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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?
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
Below
The Side
Behind
In Front
Through A Door Or Window
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!
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).
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!
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.
Looking for more photography tutorials? We’ve got plenty for you to read!
- Rule of Thirds
- Straightening Horizons
- Natural Light Photography
- Outdoor Photography
- Self Portrait Photography
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Nice ideas actually i liked the part of taking different shots from different positions .. Thanks 🙂
I love these tips! Your pictures are always stunning!
Great article! I just got a canon 70d for Chanukah so I am just learning and will be referencing your informative articles as I continue to enhance my skills! Thank you so much lots of love Courtney Bentley
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!
Goodness, I just started following your blog and I feel this intense urge to read everything! I think you are pretty amazing!!
Thanks. 🙂 You are sharing things I “knew” but didn’t “know”, if you understand. 🙂 This is very helpful.