Every Picture Tells a Story

I know not all my readers are US-based, but I hope those that celebrate the 4th of July have had a wonderful day! It’s amazing to think that our country is 250 years old, yet when you think of Europe and other countries, we are ‘spring chickens’.

Now, on to other things! I’ve been super busy building out my new website to come soon, editing photographs, etc., and while I do I often listen to podcasts about photography and other things.

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I remember someone once saying “The trouble is, we spend 1/60 second making the photograph and the rest of our lives explaining it.” That is so often right! And one has to ask, why?

Did we not express our feelings through the image making process? Is the image not telling a story? There could be many reasons.

I love this quote by Elliott Erwitt: The whole point of taking pictures is so that you don't have to explain things with words.

It’s easy to understand how a photograph that is non-nature can tell a story; there are usually people involved, some action, or moment, etc., The following few photographs are good examples of how words aren’t really needed in editorial or travel photographs if we’ve done our work to see and capture a moment.

I think you get the story from the images above. Being journalistic in nature, they fulfill a ‘who, what, when where…’ list of things that help to tell the story. They are moments in time.

In nature photography, though, we don’t have humans involved. Although animals can certainly gesture and create moments and stories, what about other subjects? Can a landscape or small scene express a story? I believe the answer is yes.

Generally speaking, the nature photographs we create, if we are successful, should be able to stand on their own without a lot of words to support them; or any words, for that matter.

I thought about this a lot the other day, and decided that I would share photographs in this post that I feel don’t require words to explain them. I think you will either ‘get’ the story, or make up one of your own while viewing them. When I am creating art for sale as fine art prints, I want the images to express what I felt or saw. I don’t plan on including a caption along with each print. The image must stand alone.

If we think about telling a story when working on a larger landscape, we can create images that will stand on their own. Even in small scenes, the intimate landscapes, we can tell a story - perhaps by metaphor.

That’s all for this week’s post. Have a great week ahead!