Photo Stories

A visual story is often called a ‘photo essay’ or ‘photo story’. Photo stories allow photographers to narrate a story with a series of photographs. Images are ordered in a specific way with the aim of the viewer seeing them as a story rather than a series of images. Captions are often used with photo essays but it is the images themselves that should be telling the story – the caption is only there to provide some context.

Stories in a Single Shot

It doesn’t have to be a series of photographs that tells a story; stories can be told in one photograph. For example the one below. This photograph was captured in 1968 by Eddie Adams in Vietnam. Adams thought that he was watching the interrogation of a prisoner but to his surprise, as he looked through his viewfinder he saw a pistol being raised to the prisoner’s head. This photograph caught the emotion and action of everyone involved and showed the world what life is like in different places from just one photograph.