I suggested to my good mate @Ewaade_3A that her journey in photography had come to the point that it was time to forget about composition and level up by telling a story in the photo. Do I really mean ignore the hard earned rules of composition? No of course not, I mean for those to have become automatic so that you don’t think about them so much anymore.
The next level of telling a story, means you now need to think about in one single frame telling what a person is or isn’t thinking or perhaps what they’re doing. While its possible to tell stories about inanimate objects it is most poignant to tell stories about people. When you’re doing this its vital to completely respectful - you are photographing a person candidly and they are defenceless because they likely are not even aware that you are there.
The story frame sparks the viewers imagination and often emotion and no two viewers will see and feel the image the same way.
As an example, there would be many ways to interpret this image, in my mind the foreground person who has formed part of the scenery of this shot has for some reason attracted the ire of the person behind them. There are many thoughts that could be coursing through the mind of the person who is the focal point of the image and by the expression they’re unlikely to be nice. What cause those thoughts? We’ll never know but from the image you can see a story and your imagination does the rest. I know the story of what went on here because, well obviously I was there.When I look at the image am I seeing two friends, one who is sharing a cigarette with her mate or am I seeing a person who just took out a cigarette and when just about to light it was approached by a random person who said “Can I bot a ciggie mate?”.
You could interpret from her expression that she doesn’t really want to hand this over, perhaps she’s thinking that cigarettes aren’t cheap and this person is delaying her need.
But then you look deeper into his hand and you see he’s got a lighter, but she does not, perhaps she was about to light up but she could not find her lighter when this stranger approached and exchanged a cigarette for a light. She still clearly doesn’t want to give him one, but now there is some quid pro quo that makes the deal seem more attractive.
My final example is an older man in a New York diner in Little Italy. Fantastic food there by the way ;).Now, we look at the man and we think he’s there alone, his stature is hunched over like he is bearing the weight of the world. He is wearing chinos and a short sleeved business style shirt both of which are incongruous with the sneakers on his feet.
Is he there waiting for friends? Is he having a quiet drink at his local bar while he watches the football? What is his story - again I know because I was there and I also know its nothing like what I portray in this photograph but that doesn’t matter, I’m telling A story not THE story.
Telling a story is what you’re doing with photography when you impose your own world view onto someone else and portray a thing. You make an image that evokes the viewer and makes them think. Perhaps it makes them empathic. Perhaps it makes them sad. Perhaps it makes them disgusted.
So go on then, go next level tell a story. Lets see your stories below on this post.
Paul