What is a Photo Essay?
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“A picture is worth a thousand words'' is the old saying. What it means is that the visual image can speak to us in unexpected ways and it can keep speaking to us as we remember it. A photo essay, with multiple images, can say a lot.
What is a Photo Essay?
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What is a photo essay? A photo essay is a series of images that tells a story. Some photo essay ideas can include instructions on how to do something, a timeline of some event, an explanation of a cause, or simply a fun story.
Taking the idea of a photo essay as a form of instruction, I’ve made some behind the scenes series showing how to do different aspects of the job of photography or photo editing. A day in the life of a pet, a local charity or sports event, a view of local attractions and points of interest, all could be used as photo essay ideas.
Benefits of a Photo Essay
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When considering what is a photo essay, most of the time we end up seeing them as either a work of photojournalism or a piece of entertainment. Both of these genres have benefits. What are some of the benefits of a photo essay?
Photojournalism is a wonderful method for telling true stories. In fact, there have been times when the photos themselves told the story of an event without any words being conveyed.
The recent events concerning the BLM movement or the Covid-19 crisis have been seen by millions around the world by means of photojournalism photo essays. The Tiananmen Square events, Iran hostages, Moon landings, Hurricane Katrina, and so on have been covered so well by pictures that we can see the news transcending language barriers.
So, that’s the serious side of things. Some photojournalism can focus on things that aren’t heavy important events. Also in a lighter vein, creating entertainment can be accomplished by means of a photo essay. In this respect, imagine a photo essay as some sort of graphic novel, aka comic book.
With or without words, you can tell a good story that will entertain. You can make it light-hearted or deep, just as with photojournalism.
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How to Shoot a Photo Essay
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Before shooting the images for a photo essay, we want to know how to plan a photo essay. That way, we can decide how to shoot the images, what style should be used, how to arrange them and in what order.
Similar to videography projects, using a storyboard will allow us to arrange the shooting order, design a lighting set up (if needed), see how well the images work for telling the story, and know how much post-processing we need to do.
A Great Learning Tool
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As we’re considering all of the various aspects of what is a photo essay, one thing that pops up in my mind is how valuable a learning tool creating photo essays can be for beginner photographers. It will also help any newcomers to videography to see how to plan out a story.
Some of the skills that are in play when learning how to shoot a photo essay are lighting, focus effects, taking care of background or foreground elements, maintaining high resolution, composing properly, and probably about 9 other things I’m leaving out.
Have fun with it, do several different photo essays. Try out something light first, like a day in the life of a pillbug, and then get deeper or more involved in other photo essay projects. As an example of a photo essay or two you’ve already seen, take a look at my processing editing studio upgrade article or our Metal Print Shootout.
Once you’ve done a couple of your own photo essays, go online to find some examples of what other photographers have done, including some of the Old Masters (Eisenstadt, Weston, Lange, Parks, Cartier-Bresson, Avedon, etc…) with their street photography, portrait work, and photojournalism. Their work just might inspire you. It does me.
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