Planning and Capturing a Photo Story
By James Gilberd
I
n what is now known as the Golden Age of
Photography – loosely the 1930s-1950s, the picture
story was king. The best photographers, such as Henri
Cartier-Bresson, W. Eugene Smith, and Margaret Bourke-
White were household names (try thinking of a current
photographer who’s a household name!) and magazines
such as Vu (France), Life (USA) and Picture Post (UK) were
people’s main source for images of world events. That
was until television came along and ruined it!
These magazines all had specialised picture editors,
whose craft was to edit (select, size, crop) the photos
into picture stories. Examples of famous picture stories
are W. E. Smith’s ‘Minamata’ and ‘Spanish Village’,
and our own Brian Brake’s ‘Monsoon’.Once colour photography took over, picture editors
would place the photographer’s developed slides
(transparencies) on a light box and examine them in
detail using a loupe magnifier before selecting which
photos to print. As you can imagine, photographers and
picture editors often argued over the published story.
“How dare you crop that photo, the composition was
perfect in camera!” Or “You left out my best shot!”
Nowadays, we photographers can do our own post-
production work so no clash of egos need occur!
If you’re a photographer who is always working towards
capturing that one perfect shot, consider putting that
approach aside and try using your camera to describe
an event or location using a number of images. Initially,
six photos is a good number to aim for.
TV programmes and movies are put together using a
variety of shots:- Long Shot, or Wide Shot: the overall location and
people (establishing shot). - Full Shot: a person head to foot, and surrounds.
Mid Shot: a person from the waist up.
Close Up: head and maybe shoulders.
Extreme Close Up: just the eyes, or some other
small detail.
We can use the above list as a starting point to
make our own photo story more interesting. Shoot
in both portrait (upright) and landscape (horizontal)
frames and include compositional techniques such
as high viewpoint (looking down), low angle, wide
and telephoto shots as well as including foreground
elements to frame your subject.
Before you cover an event (such as Wellington’s
CubaDupa festival), write yourself a shot list by
imagining some of the photos you might aim to get.
Try to make this as varied as you can. Having a shot list
is a professional tip to help cover-off the assignment
with varied and interesting images.
Once you have your photos, you can select the
ones for final consideration digitally. Try this: use your
software to edit down to your 20 or so photos and
print them out, postcard size (10x15cm). This is cheap
as chips. Then lay them out on a clear table and
start moving them around, putting this one next to
that, and you will see that some photos ‘talk to each
other’ while others don’t. Gradually pare it down to six
photos that tell your story.
There should be variety in your final six; an establishing
shot, a strong close up, and other things between.
Remember:- No photo should do the same job as another.
- Find graphic and formal relationships between
shots. - It helps if there’s some visual harmony between
them all. - Be prepared to exclude your best shot if it doesn’t
fit the series!
By planning to work in series, editing down from a
wide selection of photos to a coherent set of images
that conveys a strong sense of the event or location,
you will quickly develop your photographic eye, your
editing skills, and learn to pre-visualise images as well
as being alert and in the moment to capture that
‘must have’ image when it presents itself.
Get your final selection together, tweak the files a
bit and go make a decent sized print of each (A4 or
larger). You’ll have a small portfolio of photos that
work together to tell a story that reaches far beyond
what a single image can tell.
Remember that the best photographers are the
ones who have learned to recognise what they’ve
shot and to know how to select and present their
photographs in their own way. This is an important
aspect to achieving a personal photographic style.