture all the ingredients, get a few photos of you preparing the food, and then take a photo of your final product.

4. NARROW DOWN YOUR PICTURES

It is so easy to want to show each and every one of your pictures that you took to help tell your story. Something to keep in mind is everyone doesn’t have time to look at the 40 pictures you took. As great as they may be, you need to learn to critique your own images and only share a select few. As a photographer, this is hard for me, and I typically over share on my personal blog. I can’t always help myself!

The number of pictures to share per post is completely up to you. Think of your readers and figure out what works best.

The picture below was selected from a photo shoot of about 50 photos. No lie!

Father and daughter enjoying a snowy day!

5. DON’T FORGET ABOUT COMPOSITION AND LIGHTING

We spent some time talking about photography composition and natural lighting in the past. Keep them in mind when story telling. I promise it will make your photos more appealing.

Lighting and composition are an important piece when you try to tell a story through a single photograph.

Looking for more photography tutorials? We’ve got plenty for you to read!

About Tracie Nall

Tracie lives in Arizona with her husband, teen daughter, and more books than her shelves will hold. She spends her days writing and editing. Many of her words end up on her blog, From Tracie. Find Tracie on Twitter @FromTracie and on Instagram where she takes pictures of things that are yellow.

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Comments

  4. Rita Norton says

    I love this post. I help people preserve and share their memories through their photo collections. One of the key points I share is telling stories with their photos and I love how this provides the photography tips on how to create those great photos to tell stories with!

  5. Katie says

    Goodness, I just started following your blog and I feel this intense urge to read everything! I think you are pretty amazing!!