BUILDING STORIES
A picture is worth a 1000 words. A truism if there ever was one. While all images tell a story some do it far better than others. Why is this so? If we create images not only for our own enjoyment but also for the enjoyment of others then it is necessary to make those visual stories the strongest possible. An image that does not contain a strong story loses its distinctiveness and is visually relegated to the “ordinary” or “What am I supposed to look at” categories.
This starts with the need to keep the composition as simple and as visually uncluttered as possible. One of the benefits that come from the use of simplicity is the development of a narrative. Eliminate just enough visual information and the viewer will try to determine what happened before and what happened after the picture was created. (What was the snowy owl doing and what was the fate of the sik-sik?)
To enhance an image’s visual appeal, we need to push beyond the concept of a photograph as simply a slice of time or a visual document. This is where our imagination comes into play as it transcends these concepts to create the idea or story point of the image you will try to construct in the camera. Photography and reality have been inextricably linked since its inception but we have come to understand that the definition of the reality created in a photograph is rather arbitrary.
Whether creating or looking at a photograph, both photographer and viewer utilize their imaginations to formulate their own interpretations. We all have emotions and a compelling image can pull them from us in the same way a moth is pulled towards a flame
Our imagination tends to produce the strongest images when it is triggered by strong emotional responses.
This is the magic of an image that tells a story. As the creators of visual works, our challenge is to turn our photography into the art of transforming a simple image into a story - a story that can speak to the minds and imaginations of those who look upon our work. Producing an image that does this well requires that we create a composition that first draws the viewer’s attention to the story and then allows them to be influenced by the pictorial narrative.
Determining what to use in a composition
is first influenced by our perceptions of the contents of the world around us.
How we perceive a scene is a function of how our brains process the visual information coming from our eyes and other senses. The result of this processing is that we perceive images and subjects as a whole rather than in parts. This method of processing has a direct impact on our photographic creativity as we interpret a scene based on the results of our brains combining the “parts” and giving us a visual “whole”. While this is what we may see, what we are really responding to is the parts, the building blocks that came together to make the whole.
As creative artists, it is imperative that, as we visualize, we become aware
of the components that really make up the scene before us.
While it is important to place labels on things to help us identify what it is we are seeing, this simple act of labeling begins to limit our awareness of the essence of the thing we have labeled.
These visual elements: line, shape, texture, color, etc. are to photography what grammar is to language. Without an understanding of the former, you cannot have the latter (or at least one that can be understood).
It is difficult for us to abstract down to such parts as we are taught to see the obvious. This can take some effort as we filter out much of what we see (and hear), reducing the incoming stimulus to our senses so that we are not overly distracted. In many ways this is not such a bad thing as walking out in front of a speeding car is not conducive to one’s creativity. We do not need to know its texture, color, etc. just that the car is solid and fast approaching.
To enhance our creativity, it is important for us to see through the obvious in order to understand the nature of a subject or scene. For it is that essence that really stirred our interest to begin with. You will also find that by turning off the filters you will begin to see your world with a new set of eyes.
Plain ordinary subjects (like the grass clump surrounded by water) can become marvelous to behold and fodder for the creative imagination.
If photographing subjects such as a cityscape, we need to look beyond the gross forms or shapes of the buildings and become aware of the fact that they also consist of more subtle design elements that are much less tangible and, in some cases, not even material.
These elements are what combine to give substance and character to the subject as a whole. They must be the real building blocks of your composition as they are the true essence of your subject or theme and end up playing a greater role in determining a composition’s visual strength (or weakness) than the gross forms of which they are a part.
This is evident in the Queen Anne’s lace images. At first glance it is a tall plant covered with white blooms that umbrella out from the ends of the stems. While the large mass of white was the first thing I saw, it was the graphic array of lines (the flower’s stems) that was the real essence of the scene and what my visualization and imagination locked on to. Photographing upwards against a cloudy sky and overexposing three stops visually removed the obvious (flower clusters) and emphasized the merely obvious (stem arrays). The result was a graphic element-based image that was visually stronger than one of the overall plant.
Conditioning, whether caused by life experiences, social or cultural factors, can be a hinderance to our creativity. One of the downsides of being conditioned to only see the obvious is that:
we tend to ignore aspects of a scene that have no physical properties.
These aspects generally come in the form of tones (e.g., shadows and glare spots) or colors. Ignoring these physical intangibles can lead to images with unwanted distractions in the composition. Being aware of them though can create the option of choosing how to use them as part of the compositional design.
Such is the case of the image of the Gentoo penguin and its shadow. While the shadow has no physical properties it has visual properties that our brains treat as physical entities. Knowing this, I deliberately went about creating an image that made use of the shadow’s design properties.
Perceiving these visual elements early in the creative process helps us to make decisions concerning perspective, use of space, and relationships as well as which focal length and depth-of-field to use. They become the building blocks we use to construct the image in the camera that our imagination has already created in our minds.
Effectively combining the right set of design elements allows a viewer to process the visual information contained within just as if they were viewing the scene directly - but without all of the visual clutter.
When the visual grammar of an image is properly structured,
its imagery, as well as its message, is strengthened.
In addition to both these physical and visual building blocks there is one other element that should be considered in story building. It is one that I feel has the strongest connection to our emotions: mood. Mood can be created via such aspects as exposure choices, weather, facial expressions, and dominate color. If they are incorporated in the proper degree to match the idea or theme of the image then they serve to focus, refine, and enhance the story.
In addition to both these physical and visual building blocks there is one other element that should be considered in story building. It is one that I feel has the strongest connection to our emotions: mood. Mood can be created via such aspects as exposure choices, weather, facial expressions, and dominate color. If they are incorporated in the proper degree to match the idea or theme of the image then they serve to focus, refine, and enhance the story.
- Mark Lissick