Mail Bag. #1.

After my interview with Lani Barbitta, she suggested to me that I do a mail bag where readers could send me questions and I would do my best to answer them. I'll research the heck out of them.

So, how to get hold of me? Well, email works the best. Either here on the blog chris@chrislemmenphotography.ca or through my flickr mail, pilphoto@yahoo.com. The flickr mail may be the fastest.

So here we go......

Today's Mail Bag question comes from my good friend Lani Barbitta.

"Hey Chris, I have kinda a writer's block (if you may) when it comes to the concept of storytelling in a photograph. What do you feel about the process and how would you describe it?"

Wow, that's a big topic for my first mail bag question. What Lani is talking about here is Photojournalism. Telling the story with one or a few photographs. What I've learned about this is you have to think of it in the same way as writing a story. You need the who, what, where, when and how of the story.

• Who - Make sure you have a who in your photo.

• What - Try to show what is going on.

• Where - Make sure it is a wide enough view that the viewer can see the surroundings.

• When - Day, night, spring, fall, winter. Something like that.

• How - Try to show how the what is being done by the who you know where. LOL.

These can be in the caption for the photograph but should be obvious in the photo itself.

Well, that's all fine and dandy but how the heck do we accomplish that? Practice. Yup. Practice seeing those five elements. Telling a story isn't about the subject like we do with portraits or landscape. It's about the action going on. The firefighters battling that huge blaze, the rescue workers working to free someone from their totalled car. Or a city official cutting the tape on the new hospital wing. Still showing the who, what, where, when and how as best we can.

Let me try to show this in one of my photos here. It's a group of kids running a race. I'll add a caption.

Jacob Lemmen (who) pours on the steam (how?)  in the 2 to 4 year old race (what) at Fork Lake Subdivision (where) this past Labour Day weekend (when).

That should tell a pretty good story of what was going on. I think this would work well in the local paper or the subdivision's news letter.

I can turn this into a photo story by adding some extra photos.

This one should go before the one above.

Fork Lake Subdivison kids warm up before the races begin this past Labor Day weekend.

Then these would follow the original photo.

The three legged race claims another victim in the 5 and up category.

Parachutes and rubber balls equal popcorn!

Finally what it's all about, kids scramble and this photographer gets pelted as candy flies from the parachute.

Of course, this is just my understanding of the process. I may be way off. My thoughts on this may evolve as I practice. I hope this helps anyone who has been thinking on this subject. Those of us on Unit 5 in the NYIP Complete Course In Professional Photographer certainly are.

Please leave me a comment on this or send me a question for the mail bag.

Chris.