Photography: Telling a Story

by Elizabeth, Delightfully Tacky

A nice dynamic to add to your photos is storytelling. Storytelling adds an element of narrative to your photos, rather than having them be simply two dimensional. It draws the viewer into your world and establishes a connection that doesn't require text to communicate. The viewer will be able to visually see a story develop that will make your post more interesting. You can tell a story with just one photo, even. Think about how much more story there is to the photo above with the cat than if it was just a photo of shoes!

A good way to incorporate a story line into your photos is to include various locations. As you can see in the example sets above and below, the photos were all taken in the same basic area, but by changing the perspective, camera angle and background, you get a sense of story and exploration. You can do this by varying your body position and the angle of the photo, in addition to taking photos in different spots. This is also a good way to get different angles of your outfit, if you're taking outfit photos.

Telling a story in this way also adds visual interest to your photos by giving your audience a different background to look at in each picture, as opposed to the same photograph with different poses. It moves the viewer's eye around, rather than giving them a stagnant series of images.

Take a stab at telling a story with your photos this week! Move around, get different angles and perspectives, give your viewers something to pique their interest!