About Photo Essays
Definition + Purpose
A photographic essay is a form of visual storytelling. It’s a way to document an event or present a narrative through a series of images. A great photo essay is powerful, able to evoke emotion and understanding with or without using words… but in student media, we prefer the ‘WITH.’
“Take me somewhere I can’t go, show me something I can’t see.”
-Dave Davis, ASB
In photo essays, we do this by COMPOSITION, NOVELTY and NARRATIVE strategies.
We make decisions about PRINT or WEB formats.
We consider the purpose of our photo essays. Purposes that the student journalist might consider include EVENT COVERAGE, PROFILES, LISTS, and CONCEPTUAL.
And we make technical choices that will make our photo essays accessible to our audience.
Photo: Sam S. ’22
STRATEGIES
COMPOSITION
Composition strategies help photographers to frame their subjects in unique, unexpected, or even simply effective ways. Unique compositions help us to reconsider what might otherwise be ordinary.
Entire photography courses focus on learning composition strategies—but here are seven tips that even beginners can use to compose more interesting photographs.
RULE OF THIRDS
If you divide your picture into a tic-tac-toe board, your subject should NOT be located in the center square. Place your subject near one of the intersections of the lines.
Why? This gives the viewer room to consider the environment. It also gives your subject visual room to move in the frame.
REPETITION
Repetition of form can add visual interest to images. Two or more subjects repeat to create a pattern—but sometimes the pattern is broken with a different object.
Why? Patterns stick with us in our memory. A little bit of variation calls attention and creates visual interest.
ANGLE
A Worm’s Eye View is a low-to-high angle. A Bird’s Eye View is a high-to-low angle. If you can change the angle or viewpoint of your photograph, you automatically make your subject more interesting.
Why? We normally view things at our own eye level. Change up the angle to turn an everyday image into something unexpected.
STRONG SUBJECT
Photos that emphasize this compositional skill should have a strong, dominant focal point and/or center of interest. Keep your background simple to avoid distractions.
Why? This technique can have a lot of powerful visual impact. Nothing distracts from the subject.
FRAMING
Use natural, unstaged elements to create a frame or border around the subject of the photo, so your audience knows exactly what your focus is. Look for natural frames; you’ll start noticing them all the time!
Why? This strategy helps to leade the viewer’s eye and can give additional context.
LEADING LINES
Look for visual elements that pull your viewers into the composition of your image. Natural leading lines are all over schools—fences, rows, hallways, stairs. But looks can also lead us…
Why? Leading lines can be a powerful strategy to pull the viewer into the middle of a scene they have not considered before.
SELECTIVE FOCUS
Use a shallow depth of field (think: iPhone portrait mode) to achieve a strong center of interest by making sure your desired subject is the only thing in focus.
Why? Selective focus can create strong emotional impact by making us consider the details of the subject in an otherwise blurred-out space.
NOVELTY
When you’re considering creating a photo essay, think about what scenes or situations that your viewers or readers might not otherwise see. The strategy of novelty challenges us to find situations that are unusual, unexpected, or not accessible to the average person.
What are the stories that are unique to your community? What happens only once (or infrequently)? In schools, even though lots of situations can seem everyday (or even boring)—keep in mind that what is mundane to you might be completely unexpected or inaccessible to an outside audience, thus making for a very interesting situation for you to “prove” to your readers with photographs!
The Scot Scoop in Belmont, CA published this multimedia piece—including a photo essay—about the 2018 Camp Fire.
Protests don’t happen every day—not even in 2020. The Kirkwood Call in Kirkwood, MO documented a 2019 climate protest with a photo essay.
Sure, Halloween happens every year—but seeing the costumes from the unique perspective of THIS year’s student body deserves a photo essay! Bearing News, Columbia, MO
NARRATIVE
CAPTIONS MATTER. A caption is the block of text that accompanies a photo in a print or online form. Writing photo captions forces you to go beyond a headshot and tell the story. Captions are essential to most photo essays, because they provide the narrative context for the photo.
From legendary adviser Lori Oglesbee: “Great captions do not begin in a publication lab room. Go out and interview the people who are in the photographs. Find out every detail about what happened immediately before and immediately after the photo was taken. Get the correct spelling of every name. The interviews achieve two purposes, information and interest. Whenever these people are interviewed, the reporter gets secondary information that is not obvious in the photograph, and the interviewee knows that [they] will be included in the yearbook or newspaper.”
There is a formula for writing publication captions, and it’s worth learning…
Minimally, every photo should include at least the names of the people in the photo. Locations and dates are important, too.
Captions narrate the ways that situations are unique. 2020 graduations will someday be primary sources for history—so it was important for these captions to include the details!
FORMATS
A cohesive yearbook spread is a photo essay. All of the photos are united to tell a story of an event, a person, or any other aspect of the school community.
Seek out lots of examples of great yearbook spreads for layout ideas. (Yearbook design is its own craft, worthy of deeper study!)
Photo essays in newspapers might not be quite as common in student journalism, but you can find great examples in magazines.
Check out the monthly issues of the St. Mark’s ReMarker—for content and design ideas. They usually publish at least one a month.
WEB
THERE ARE SO MANY GREAT EXAMPLES OF PHOTO ESSAYS IN PROFESSIONAL PUBLICATIONS ONLINE. Start curating a bookmarks list for ideas and inspiration. Start a bookmark folder. Aim high. You might not have the coding know-how just yet… but these can spark ideas for how you might cover events in your own community.
PURPOSE
KNOW YOUR WHY. You should understand the purpose of your coverage before you start to create your photo essay. Are you documenting an event? Showing us what goes on behind the scenes—with a person, a class, or a team? Curating a list? Or trying to convince your readers of something?
The samples below are not all-inclusive, but provide some examples of purpose for intentional photo essay planning.
EVENT COVERAGE
PROFILES
LISTS & COLLECTIONS
TECHNOLOGY
Most of the tools listed below are primarily for digital/online publication. Adobe InDesign is still a standard for print publication design, although many yearbook companies are offering their own native or Adobe-linked set of tools that are accessible to student publishers.
Don’t let technology be a hurdle. Adobe Spark lets students publish rich photo essays with just a few clicks—even from a Smartphone.
SNO Photo Gallery Feature
Adobe Spark
Video: Creating a Spark Page from your computer
Video: Creating a Spark Page from your phone
Guide for ‘Weekly Theme’ pages — Student option during flexible learning this spring | Student Samples: one / two / three / four
Guide for Digital Portfolios with Specific Projects — Portfolio projects from winter 2019 (Compilation Page: Student Samples)
LucidPress (Print + Web Layouts)