Every picture tells a story. It's the story inside the picture that grabs your attention and gives you a reason to look for more than a moment, or to come back and look again, and again. But it isn't easy to see how a flat, unchanging, picture can really 'tell' a story - so let's start by looking at the 'story power' of a photograph...

Task 1Tell the Story

Look at the picture below and write a short story based around what you see. This might be 3 or 4 sentences only, or could be a whole page or more - just depending on how inspired you are by the picture.

After you've written your own story you can read mine by clicking

HERE.

The beast came lumbering down the street, driven on and on by the mahout deep into the awe-struck crowds. Even the ancient, elegant buildings of Pall Mall were dwarfed and shook as the beast passed by. Then, amongst all this danger and chaos, one small boy.

One small boy thinking " like yeah, how am I supposed to stop that?"...

5 Things to look-out for

• Get-up Close. Be Selective. Make sure the only things in the picture are things you want there - don't let your picture get lost in a lot of extra space all round. Be extra careful about the edges, don't let rogue bits and pieces creep in.
• Don't stick things in the middle - it's just boring. See how the elephant above has more space on the right than the left? The elephant is facing right so I've given it room to move in the picture.
• Try looking up. Try looking down. Photographs should show us something we might not have noticed or thought about. We all see the world from nearly the same place, the height of our eyes above our feet... by laying down or standing on a wall we can show something new.
• Think about balance. Don't scrunch everything up in one corner. If the main subject is dark put it against a light background.
• Think about the 'moment'. Why take the picture right now? Sometimes you have to wait, are the clouds in the right place? is the sunlight falling just right? Have the people moved to the best spot to 'balance' the picture? Because photographs freeze a moment of life, it's a good idea to freeze the right moment - take your time...

Task 2 Make a story

Take a photograph that tells a story using the 'things to think about' I've listed above. While making the picture try to think about how people will 'read' it - what will they take notice of first? and then second? What will they think about what isn't in the picture... what might they think happened before the picture was taken, and what might they think happened afterwards? Write your own story down as well!

Although there's always a story lurking inside any picture, it isn't always the same story for different people! This is a good thing, this is why we want lots of people to look at the pictures we make, to unlock and release all the different stories a picture a can hold. If you want to tell a more definite tale you can try taking a sequence of pictures - for ideas on how this can work take a look at this Flickr group.

More about story telling

Mostly photographic assignments will choose a topic like 'landscapes', or 'people' - and although I intend to cover those in detail, it seemed important to start with something that really looks at why we take photographs.

To say every picture tells a story might be stretching the point a bit - sometimes it's really hard to see a story but the photograph still works anyway. This probably doesn't matter - as the assignments develop we'll see other ways of creating photographs that work; it isn't always about story telling. The most important thing is to think about why you want to take the picture and what you want others to see or think. You see, pictures don't have to be important, great, or beautiful - they just have to show something clearly. The best pictures are simple pictures, that 'talk' to people.

don't be scared of heights... jump right in! Tell a good clear story and you pictures will be easily as good as anyone else's.