Everybody loves a well-told story because stories are the best way to evoke emotions. They can make us excited, laugh, cry or feel empathy for someone else. But perhaps the best thing about stories is relatively simple: stories about other people help us to better understand ourselves. And this is the reason why visual storytelling has such an important role in photography. Below are the three tips to add a sense of story to your photography.
Practice Your Ability to Evoke Emotion in Your Work
If a “story” is a “sentence,” then “emotions” are “words”. So, before we dive deeper in crafting our ability to create visual stories, let us work on evoking emotions in our images first. Head out to the field, either the streets, a wild landscape or the studio, with an aim to create an image that evokes a specific emotion. Start with basic emotions, such as happiness or sadness. It’s not as easy as it sounds. Yes, to evoke happiness, you can just photograph someone smiling or ask someone to smile for you, but that’s too easy and flat, isn’t it? In addition, everyone knows that there could be darkness and sadness behind a forced smile or a grin – capturing someone truly happy at that moment is certainly a challenge on its own. Try to think outside the box and be creative. What colors come to mind when you think of happiness? Can you evoke happiness with an object or an abstract image?
What kind of light comes to mind when thinking about sadness? Is it the blue light of an early morning or that of a foggy day? After practicing basic emotions, try to work on emotional themes. Evoking concepts like: “Family”, “Loneliness”, “Fear”, “Warmness” etc. Again, be creative and do not go for the easy path. For example: try to evoke the concept of “family” without having people in your image.
Think About Your Hero
From Hercules to Shrek, from da Vinci’s “Mona Lisa” to McCurry’s “Afghan Girl”, every good story must have a leading character that viewers can connect with. You should think of this leading character as some sort of a tool to evoke those emotions previously discussed.
A good leading character can be anything or anyone, as long as they can evoke an emotion in the viewers. This may be any remarkable subject, from an interesting face in portraiture to a lonely tree in a landscape.
Some people tend to confuse the leading character with a place or genre of photography. For instance, a market or some street cannot be leading characters; they are just general categories that describe the background of your photographs.
Think about iconic storytelling images, like Nick Ut‘s Pulitzer Prize-winning “The Terror of War”, taken during the Vietnam War. To say that the picture is about the war in Vietnam would not be accurate, since there were thousands of pictures made there, but only a few remain engraved in our memories. This image is not about the war in Vietnam; it is about the nine-year-old girl (later dubbed as the “Napalm Girl”) running from the inferno. This is actually what caught attention and managed to move people around the world. She is the leading character of the photograph – she is the hero of the frame, someone you notice immediately. Out of all the people in the photograph, she is the one you will remember the most.
From a technical point of view, the leading character of your visual story must draw the viewer’s eye to the image by being noticeable and significant within the entire scene (or frame). You can think of it as a hook that catches the viewer’s eye.
Craft Your Own Unique Visual Voice
Why do you take photos? This is the question that I consider to be the most important question each one of us must think through as photographers, and this is the question I ask from my students when lecturing them. Each of us has a reason for making photography our hobby or profession. So, ask yourself – Why?
“Because I love taking pictures” – is not an adequate answer. You should dive deeper and ask yourself: What benefit do you gain from freezing those moments? The answer to this question will help you understand your unique point of view and your voice in this visual world.
One of my students shared the fact that photography helps him put his chaotic life in order, which is why he is into landscape photography. Another student told me she uses her camera to take an almost direct look at the things she is afraid of, and she mainly works around the themes of loneliness and seclusion. Some of my students shared that they like the “hunter” feeling they found in photography (mostly nature or street photographers), while one of my students who is engaged in beautiful dark fashion photography shared that photography helps her to show her darker side to the world.
Keep in mind that photography is not just about the right aperture, lens sharpness or your camera settings, but also about other more important elements such as “voice,” “emotion” and “point of view”.
