Story-telling: The difference between a great photo and everything else…

This is a subject that has been very prevalent to me recently, and that is ‘story-telling’ and the actual power that has.

As some of you know, I’m involved in lots of different creative hobbies; I play the guitar and have been in bands in the past where were actually wrote our own songs, I have recently taken up oil painting as well.

One of my huge passions is photography. I actually spend a lot of my time looking at the work of other photographers that I really admire and I love the style of and I actually go out and try to take inspiration from their work and put that into my own photography. However, there is always one huge thing missing from my photos that really stand out in everyone else’s but it’s only recently that I’ve been able to put my finger on what it actually is.

It is the power of “story-telling”.

Until recently, I have literally been going out into the world with my camera and doing ‘happy-snapping’, taking 1,000s of photos in the hope of getting at least one good one, or spending countless hours over-editing my images to the point where they no longer look natural and look more manufactured. This then leads to the downward spiral of “maybe my gear isn’t good enough” or “I need a new lens” or even “I’m just not good enough”.

In essence, it has absolutely nothing to do with any of those things. I’ve seen photographers take far better photos with ‘lesser’ gear than I have, so the camera and lenses are not the issues.

It’s because I don’t go into a photo shoot with the simple questions of “what is the story here, and how do I best capture it?”

The ability to tell stories in anything you do is so, so powerful. Believe it or now, everything you encounter and remember will be down to some form of 'story', whether that’s some clever marketing or advertising or (obviously) a great film or book or even a conversation with someone where they have that ability to fully immerse you into whatever it is they are talking about.

Stories are a huge part of the whole evolution of us as human beings, they were the way our ancestors passed on vital information about experiences that lead to our survival as a species. Just look at any religion in the world, their whole foundation will be based around teachings through stories. Visit any historical site, you will be told stories about whatever used to happen in those places to try and build a picture within your mind which is designed to give you a more emotional and spiritual connection to a place rather than just something aesthetic.

Everything you do, you need to consider “what is the story I’m trying to get across?”.

Take your ‘viewer’ on a journey

Whatever it is you are doing, think about how the person it is designed for is going to interact with it and what the journey you’ve going to take then on is.

Let’s take an example from my background and look at the concept of a website. For this consideration you need to think:-

• what have they come here for?
• How do I best get them to their destination
• how can I get something across in that journey that they remember

It doesn’t always have to be a huge, complex gesture. The reason people use Amazon? Because their journey through Amazon’s website is easy and quick.

Dom, what does this have to do with photography / creativity?

Any photography you look at, you can instantly tell whether it is a good one, OK, rubbish or stunning. Take a look at any photo that is stunning and I bet the reason you feel like that is because there’s a story playing out, whether that be figuratively in the form of capturing an emotion from a subject or some kind of action, or it could be captured simply by an aura, an atmosphere or a feeling simply captured in the frame.

It could be a simple yet very effective use of light designed to separate a subject from a setting, or even the exact opposite of capturing a subject fully immersed in the crazy hustle and bustle of a situation.

But the one overlying similarity over all of these scenarios is there is a story. There is a narrative going on that the photographer managed to capture in a single frame.

That is the difference between a great photo and everything else.