Narrative Photography: The Complete Guide to Telling Stories Through Photography

What was the last photo that left you completely spellbound? Do you remember her? I bet that was a photo full of life, it conveyed things. It was not a simple composition of colors and shapes. There was something in that photo. If you have it handy, take a look at it again please. Every great photograph is a narrative photography. The cool, impressive photos that take your breath away and leave you fascinated, they all tell you something. They all have a story inside.

In today’s article I am going to introduce you to the exciting and addictive world of telling stories through photography. I’ll explain the elements you need to include in your photographic work for it to really “tell” something, and I’ll reveal some methods to take the viewer and guide them through the plot of your story with total comfort. Throughout the text I will also show you some practical examples where you can see each of the aspects that we are commenting on.

Make yourself comfortable and get ready because at the end of the article I am going to ask you to practice what you have learned in this article.

Let’s get to the point.

The most fascinating part of photography is the little stories it tells

Unlike a movie, which lasts an hour and a half or two, a play, or a novel that takes a day or a week to read, a photo is a momentary shot. With a photo you capture what is happening in a thousandth of a second, a “still photo” and never better said. This makes telling stories seem, at first, not an easy task. How are you going to tell a whole story in a still, inanimate photo that doesn’t move? If it is not even a series of photographs, not even a sequence.

Precisely what makes photography fascinating is the subtlety with which it catches us and immerses us in the emotion and story it tries to convey. A movie may need 90 minutes, or 15 minutes at all (if it’s a short film) to get you to an emotional point. A photo becomes a highly concentrated emotional shot, a micro-story told, from start to finish, in great detail, in the time it takes to blink.

Here are some elements you need to include in your photography to make sure it tells a story. Take good note.

Essential elements in a narrative photography

For your photo to tell a story, you don’t necessarily need to include all of these points, but they are “ambient” elements, and the more they are, the easier it will be for the viewer to perceive the story you are telling them.

• A physical context: A location, the place where the photo takes place, where the little story we are telling takes place. It can be a city, a street, the living room of a house, or the inside of a flower petal if what you are telling is the story of a ladybug. It should be relatively easy to deduce from your photo the nature of the place where it was taken. Not knowing the city in particular, or the name of the street or anything like that. Simply that it is understood that it is a photo taken on a street, on the beach, next to a tree or inside a cafeteria. This is a physical reference that will undoubtedly help the viewer to recreate the story.
• A temporary context: Can you visually convey a reference to the moment the photograph was taken? The photographs that express a moment of the day such as sunrise, sunset, or that carry some kind of time reference, year, etc., usually convey a greater narrative load than a photo in which, no matter how much you look, you do not find any time indication . Make sure to always include a time reference in your photo.
  Watch out: Although you have to indicate the moment in which the photo takes place, you choose if you want to indicate it explicitly or implicitly. Don’t let it be too implicit because not everyone is going to “feel” it, but for example a boy delivering newspapers on a bike is a clear temporary indication of the morning. Long shadows on the ground would also indicate times such as morning or afternoon. A wet floor is a great time indication: a rainy day.

• An emotional context: In your photo, make sure you have one predominant emotion clearly defined. There can be several emotions in the same photo, but one has to dominate and remain captured in the viewer’s retina.
  The visual direction you have chosen for your photo has to accompany this dominant emotion. It would be difficult to reflect feelings such as fear or loneliness with a photo of warm and vivid colors, in the same way that a photo of predominantly gray color, with a composition full of negative spaces, it is difficult for it to tell stories of joy (impossible in photography). there is nothing, I say difficult).
• A leading element: And I say “element” because it can be a person, it can be an object, a landscape, an animal, anything is likely to become a good protagonist of a photo, but define a protagonist with yourself. Gave «the person or thing that is the protagonist of my photo is this one, or that one». Do not leave it to chance, do not shoot to shoot, to see what comes out.
  Little trick: humans, by nature, are more empathic with other humans than with an object. As a result, you will find it much easier to tell stories about a person than about a baseball. This does not mean that a story cannot be told through a photo without people appearing. No way. But for humans, the stories that captivate and overwhelm us emotionally are those in which we see, feel or notice other people. I don’t care if there are no people in the photo, the main element can be a simple shoe, but a shoe that will tell the story of a person. The presence of people, directly or indirectly, is key in a story. The person does not necessarily have to appear in the photo, but it can be deduced in the context of the story.
  The same goes for any other type of animated living beings. Pets are an excellent character to build a story.
  When you look at the photo of this lonely bike, it’s hard not to automatically think of its owner.

How to put it all together: the script in narrative photography

As I said before, unlike a movie or novel, where there is a script that advances chronologically, and that the reader or spectator consumes little by little, a photo is a micro-story told in a fraction of a second. That’s not why it won’t have a script. Photos have their own script too. A script that the viewer consumes in a fraction of a second as well.

How?

In a photo you put all the elements of the story at the viewer’s disposal, but you maintain full control over where the reading of the photo should begin and where it should end. You have countless resources and techniques that allow you to guide the viewer within the frame and transport him from one element to another, focusing his attention on an element of greater prominence, or letting him notice a background detail only after a few seconds. Here are just a few examples of resources you can use to map out the path the viewer will unconsciously follow when viewing your photo:

1. The light: The brightest areas within the frame will be where the viewer’s gaze lands first, and then go to explore the areas of less light.
2. Curves, lines and vanishing points: Within a composition, vanishing points and linear elements are a perfect way to lead the viewer in “reading” the photograph.
3. depth of field: The focuses and blurs are another resource that facilitates directing the gaze and the attention of the person who contemplates the photo. By the wisdom of nature, our brain directs our gaze first to the most focused area, and then to other less focused areas.
4. The look: If you want to draw attention in a certain direction, have the subject look that way. By nature, we are curious. When looking at a photograph, it is normal for us to direct our gaze towards what the subject seems to be looking at. As for the order, first we look at the subject’s eyes, and secondly we look for what he is looking at.
   A group of 4 subjects, 3 of them looking at the room: we automatically focus our attention on the fourth character. We assume that he is the main subject.
5. Natural address: Unless the photographer provides elements that modify the path of the viewer’s gaze (such as the previous points), the natural thing is that we go through a photograph from bottom to top, and from left to right. Keep this in mind when assembling your composition.

The cotton test in narrative photography: the title

You just took a photo. You have embodied in it a magnificent story, according to you. But you’re not sure if the others will be able to find it.
A little trick you can use to make sure you have good narrative content in your photo is to give it a title. It sounds silly, but if you can verbalize, through words, the little story of your photo, then you will have hit the nail on the head.

Be careful, the title cannot be a simple visual description of the photo. «Boy sitting on a chair, with a lollipop in his right hand» It doesn’t work for us as a title. We are looking for a title that touches the emotion as the photo itself would. If it is impossible for us to come up with a minimally deep title, if all the titles that come to mind are mere descriptions of what we see in the photo, there is a high probability that the photo does not contain anything deep.

Practical examples of a good narrative photography

There is nothing better than a few examples to illustrate what a good narrative photography is.

Your turn

The number of words you read doesn’t make you a better photographer 😉 but the photos you take. I want you to practice narrative photography in your next photos. Shooting with a little story in mind will open up new photographic possibilities for you. As soon as you get your first true narrative photo, you’ll realize that your other photos, lacking in story or emotion, ultimately lacked soul.

Including a story, message, idea or emotion will make you great.

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