A Story Starter
I do not know why, but this little boy reminds me of all of the sweet little boys in my life.
It was looking pretty bad for me to get a blog written this week. For the life of me, I could not come up with a topic except why I think you should not put a watermark on a photo. I am not that desperate, yet. I had reconciled myself that I simply would skip this week. You have no idea what personal progress it is that I could even consider skipping. In the beginning, I kept 10 blogs written and ready to go. I can get rather anxious about meeting deadlines. The silver lining to the pandemic is my acceptance that it is not always the case that, “The show must go on.” I now write with what I believe is called in logistics, on time delivery. I write on Tuesday, secure photos on Wednesday and publish on Thursday. Unbelievably, it is more or less working.
My understanding of street photography has grown so much since I started looking at the many photos that the members of Inspired Street Photography post every day. It has been its own little art school for me. Step one was learning to recognize the elements of good composition. I comment about that tirelessly, or perhaps tiresomely. I think I am now at Stage 3 of the psychological consciousness model. I know I know, but I have to make a conscious effort to execute, which in this case means, identify and comment. I am getting close to the day when seeing elements of composition are second nature. I look forward to reaching the final stage which is that I don’t know I know.
Step 2 in this art curriculum was learning to track how my eye moves around a picture. This is still a work in progress. The challenge for photographers, particularly in this digital age, is to keep their viewer’s attention for more than a millisecond. If you have compelling paths in your image, your viewer will likely subconsciously follow them. You get their viewing time as a reward.
Step 3 dawned on me this week. Street photographers talk a lot about story. How exactly one gets a story or what the story might be is not so obvious to many of us. However, today I saw a post that cleared up any confusion I might have had about how stories are formed, or at least how my stories are formed.
Photo by Marco Bacci Dei Rossi. Used with permission. You can see Marco’s Facebook gallery at Marco Bacci Dei Rossi and his Instagram gallery at @marco.deirossi.75.
I saw this post and it had surprising impact on me, although initially I did not know why. I decided it must be the splash of the water, so I commented on that. When I looked at the post later, I remembered a defining story from my childhood. My mother would put rain boots on me so I could go out and play. I would then go out, take the boots off, fill them with water from the puddles and put them back on. When I look at that picture what I see is little Diane. With that comes a long narrative about being Peck’s Bad Girl.
Stories are born of the viewer’s personal experience. Sometimes stories come to me because I pair a photo and a song in my mind. I was looking for an example of such a photo and it turned out one was in my own backyard, so to speak. I posted this and one of the comments was that it reminded the viewer of the song, “What the World Needs Now.” My viewer went on to observe that he was listening to the song and getting a little weepy. I do relate to that.
The question becomes, once we know how personal stories are, how can we possibly be intentional about starting a story through a photo? I think capturing universal experiences gives us a good chance. For example, a person interacting with a dog is likely to trigger memories for a lot of viewers. A well conveyed mood in a photo also is likely to strike a chord in viewers as well as interesting expressions, gestures or body language. Unexpected or unusual things happening will cause the viewer to, at least, try and imagine what is going on, perhaps through quick reviews of their personal experiences.
Photo by Pedro Boiça. Used with permission. You can see Pedro’s Instagram gallery at @bekas.lylx.
This silhouette is an unusual character. I saw the character, Carl Fredricksen, from Disney movie, Up. Pedro saw Benjamin Franklin. That is the start of two very different stories.
Photo by Pavel Tůma. Used with permission. You can see Pavel’s Facebook gallery at Pavel Tůma.
I laughed when I saw this. But it also resonated with me because my little granddaughter, who is quite committed to wearing dresses, will also wear long pants to keep warm. Why didn’t my mother think of that?
Photo by Sue Darby. Used with permission. You can see Sue’s Facebook gallery at Negra’s Photography and her Flickr gallery at negra223.
I laughed at this highly unusual catch. Who can fail to wonder what is happening here?
Understanding how I experience a photo does not necessarily change how I take a photo. But I think over time it possibly can. As I have come to understand what compositional elements draw me, I have been more deliberate in seeking those kinds of opportunities. We will see if I can learn to recognize paths that might move an eye through a scene. Perhaps as I increase my awareness of stories I see in other photographer’s posts, I will learn to recognize story making opportunities for myself.