Call & Response

The Call: Waiting for the Boat to Come In — Cheryl

I will tell you something about stories,
[he said]
They aren’t just entertainment.
Don’t be fooled.
They are all we have, you see,
all we have to fight off
illness and death.

You don’t have anything
if you don’t have the stories.

—Leslie Marmon Silko, Ceremony

The Response: All Done! — Jessica

I know I’ve touched on the concept of storytelling in photography before. I guess it’s something I keep coming back to because I can see the vitality and energy that it adds to photographs and I want to have that same feel in my own photos. It’s a difficult concept to execute successfully. Or maybe I’m just really bad at it. ; )

I read a piece the other day that attempted to show some storytelling photos. One of the commenters took the author to task for showing poor examples. He claimed that since the author had to explain so much of the story behind the photo than it wasn’t really an effective storytelling photo.

So, my example: the empty jar of baby food is prominent and you can see the baby in the back. I’m afraid my f-stop was too wide so Danny is little more than pretty baby bokeh. It leaves the photo with a “so what” feel. On the other hand, if the baby had been more in focus and you could see how much food was all over him, than it would have been a funny story: more food on baby than in baby.

So mark this one as another lesson learned.