Narrative photography is basically visual storytelling. This can take the form of either a singular photo, or a series of images. Photo essays can either be a linear or non-linear narrative. The difference between the two being that a linear story has a clear beginning middle or end, often chronologically. Creating a photographic essay entails finding a subject, researching the story and deciding on the specific images you want to take. Becoming an expert in what you’re photographing is necessary for framing your narrative so that you know  your understanding of it is all-encompassing – there could be a perspective on the topic that you’re missing out on! Not doing this could mean you also miss out on some more interesting or in-depth images. Once you have done this, planning out the specific images is integral to the photo series. There are five kinds of images that will often be found in a photoessay which are particularly important to the planning phase. Additionally, having these kinds of shots planned can be helpful when it comes to final image selection after the images are shot:

The first being an establishing shot that introduces the subject and/or locationA portrait, being an image of your subject within a scene
Action/process shots, showing the subject doing something pertinent to the narrative
A detail shot, adding a close up image of something relevant to the story
The final is the closing shot, which should wind-up a narrative, or feel like the final piece of the puzzle

Practical Activity
This week we had to put our knowledge of narrative photography to the test by capturing a quick photoessay during class time. I decided on the very simple narrative of climbing a flight of stairs. As we didn’t have time to sit down and plan out a narrative, the images are loosely based on the shot list which we had just learned about.

Although this was a very simple narrative example, I felt that doing so would allow me to focus more on the kinds of shots I would need to frame to tell the story.