Storytelling for Photographers – Narrative Composition

Storytelling for Photographers – Narrative Composition

Storytelling is Powerful. It’s also confusing. Why does composition even affect how we interpret a photo? In Episode 2, we dig into advanced composition techniques. We look at how you can create a composition that helps further your narrative.

Highlights

– Why does composition matter?
– How can composition work with your narrative?
– What is Visual Weight Theory?
– How size, focus, movement, lines, and other factors can help tell a story.

Episode 1: How can you tell a story in 1 photo?
Episode 2: Narrative Composition.
Episode 3: How lighting can influence mood.
Episode 4: How color can influence mood.
Episode 5: Creating a Storytelling Photoshoot from scratch.

You can also watch the whole ‘Storytelling for Photographers’ series on YouTube.

Narrative Composition – Episode Transcript

This is Storytelling for Photographers. Welcome to Episode 2, Narrative Composition.

Guiding a viewer through your composition

Last week, we looked at how to sketch out a story, and then how to use that story to help with composition and posing.

Today, we’re going to dig deeper into that compositional aspect. I don’t mean we’ll be talking about how you should just blindly follow the rule of thirds. No, we’ll be looking at WHY our brains react to certain visual compositions, and HOW you can use that knowledge to guide viewers through your photos so that they see elements in a specific order. I call this Narrative Composition.

How does composition work?

Let’s rewind a bit though. How does composition actually work? Why are we affected by how a photo is visually organized?

Classical composition appeals to our brains for a couple of reasons.

The first is symmetry. Our brains love symmetry. We’re more attracted to people with symmetrical faces, for example, but our craving for symmetry extends to foods, spaces, and of course, photos. Hand a child a camera, for example, and their first instinct is to create a center-weighted symmetrical composition. A composition with a reflection symmetry.

The second reason that classical composition appeals to our senses is because it arranges the elements in a photo in a way that our brains can easily process.

Here is an analogy I like for this. When you read a blog. If the author has followed grammatical guidelines… that blog will be easy to process or read. It’s the same with composition. Following compositional guidelines will make your photos easier to mentally process.

But there’s more to composition than JUST making something visually appealing. Let’s go back to that blog analogy. The author, if skilled enough, can also manipulate the way we feel. They can play on our emotions. And you can do the same with composition. Which is pretty cool!

I find the best way to teach this is with a theory called ‘Visual Weight’. So let’s see how that works.

Whenever we look at a photo – or any scene – our unconscious mind will create an ordered list of what elements it thinks are important, and then our conscious mind … will just run through that list sequentially.

Visual Weight theory organizes those elements into categories. The idea is that when composing a photo, we can actually use these categories to exert some control over this otherwise unconscious process.

How does this help with storytelling?

But how does this help with storytelling? It helps by letting you link storytelling elements with visual elements. Say you have two characters – one is the hero, the other a less important secondary character. Visual weight allows you to give more visual importance to the hero so that anyone viewing the photo instantly knows the relationship between these two characters.

Does that make sense? Don’t worry if it’s still a little hazy, I’ll be giving plenty of examples. For now, let’s look at HOW we can give that hero more Visual Weight…

Size

You can make your hero bigger. Because the bigger something is in the frame, the more visual weight it has.

Check out this example: the female character was the heroine of our story, the male was just a secondary character. So in the composition, the heroine is the biggest element in the frame.

Do you see how these two concepts – storytelling and visual weight – start working together?

I do this in a lot of my photos. So it’s easy to identify the main character in all these photos. It’s easy because your subconscious is doing it for you.

Focus

An element in focus has more visual weight than one out of focus. I use this in conjunction with size a lot.

The category is pretty intuitive because it mimics the way our eyes work IRL. We focus on what we want to see, the rest of our field of view is out of focus.

When you take a photo and focus on an element, you’re making that decision for your viewer. You’re telling them what is important.

Faces & Figures

Our brains are hard-wired to detect faces. The instinct is so strong that you can compose a photo with a tiny human figure and still be confident that a viewer will zero in on it. Because of this instinct, human figures carry a lot of visual weight in a composition.

Faces evoke an even stronger reaction. We don’t just react to a face but to what the face is looking at. Infants as young as three months old will follow the eyes of those around them. And this works in photos too.

Incidentally, this is WHY that rule of thirds composition – the one with the person staring off into space – is so visually appealing. Because the directionality of that gaze infers meaning and it draws us in. We are curious as to what that person is looking at.

Which brings us nicely to leading lines.

Leading Lines

If you’ve studied composition at all, you’ll have heard of leading lines.

A leading line can be a visible line or an implied line – like the gaze we were just discussing.

Those implied lines can be a great way to establish a connection between two characters.

Visible lines can be used to show where an individual is going or coming from.

Leading lines can also be used to draw a viewer through a composition, into a composition or out of a composition. This is why they have visual weight, they influence the way you move through the elements in a photo.

Lines are fundamental to composition as they can also create emotional tension based on their orientation and their position. But that, interesting, is a lesson for another day.

Tonal Contrast

Your subconscious gives a lot of attention to high-contrast areas in a photo. A high contrast area is where there is a strong difference between dark and light. So a silhouette is a great example of high contrast.

These areas have high visual weight because they are easy for your brain to process. Look at these two photos which one do you think your brain can process faster?

I shoot in the jungle a lot, where it can be hard to create the contrast around a model. So I use smoke to do this.

The smoke separates the subject from the background – so they have more visual weight.

Movement

Last but not least! Movement.

You’ve probably noticed that the elements that affect visual weight are often quite primal. We pay more attention to objects that are closer, that are in focus, that are easy to identify. Which is why movement – or the illusion of movement – also has visual weight. An object in motion, especially one that appears to be coming our way, will always attract our attention more than something that is static.

And movement also happens to be a great storytelling tool as it shows an action in process. Check this photo out. Had we decided to have out model stand still the photo would have ‘said’ less. By adding movement we are adding to the narrative. The person is not just holding a spear, they are actively hunting. It’s waaay more compelling.

How can you use visual weight to help you compose?

OK, that was a pretty full-on theory session. Hopefully, this video has given you the tools to go beyond composition that is just aesthetic. Instead, you can now create deliberate compositions that will further a narrative. Compositions that highlight story elements: characters, actions and relationships.

If you have any questions, stick them in the comments. If you’re inspried to try and apply some of this theory. Do it, and send me the photos. I would love to see them!

Next week we’re jumping into some practical studio work. We’re going to look at how lighting can help convey the emotions in your story.

As ever, if you liked this Narrative Composition video, and want to be notified of future episodes. Subscribe, follow, comment, like, send me fire, clap, explosion emojis – do all those things. See you next week!