A picture story is a group of images, roughly ranging from 6-8 pictures. For a picture story to be powerful, it contains 7 types of shots, including:
- Person at Work
- Relationship Shot
- Establishing Shot
- Detail Shot
- Environmental Portrait
- Formal Portrait
- Observed Portrait
Person at Work – These photographs are very realistic and usually quite natural. These photographs makes you think about the types of things they do and why they are doing them. They make you think about the context more, and why the context is important.
Relationship Shot – A relationship shot doesn’t always have to be the stereotypical loving relationship. It can range from love to hate, abusive to affectionate etc. It can also be an emotional thing, such as the relationship between workers, or the relationship between two objects. It is important to notice the key aspect of the relationship, how it works and why are they apparent.
Establishing Shot – This is one of the most important aspect to the picture story. It portrays the main context of the story, giving out detail of where it is and what is happening. It describes key aspects of the story.
Detail Shot – These type of images range from doing close-ups of objects to images of people. Commonly, I did detailed shots for some of my portraiture work last year. I think this images are very effective and enabled the audience to focus on the foreground rather than everything that is going on in the picture.
Environment Portrait – An environmental portrait is a portrait executed in the subject’s usual environment, such as in their home or workplace, and typically illuminates the subject’s life and surroundings. By photographing a person in their natural surroundings, it is thought that you will be able to better illuminate their character, and therefore portray the essence of their personality, rather than merely a likeness of their physical features. It is also thought that by photographing a person in their natural surroundings, the subject will be more at ease, and so be more conducive to expressing themselves, as opposed to in a studio, which can be a rather intimidating and artificial experience.
Formal portrait – A portrait is an image of a person’s face that clearly displays their likeness and may often display some aspect of their personality. A formal portrait is not a snapshot but a carefully arranged pose under effective lighting conditions.
Observed portrait – These images have more than one person in. The main focus to the image is the person getting a portrait taken, but there is always another person in the image ‘observing’, it doesn’t have to show their face just their presence.
