PixelatedImage Blog

Through the ages, myth and stories have been the primary vehicle for communicating meaning and truth. They are not merely the stuff of bedtime tales. The primary storytelling medium in our culture is the cinematic film, and given the billions of dollars attached to the film industry, and the royal status given to its stars, it should be clear how important story is to us.

Story told in a movie or novel, and story told in a single frame of a photograph, are very different kinds of story. One occurs over a minute period of time, perhaps 1/500th of a second, while the others are told over longer periods – hours, days – and reflect experiences or circumstances that span days, weeks, years, even generations. What makes it difficult to tell a story within a single frame is the inability to form a classic plotline, but this is doesn’t make storytelling impossible; it simply confines us to certain conventions that, when understood, allow us to tell, or at very least imply, more powerful stories.

An understanding of the elements of story and how they can be incoporated into your images will make stronger images. It doesn’t matter if you do reportage, advertising, weddings, or wildlife; a sense of story will make your images more engaging and compelling.

Four aspects of storytelling come to mind as I consider the unique challenges of storytelling within the confines of a single photographic frame; themes that tie the image to our deeper, more universal human experience; conflict; mystery; and the relationships between the characters.

What is the story ABOUT?
A story succeeds or fails on empathy, or lack of it. If you don’t care, it’s not a relevant story.

Ask a friend what the last film they saw was about and the usual answer will be a recap of the plotline. Character X did this and then this happened and to get out of it he did this and this, etc. But movies are not about the plotline. The plotline tells the story, but the story is about something more. Perhaps it was about revenge or love or the search for meaning – the deeper theme that moves the film from beginning to end.

Photographs, if they are to tell or imply a story, must be about something. Truth, justice, love, or the lack of, or search for those things, are strong universal themes. Loneliness, betrayal, our tendency to self-destruct, death, resurrection, the bond of family – all of these are strong themes and the more universal a theme you echo in your image, the more powerful it will be and the more broad the audience to whom it will be powerful. If you’re already thinking that this is a little to deep for your style of photography, what about themes like harmony, balance, or beauty?

Make your images about something. It doesn’t have to reflect deep brooding themes. It can be a photograph of an orchid that’s about serenity or the wonder of the natural world. It can be about innocence or the simple power of a line. But even an image of crocus breaking through the crust of snow and ice can resonate with themes of resurrection and new life. Whatever it is, make it about something so the people that see your image feel something, so they care about your image.

This can’t be overstated – the more powerful and universal the theme in your image, the more powerful and universal the impact of the image. To put it another way, the more deeply they care, the stronger the story.

Conflict – The Heart of Story
In his screenwriting text Story, author Robert McKee writes that “the music of story is conflict,” that, “nothing moves forward in a story except through conflict.” And he should know. Robert McKee is the script doctor behind more great movies than any other.

But how do we bring conflict to play in a frame. Obviously we can photograph moments of actual open conflict – guns and fists and angry gestures. But what about stories that are not about open conflict? What about stories that are about something else but still need conflict to move it forward?

Conflict in a still photograph is most often shown in contrasts. Not just the visual contrast of dark tones to lighter ones, but the more conceptual contrasts of big to small, mechanical to natural, smooth to textured. Any pair of juxtaposed or implied opposites create what I call “conceptual contrasts” that imply conflict.

Tom Stoddart created a powerful image in Rwanda: a little boy cowering in the shadow of a larger figure with hands on hips. The contrast of big vs. small creates both a visual and a conceptual conflict. In the same series he has an image of a small Rwandan boy sitting under the larger figure of a Caucasian soldier – small African boy vs. large European man. The contrasts imply conflict and creates story.

Ami Vitale has a gorgeous photograph of soldiers in Kashmir; they sit in their camo fatigues, guns on laps, in bright yellow shikara boats, festooned with ribbons and hearts painted in primary colours. Hearts and guns, camouflage and clown-colours. The conflict comes from a clash of ideas – the primary colours of youth and innocence clashing with the guns and colours of war.

This concept applies to non-reportage images as well. Even a sunset shot contains elements of conceptual contrast – sky vs. earth, sun vs. water, light vs. dark. Strongly opposed or contrasting elements create a compelling sense of conflict which is the heartbeat of Story.

Leaving Clues and Provoking Questions
A great storyteller doesn’t tell absolutely everything, she tells enough to make you care, to tell the story and move the plot, and no more. Extraneous details don’t provide anything more than confusion. In fact, more than just cluttering the story, a flood of details kills the mystery and the engagement. A good story has a sense of wonder, it raises curiosity, it leaves something untold for us to gnaw on. Perhaps it’s a glance out of frame; we’re familiar with the look of affection she has on her face, but who is she looking at? A face moves into silhouette as you press the shutter, and suddenly a photo of a specific woman is a photo of a woman around whom there is some mystery.

What you leave in the frame must be part of the story. It must be part of the visual plot, even if that’s simply establishing the setting. But you need to be very selective. Leaving a cluttered background by shooting wide & indiscriminately does not establish setting; it’s lazy photography. Each element must be chosen intentionally, even if that occurs intuitively on some level. The more elements within the frame the less power each of them has and your story becomes diluted.

Leave enough clues to tell the story and exclude enough to create a sense of mystery. Unanswered questions engage a viewer and create an interaction between the image and the viewer – a deeper level of viewing that allows us to think and feel more connected to, and touched by, the story.

The choices you make about what to leave in and what to cut out are editorial choices that will determine how clearly the story is told.

Relationships
Relationships of elements to each other within the frame are key compositional tools that give us – or deny us – solid clues as to the unfolding story within the frame.

One object larger than another implies something about the relationship of power between them. The space between two elements or characters within the frame tells something about their connectedness or how they relate to each other. Simply changing your point of view, camera angle or choice of lense can dramatically change the feeling and implied relationship within a photograph.

As an example, using your telephoto lens’ ability to compress space is an excellent way of bringing elements that are distant from each other into a perceived proximity. An image of a snowboarder on a mountain peak taken with a standard lens will show mountains in the distance. The image is likely to have large chunks of sky and little feeling of being nestled within the mountains. The same scenario captured with a 200mm lens will compress the foreground and distance and create an implied relationship between the snowboarder and the mountain. In terms of story, this places the main character within his setting, but if you look at the mountains themselves as one of the characters, it creates a relationship of closeness and proximity, as though the two are inseparable.

If you wanted to show the same snowboarder on the way to the mountains, you might choose to use a wide angle lens and get closer to the snowboarder as he hitches his way to the slopes. The properties of the wide lens will make the mountains appear distant and will create a stronger feeling of how far the snowboarder has yet to go before he gets to the hills.

Which lens you use will depend on the story you want to tell. In the same way your other choices will be made based on the story you’re telling or the way you want to make your viewer think or feel about the characters/elements within the frame.

What choices you make depend on the story you’re compelled to tell, but being conscious of the tools you use will make your storytelling more intentional and compelling.