I’m currently presenting one of my favorite photography talks: Storytelling for Photographers.
Great storytelling will help an audience connect emotionally to your images, but understanding how to weave narrative into your photography is far from obvious. Contact me for bookings.
I’ve presented my talks over 250 times since 2020. Each one is an exploration into Narrative Photography, using videos and photos from my photoshoots here in Mexico.
What an amazing photography talk! JP’s work transcends photography alone.
JP has spent the last decade photographing the same group of Mexica, or Azteca, dancers. In that time he learned how connected the Mexica are to their mythology, to ancient stories passed down across generations. That’s when he realised that, as these stories were so vital to Mexica culture, they needed to play a bigger role in his portraits.
Thought provoking and inspirational. Unlike anything we have had before!
This is a photography talk is about what happened next. About how a desire to tell stories visually, ended up changing his entire creative process, and the way people react to his photos. Using examples from his cultural photography work in Mexico, JP Stones explores different ways to improve that emotional connection. Including how myths and character archetypes can be harnessed for better storytelling.
Working with narratives won’t just change the way people engage with your photos, it will fundamentally change the way you create them. Because that narrative can also be used to guide decisions on posing, composition, lighting, and color. Focusing your creative decisions and ensuring you create cohesive work.
An incredible presentation! Our members are still talking about this!
JP has presented for professional organizations and camera clubs across the US, Mexico, and the UK. His work has been featured on the cover of multiple publications, including Good Light Magazine. He’s been teaching his Cultural Workshops for close to 10 years. You can watch him present below on his YouTube channel.
What you get when you purchase this Storytelling for Photographers: a live 90 minutes photography talk by JP Stones followed by a live Q&A session. This photography talk is available in English, French and Spanish.
Book Storytelling for Photographers Now!
TOPICS DISCUSSED IN THIS PHOTOGRAPHY TALK
- How much of a story can one photo really tell?
- How being more intentional can changed your approach to photography.
- How photography can be about making an emotional connection as well as creating beautiful work.
- How thinking in stories can help guide your entire creative decision-making process.
GET A FEEL FOR WHAT MY PHOTOGRAPHY TALKS ARE ALL ABOUT
My YouTube channel is a good way to get a feel for who I am.
PHOTOGRAPHY TALKS TESTIMONIALS
See what people who attended my photography talks had to say:
We are all still talking about our evening with JP!
We are all still talking about our evening with JP. He is a dream guest for Camera Clubs! Affordable, humble, quick to respond and equally good in front of the camera as he is behind it!
It was fascinating to explore your mindset!
Thank you so much for your inspirational talk this evening. It was fascinating to explore your mindset and process in creating narrative images. The talk provided a lot of discussion and food for thought. It was universally well received by the Society.
Une excellente conférence!
Nous avons assisté à une excellente conférence de JP Stones. JP nous a fait évolué dans la compréhension de la narration visuelle en photographie. Ses commentaires étaient justes, pertinents et ses photos magnifiques! Je veux aussi remercier JP pour sa générosité et aussi de nous avoir si bien aidé à passer à un autre niveau! Tout ça, dans un excellent français! Merci encore!
Thank you for your inspiring and beautiful talk tonight.
Thank you for your inspiring and beautiful talk tonight. So refreshing to hear about your work being about emotion, intention and narrative.
Informative and inspirational!
I want to give my extreme thanks for your talk you gave thursday night. It was very informative and inspirational. I am extremely grateful for the time you put into it!
We highly recommend this talk!
Thank you for the presentation. We all thought it was a great learning lesson about Intentions and Lighting and Storytelling in photography. We highly recommend it to anyone or group that wants to increase their "narrative" abilities!
We are all enriched by this experience.
JP's method asks the photographer to build cohesion by being true to the intention and letting slip those rules we have all been taught about how portraits "should" be shot. The beauty of this method is how it helps produce narrative work of power. Any scenario, properly planned, will likely produce powerfully narrative results. JP's work is exceptional and inspiring. His delivery was well paced, comprehensive and motivational . He brought the exotic into our homes - and a new method into our thought processes. We are all enriched by this experience.
So much more we could hear you share with us about this topic!
It seems like there is still so much more we could hear you share with us about this topic! Your presentation on Storytelling for Photographers was very informative and very enjoyable.
Thanks so much for the inspiration!
On behalf of our Camera Club, I just want to forward a big thank you for your inspiring presentation last night. Your thoughts and approach on how you have evolved and improved to reach current level was an amazing story in itself, and personally I walked away with a lot of ideas on how to change my approach to photography and hopefully improve the final result, and I am confident that will be the case for most of the audience as well. I have always thought that a story-telling element always separates the great images from the good images. Thanks so much for the inspiration!
You gave us new ways to look at photography!
Your presentation last night to the Sierra Camera Club was entertaining and educational. You gave us new ways to look at photography which gives us opportunities to broaden what we shoot and create art. You used your striking mages well to illustrate your message. Thank you
I found your talk both engaging and inspirational.
I would also like to personally add my thanks for last night. I found your talk both engaging and inspirational, and the photography was excellent. Thanks once again.
Cool presentation and great insights. I really enjoyed the talk.
Cool presentation and great insights. I really enjoyed the talk.
So many positive comments from our club!
It was great - so many positive comments from our club. Its talks like yours that make us bless the invention and use of zoom.
Wow! That was the best presentation I’ve seen in a long time.
