Since I started my interest in photography as a hobby there have been many new topics for me to explore. You know the basics, how to shoot in manual, jpeg vs Raw, Photoshop, Lightroom, composition, HDR and on and on. I have even opined about some of these topics in this blog myself. These, and many more aspects of becoming a good photographic artist are important to invest time in mastering. I continue to be amazed at how much I’ve learned and how much more there is to learn about photography.
Lately I have been considering the concept of storytelling with a photograph. This is a subject that has come up many times in some of the YouTube videos I have viewed, along with books and blogs on photography that have occupied my time. Interestingly, many of the photographs that I see do not always convey any significant or obvious story to me. I suspect that has also been the experience of many of you reading this post.
Naturally, this brings us to the question of how to tell a story with photography. For example, consider a landscape photo. At first, I could not see any story in a photo of a mountain, waterfall or some trees. I just thought that I was viewing some good photos. How about macro photography? What is the story that is told by examining a closeup of the inside of a flower or the wings of a butterfly? Even street photography sometimes appears to have no story that I can discern. Maybe I’m just looking at a photo of a man talking to a woman or some graffiti art on the side of a building.
I have arrived at the conclusion that my difficulty in finding stories in photographs is really a problem of my seeing. What does that mean? Simply put, it means I have been focused, pun intended, on looking at a photo from a technical viewpoint. Since I am in the learning phase of photography, it has been natural for me to try to view the focus, clarity, color or tone, composition and many other mechanical aspects of photography. I have not put any time or effort into looking deeper into a photo to find a story that is meaningful to me. It might not even be what the photographer intended but I suspect in many cases it is exactly the story the photographer intended.
This thought occurred to me due to a recent photo contest at my local photography club. The topic was Street Photography. The initial photos I took were ok from a technical standpoint but there was something missing. It became clear to me that I was just taking a photo of a scene that looked like it might be a good photo for the competition but I was not tuned to looking for a story to photograph. That caused me to finally go back and look at photos on Flickr, 5oopx, Instagram, Facebook and my club’s website to concentrate on stories. Slowly I began to see something I had missed before. The lighting and beauty of a landscape that may never occur again in precisely the same way. Did the picture give me an experience of being there when it was taken? I saw photos of the inside of a flower that displayed the awesomeness of God’s creation.
Hopefully, I will be a better photographer in the future by looking for the story in addition to successfully mastering all the technical manipulations to create a good photo. Back to the Photography Club competition. I managed to use my smartphone’s camera to capture some scenes that I hope convey a story with emotion. The first one is of a woman who was talking on her phone while waiting for her car to be washed and I could tell she was receiving some bad news. I was close enough to take the photo without being noticed. The next photo was of an older man just sitting on a bench. It struck me that he probably spent a lot of time at his age just sitting and possibly thinking of times gone by. As I am also getting older this connected with me in a particular way. Here are the photos for you to judge if you sense any emotion or story in them. Come back to www.cestlavie4me.com in the future to read more of my adventures in the journey to becoming an artist in photography.
Bad News
Waiting
C'est la vie 