Alyice on January 4th, 2007

A Photo Essay

Just as a group of words woven together tell a story, so do a group of photographs. Many think of photo essays as a series of shots taken in a timed sequence and showcased in linear form, but a photo essay is so much more than that.

A photo essay is life in the making. It’s about evoking emotion and telling a story. It’s about changing the way we view history while preserving history for future generations. It’s about being real.

A photo essay can be as creative as a collage of pictures, or as simple as grouping a set of photographs together to be displayed in a photo album, a story book, a scrapbook, a slideshow, or a wall hanging.

The photographs can be cropped to remove distracting and irrelevant areas and enhanced through a digital darkroom, but they should never be altered in such a way that they no longer tell the true story. In other words, images should not be manipulated to make the pictures say something that never really happened—taking “creative” license with photographs should be saved for fine art, not tell a photo essay.

Just as a written essay has a beginning, a middle, and an end, so must a photo essay. The photo essay can be as short as three pictures, or as large as a hundred, but it must have order and it must convey a story. If it’s not telling a story in chronological time, it should be telling a story through a theme.

A theme could be an event such as a birthday party or wedding or a day spent baking in the kitchen. It could be a picnic in the park, or surfing the tides. It could be the simple act of opening a gift, laughing with loved ones, or saying goodbye to distant relatives. It could be anything you want it to be, as long as the message is unified and clear.

And finally, the photo essay can be accompanied by brief captions or sound bytes: words that further tell the story, or left alone, allowing the pictures to speak for themselves.

For a great tutorial on photo essays, visit Apple Computer’s website where a middle school teacher by the name of Anthony Cody teaches his class to develop photo essays using video slideshows, digital images, and storytelling techniques.

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