JP. Wow! That was the best presentation I’ve seen in a long time. Your images are absolutely brilliant! The use of the word “story” in the context of photography has always troubled me. But the way you explained things, it really gave me a much better understanding of the term and how to go about visually communicating it. Thank you so much for the presentation. I have a limited number of living photographers that I call my favorites and I have now added your name to that list.
It was a real inspiration and learning experience.
Thank you for sharing your process and amazing work. It was a real inspiration and learning experience. The feedback from our members on your presentation has been excellent. Our club has an amazing number of great photographers, but everyone I have spoken with took away something they could use from your talk.
In awe of your fabulous storytelling!
It was an absolute pleasure to host you on Monday evening. Our members felt totally inspired and in awe of your fabulous storytelling! Many many thanks for your time given to entertain and educate us all with some absolutely jaw-dropping images.
Everyone enjoyed the striking photography!
Thanks very much for the extremely interesting presentation. I loved the way you were so honest about how you felt about your work and it was interesting to see how sometimes, just a tiny change can make such a huge difference in a photo (I'm thinking of your Mother's Day image). There were definitely some good pointers for all of our club members to keep in mind, and everyone enjoyed the striking photography!
Our members were inspired to get out and try your intentional approach!
Excellent presentation! The club really loved it. Many of our members were inspired to get out and try your intentional approach to visual storytelling!
Your work is mesmerizing!
You just finished giving a presentation on zoom to a few photography clubs, I was part of that zoom meeting and I just wanted to say thank you! Your work is mesmerizing! I've been feeling very stuck with my photography lately and your presentation was full of some great information and inspiration for me personally.
An Incredible Presentation!
Thank you for your incredible presentation.Your talk was like a gift that kept on giving, or maybe like a good story that keeps unfolding. You were so effective in creating a mindset of not just striving to capture a nice image but to establish the framework for conveying a narrative. Your images had so much depth, not just conveyed by creative exposure but through luring the viewers’ imagination into the image. You successfully created captures that prompted questions about the character, more that just viewing a model. Reading between the lines, it was evident though out your presentation that you think and plan your images.
The talk was very enjoyable!
The talk was very enjoyable. It was great hearing JP’s perspective on storytelling in photography and seeing how he has approached it in his career. JP was engaging and informative and had an evident passion and talent for photography. I look forward to seeing how I can apply his ideas shown into my own photography. Thanks again for everything!
Our members were on the edge of their seats for the entire time!
Thanks for an excellent presentation last night! Our members were on the edge of their seats for the entire time!
fantastic photography, well planned out and well delivered!
I would just like to say how we thoroughly enjoyed last night's talk from you. Apart from the fantastic photography, it was full of tips and things I will definitely keep in mind next time I am out with my camera, and also questioning what am I trying to say and what will the person viewing the image take from it? So thank you for such an interesting evening, well planned out and delivered, and we will forgive you for saying how hot it was over there, as we were all wrapped up in our community hall!
I was engrossed all evening and learned much.
have been to many, many camera club presentations and I must say that JP Stones talk on Storytelling in Photography last night was right up there. His photographs are first rate. His location in Mexico gives an interesting new subject setting and perspective I've not seen before. And in the presentation he openly and generously describes his journey and methods of photography. I was engrossed all evening and learned much.
Extremely interesting
Your talk on 'Storytelling for Photographers' was well-received by our members and extremely interesting from a Mexican cultural perspective, it was also very valuable in terms of lighting techniques, use of smoke and and model-management. Thank you!
It was a truly unique learning experience!
JP did a fantastic job describing the path he has been on to develop his photographic style and how it has evolved over time to the present. The images he shares exhibit the care and thought he puts into his photography and telling a story in one photo. It was a truly unique learning experience for me and for most of our photography club. JP was able to explain his unique vision and how other photographers can adopt or adapt it to fit into their future work. I have notes from the presentation that I am sure will help me on my photographic journey.
Our members enjoyed it and were inspired!
Thanks so much for the knowledge and insight you shared with our club. I know our members enjoyed it and were inspired.
The talk was professional, very enjoyable and invaluable!
It was a pleasure for our club to host JP Stones and his presentation on Storytelling for Photographers. It was great hearing JP’s perspective on storytelling and his intent behind his work. JP’s willingness to explain his thought process, showing examples of both his brilliant images as well as mistakes he has made was a real eye opener. The talk was presented in a professional way, was very enjoyable and our members found it invaluable.
You even motivated some individuals to purchase fog machines!
Everybody really enjoyed your presentation last month – very informative. You even motivated some individuals to purchase fog machines. I know Denice got hers 2 days later!
JP presented us with some fantastic images
JP presented us with some fantastic images each telling a story in their own way. JP explained how he creates images that tell a whole story from beginning to end. In his 90 minute talk he explained how he works with narrartives & how they work with creating lighting, composition & the mood for his images. This will help us think about the story when creating our own images.
Book Now! Storytelling for Photographers (90 mins) now $120 USD / 95 GBP.
Have some more questions? Let’s chat!
ABOUT JP STONES
“I started my Cultural Photography Workshops because I was frustrated at not being able to create the travel photos I wanted to. Candid photos are fine, but I wanted my portraits to show the personality and history of the people I was photographing.”
“A great portrait is a blend of multiple factors: the model, the environment, the lighting, and the composition. But as a tourist you can’t control many of these factors. I wanted to change that, bringing tourists and local communities together, in a harmonious way. The more we learn about someone else’s culture, the more we’re likely to embrace and respect it. As a foreigner in Mexico, that idea means a lot to me.”
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