Picture Stories

Picture stories are essential for most mainstream physical media, from magazine spreads to blog posts online. For years we have been using text and photos to reiterate a story, from newspapers to scientific textbooks. However in photography terms a picture story is using a series of shots with adept text to tell a narrative. As in the examples above, it’s clear some use a more creative approach in all black and white scattered pictures with text in between and some use a more direct, documentary style. It depends on the narrative the page is trying to tell. 

St Malo Picture Stories

Having taken photos (street photography) of the st malo streets and the people in them I would like to use them to create a picture story, showing and explaining parts of St Malo from a photographers perspective. I’d like to do something show casing certain joining points in photos, like photos with an abundance of certain colours and maybe one telling a narrative about the people, whether locals or tourists. 

How Will I Create My Picture Story?

Using in design I can completely customise the page spreads before printing. I will start with the same layout for all of them and then place the photos in, moving the text and flow of the page to fit the images. There is a particular way to approach a photo story, mainly using an establishing shot, this is the main attention pulling photo on the page, often the biggest and drawing the eye around the rest of the page. It’s important that this shot grabs the viewers attention and gives a small overview into the narrative you are telling. I will also before adding text look at how the images flow on the page, by not having text it removes distractions and allows me to focus on how well the photos flow around the page and if the story is interesting without the text. This also allows me time to check the images all work together and nothing is too different or confusing.