How To Get Your Picture To Tell A Story

The art of photography can be as simple or as complicated as you make it, it lies in the process of the artist and differs according to artform and temperament.

- Joseph Radhik

But to break it down in the simplest of terms, any photo that tells a story essentially has three elements.

First come the physical elements in the photo – in front of the lens is the foreground, the middle area usually consists of the subject of the photo and thirdly, there’s the background.

The foreground typically gives you the “context” for your photograph. For example, at a wedding or bidai, if you are shooting somebody who is shedding a tear, you can frame just a face with tears rolling down their cheeks, or you can zoom out and probably show the reason why they are crying. It can be a blurred out image of the bride with the mother in focus who is shedding tears. The context here lies heavily around the subject you wish you capture.