How To Take Photos That Tell A Story

Examples and how to get started

Hello friend,

How are you? I hope you had a nice and productive week and now your brain is swirling with new creative ideas to try out next.

Let’s talk about photography - the simplest, yet trickiest way to tell visual stories.

Unlike video, you only have a single frame to play with.

Migrant Mother by Dorothea Lange (1936). Can you read the story?

You often use photos to visualize a story to drive a key message, right? These days, you have two options:

You can set a narrative scene for an AI Chatbot asking it to mock up your “pink squirrel” idea. 

And after the 1000th tweak deep in that rabbit hole, marvel at the hideous result.

Other times, it’s all about going retro where you move away from AI’s “box of chocolates where you never know what you’re gonna get” - instead capturing an interesting photo as it happens, while say you walk down the street.

In this case, reality is the visual creator, and you use your eyes and attention to detail to carve out a “thought-provoking slice” that serves a particular message you’re after.

Either way, realize that we humans have this unique superpower to visualize events that either happened in the past or will happen in the future.

That means that when people look at your photos, beyond searching for personal relevancy to their lives, they can complete the story in their minds by either rewinding or fast-forwarding the timeline.

Knowing that you can be intentional about this approach and create narrative photos that tell a complete story.

Let’s look at a few more examples

hmmm… good! When you show visuals that convey outcomes like an empty coffee cup, people can rewind and complete the rest of the story in their minds. In this case, how this cortadito’s circular frothy white foam might have looked like against the surrounding rich dark brown coffee. (Photo: Shlomi Ron)

Watching this photo you can likely play with the timeline backward: the duck just came out of the water and stares at the sign thinking “Yeah, right…” Or Forward staring at the sign before getting in the water “Seriously? Forget it! I’m going in anyway!” (Photo: Shlomi Ron)

Back in 2019, I enjoyed chatting with Jaime Permuth, an award-winning photographer. We talked about What Makes A Photo Tell A Story.

There is a whole backstory behind this photo taken by Jaime Permuth

I liked what Jaime said which fits well with narrative images:

What the photographer chooses not to show in a frame is even more important than what she chooses to show.

Watch the full video interview as Jaime shares intriguing stories behind his memorable photos.

That unique sense of narrative action, you can also find in art like my favorite, medieval Flemish painters such as Hieronymus Bosch, and Peter Bruegel The Elder.

The Peasant Wedding by Pieter Bruegel the Elder (1567). With such dynamic visual storytelling, you can easily unpause and experience the raucous of the lively feast in action. I bet there’s an AI app for that :)

Back in 2020, in You're Cordially Invited to A Peasant Wedding, I had fun trying to piece together the mini-stories in this masterpiece.

All it takes is to pay attention to the fine details and figure out what the objective vs. subjective meanings might reveal.

And let’s not forget empathy; What do you want your audience to think, feel, say, and do? You can always test your photos to ensure they convey the right and bias-free message you meant.

And as always for better results, validate your ideas with your ongoing customer research.

So when you have an important message to convey to support a particular business objective, consider using narrative photos that place your viewers in the driving seat as they complete the story in their minds.

All it takes is planting just the right visual triggers to create this magic.

Best,

- Shlomi 

Shlomi Ron
Founder/CEO, Visual Storytelling Institute
story > visual > emotion > experience

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