 How's it? How's it? Storytelling in photography can take many forms. Most of you are probably familiar with the documentary. That's, you know, the person, the combat photographer who goes off and brings us back. Those images of people at war. Then there are the artists, people like Dwayne Michaels who create narrative within not just one photograph but a sequence of photographs in a way that tells us a visual novel. And then there's people like Tim Walker who create fantastical worlds that are just one image but have the depth to them that suggests so much more about what's going on there just outside of the fringes of the image. As a young photo student our focus at photo school was predominantly on documentary photography and a little bit of commercial. And it was there that we began to sort of think about the power of the photograph not just as a single image. Of course single images are extremely powerful but as a series of photographs that work together to lead the viewer through a series of events. And a fantastic example of this is Larry Burroughs and his photo story arrived with Yankee Papa 13. And you see through these photographs that are on screen now that I don't really need to tell you very much about what's actually going on, you know with this young helicopter crew in Vietnam that the images are leading you along this story. And that's what makes them so powerful and that's what makes documentary photography not just a series of individual photographs but you need to think about it as well as a story that it has chapters it has a beginning and it has an end. If you want to pursue documentary photography then you need to think about it this way that you need to think about it as a story, as a whole. Not just try and concoct the story after you've taken all the pictures. See without even telling you the story of Yankee Papa 13 you got the feeling for the emotions that came through that. I like a little bit of arty fartsiness in my photography from time to time and as a young wannabe photographer I used to you know get copies of practical photography and I would read them on the bus go into school and one morning there was in those pages a photo series called Things Are Queer by a photographer called Dwayne Michaels and immediately I was struck by this because it's a cyclical photo story so it just loops on itself never ending like a like a moebius strip of images and I was like well how where does this start what was the first photograph that Dwayne took to you know get the whole ball rolling and then I discovered more about his photographer so that he does a number of these these photo series that all kind of are slightly open to interpretation that they are one of these kind of quirky worlds or a vignette of something that you can imagine is happening just somewhere else. He also does something that I'm in two minds about which is writing either a title or a caption or like a mini short story next to the image and I say I'm in two minds about it because on one hand there's part of me that goes well if you need to write things then you're kind of the photos missed the point and it's not really telling you stuff visually but then on the other hand I go ah okay well Dwayne is creating a narrative for us to guide us on a story and he has written it down so it's not open to interpretation so it's not really you know left to the viewer to make their own journey through it he's given us a signpost saying look that's the way that you go so I do find that encourage him and I think had he have not done the photo stories or something then I might have gone well you know he can't use visuals only but then of course he can and there's a little sort of side note is stuff if you break rules on purpose but then show somebody that you can do something with intent in your photography then it makes it more acceptable instead of just kind of doing quirky things right then people go well you don't know how to do things properly and and Dwayne does this all of his work and that you know in the third part did he looks you know at Renny Magritte and I had to just check that earlier because I've made this mistake before just throwing out a name it's completely the wrong name but you know these photographs of Renny Magritte use technical processes you know double exposures all these kind of things to play with the portrait that could just be you know a very run-of-the-mill thing because you know Magritte is famous by himself he doesn't need Dwayne Michaels but because there's such a wonderful you know connection between Dwayne's work and Magritte's work that they come together they play off of each other I find that absolutely fascinating so don't dismiss the idea of using technical and you know let's say esoteric processes double exposures and things of that nature to create a world that invites the viewer in in a way that kind of suggests there's something else more going on fashion photography has its own worlds doesn't it I mean that's if we're talking about creating fantastical worlds and things of that nature then fashion photography absolutely and they are prime examples of the let's say the single image storytelling because they are sets that are constructed and put together with a very specific idea in mind and there's a photographer called Tim Walker he says pick it up this book you may notice some of these books are getting quite heavy right he's got a lovely um yeah I'll just get that out of the thing there he's got some lovely setups through his photography and and again you know he's leaning towards the surreal and I don't want you to think when you kind of look at all the photographs in this example we're talking about storytelling with the exception of course of Larry Burroughs that storytelling needs to be bizarre that it needs to be something weird it doesn't need to be it can be extremely mundane but these are all just ideas about how you can employ storytelling within your own photography in Tim Walker's case you know obviously they are designed to sell clothes and and to illustrate pieces and and what are the what is the purpose actually of fashion spreads um your answers in the comments below I don't know um but you know when you look at these these worlds I love the idea that a lot of them feel decadent they feel like you want to be there but you don't quite want to inhabit that place but if you could that'll be cool there's thinking the reason why these images do work is because of exactly that that they are they're recognizable and yet the world isn't quite the one that we know you could do this in your own photography by taking and I hesitate to use the word stereotype but taking convention taking things that are expected and just giving them a little twist photographing reflections I've seen a lot of work recently where photographers have been using reflections as the main source of the image and that's an interesting way again it vegs you know you see how easy it is to drift into the arena of the surreal but once you explore these ideas once you think about the idea of a narrative that goes through like the documentary photographers and people like W. Jean Smith and you know Dorothy Lang all the people in the FSA and the magnum you know group they all understood that narrative the surreal approaches of people like Dwayne Michaels who use either again a narrative that they've planned out or you know using text and wording on the on the print itself or using technical ideas double exposures to create interest and then these single images that are about a world that is probably familiar but yet not quite familiar these are three ways that you could explore story in photography one of the things I haven't mentioned but I think it's important to include just here is if you are doing portraits of a person and you don't want to go to the crazy route of you know surrealistic kind of things or fancy you know setups or what have you but you still want to create a story is that you need to have something in the person's eyes and I don't mean catch lights I mean they need to be thinking about something when they sit and they stare amrod straight just blank at the camera there's nothing there there's no story but when you ask them to think about something when their child was born or something they're really proud of doing or the opposite end of that spectrum when a parent passed away or a pet you know ask them to explore that space within ask them to feel those emotions coming up and allow them to flow through their eyes and into the camera then you end up with a portrait that grabs the person viewing it because there is story in that subject's face another photographer who gives us a fourth way of telling stories is Obi-Wan Hauser and I would suggest you check out his video over here thank you once again ever so much for watching and I will see you again soon