Note From Nasim
I had a chance to meet Oded Wagenstein last year when photographing Israel. He was very kind to show me some of the streets of Tel Aviv and provide guidance in photographing the locals. I was so blown away by his mastery of portrait photography and his ability to evoke emotions through his images, that I asked him to do a guest post at Photography Life. I’m very happy to be able to feature his article here and I hope our readers can learn from it. If you want to learn more about the power of visual storytelling, I would highly encourage you to check out Oded’s eBook “The Visual Storyteller – Creating Stronger Images“.
This is amazing, our class assignment is choose one photo that tells a story and perfect it for class in January
Thank you for helping me. I can’t wait to get started.
Thank you for sharing this. This article helps me a lot for my photography lesson.
Greetings ODED
When I started reading and I saw your photos I realized that they were made in Cuba, I am Cuban and I work that genre, your article I liked a lot, if you can come back to Cuba aviasame. I congratulate you. Here I leave my email and my blog.
Greetings Felipe Rouco Llompart
Indeed, many very moving photos, here. Sometimes, it’s collections of pictures that have an origin in wanting to convey certain feelings that are together much more than the sum of their parts.
My most popular gallery is like that. Sure, there area couple of good photos in it that would stand alone. But most would be overlooked on their own: including by myself. They are technically nothing to write home about and relatively forgettable, by themselves. But because, together, there is such a strong unity of ‘look’; a way of looking at the world, such suggestive emotions and yet a certain ambiguity that the total effect is hypnotic. It stays in your mind. That’s one form of photographic story-telling, even if the story is not always obvious, let alone self-explanatory.
Thanks for the excellent essay, Oded.
Dear Oded,
Thank you, well said.
Thank you for sharing your experiences, feelings and thoughts. It’s good to step back from the tecnical side and step to the artistic side.
Excellent article, thanks!
I don’t get it why there are so few comments under non-tech articles…
Incredible article! Thanks. I’m very new to my Panasonic Lumix camera and new trying to take photos off automatic, A and M. But I Iove your ideas of evoking emotion and your photos sure do that. this is a goal of mine as I grow as a photographer.
Very interesting article Oded. With all due respect I do disagree with your comment “Because I love taking pictures” – is not an adequate answer. If this was the only reason I took photographs it would be sufficient for me. Photography is a form of expression that I truly love to do. Why can’t I, or anyone pursue it for just that reason alone? It doesn’t have to get any deeper than that. It’s my escape from the day to day. I don’t feel the need to justify my reason as to why I do it.
Just my .02
Stephen,
I don’t feel any need to justify my desire to take pictures either. On the other hand, I haven’t yet figured out just why I have the desire and the resulting pleasure when whatever, however unspecified, goal is almost reached. But “justification” implies a requirement, whereas understanding only implies self-knowledge. Maybe knowing why is the right question, whether you share the answer or not. There are times when I am pleased with just getting the technical stuff right and times when I feel like the composition or the subject have more impact (more meaning?) than the technical aspects, at least to me, and in the end I only take pictures for myself. I’m willing to accept that when I can answer my own questions my photography might be more meaningful; always searching.
Totally agree. This is a personal l to do with yourself. It doesn’t involve any justification, but it is more of an inner journey to find out more about yourself and the reason you do what you do.
Dear Stephen,
Thank you for sharing this.
Of course, in art there is not “right” or “wrong,” but I will try to explain what I meant. The goal of this process is to find the reason that motivates you to take pictures in order to be aware of your inner voice and create better work with that awareness. I believe that every good picture should be a self-portrait. An image that will represent some of the inner voice of its creator. The reason you wrote for taking photos (“It’s my escape from the day to day”) is of course perfectly fine, because what you are like is the process on its own (similar to the example I gave of my students who liked the “hunter” sense of photography), while the process I suggested is more aimed to help with the outcome of creating better, more personal work. If you just enjoy the process of cooking, then “just loving it” is good enough, but If you wish to share your cooking with others and want to make it more personal, so I believe that this suggested self-inquiry, of understanding the deeper benefit – why do you like it? is important.
Oded