Intro

“Everyone is a photographer now, remember.” said Martin Parr, Britains most prolific contemporary photographer. it's easy to make something to upload to Instagram,  but harder to make a really great image. 

Here are a few principles and ideas that I have found useful in creating stories from photographs.

Important 

·   What do you want to say?

·    What's the story?

·     Who are your audience?

·     What do you want the viewer to think, feel or do?

Have a look at some of the stories on this site. 

A good example is the slideshow on fracking. What themes do you see there?

Basics

Taking good photographs is as much about breaking rules than keeping them. It's not always about having a sharply focussed image in the centre of the frame, it has to say something.

1.        Frame: Centre, Rule of thirds, or edge.

2.       Focus: In or out.

3.       Movement: Still or blurred.

4.       Creativity: ‘Authentic,’ altered or fabricated

5.        Story: Say something, or evoke a theme or mood

'Framing' objects on screen or on a camera viewfinder 

Photography has lots of rules, especially about how you organise things on the phone screen, or camera viewfinder, which FRAME your image. The 'Rule of Thirds' is a way of organising what is in that 'frame.'  For example, in a landscape picture you might have a third sky and two thirds land (SLIDE 1), or the other way round. Or a person might be in the right upper, outer third of the frame, with  another object in the opposite left lower, outer third of your frame (SLIDE 2). You might even have the main part of the image in the middle third (SLIDE 3). Organising subjects and objects like this is aesthetically pleasing to the viewer. But you can break that rule and put the image at the edges of the frame as in SLIDES 4 and 5. That still works because it suggests a person without showing the whole of them and leaves more to the imagination than SLIDE 2.

Focus

IMAGE 1 has every object in the frame in focus. It speaks of everything being important in the picture. In IMAGES 2 and 3  the background out of focus, so that the main object stand out. Sometimes you want the main image to be out of focus as in IMAGE 4 as it suggests a 'muggy' unclear view.

Movement - still or blurred

Sometimes you want the image to be detailed so that you encourage the viewer to explore all of it to understand what the image says, IMAGE 1. In the second two images IMAGE 2  is of trees snow in Japan taken from a train window and suggests a surreal landscape, and IMAGE 3 suggests dancing, movement or a party.

Be creative

IMAGE 1 is a documentary photograph taken at an airport. IMAGE 2 is fabricated from LEGO to make a point about the NHS working 24/7 at a a high cost to it's 'broken' workers. IMAGE 3 are blood spots and streaks dyed in Photoshop, and IMAGE 4 is a collage about the stress of doctor working.

Connect a series of images together to tell a story.

Sometimes you just want to take that selfie and send it to your friends. At other times you want to say something about your life or the world around you.

STORY 1 is about the relationship between me and my son. The images were taken on a train trip to Sapporo in Japan.

STORY 2 is about the illness and death of my daughter.

There is more on these stories on my website.

NOTE: There is a skill to ordering images to create a series that tells a story. It is best to set aside your history with the photographs and order them based on what they LOOK like i.e. two green images together, or two or more images with angular shapes in the frame  together. Let the viewer decide what your images are about. Don't be disappointed when people read a different story in your series of images, because they bring themselves and their experiences to creating their story from your photographs.