Wildlife Photography – Tell Your Story

Photography is about sharing the beauty of nature.  About telling a story.

The difficulty is to tell your story in one frame.  How do you include everything in just one frame?

Most of the time it is virtually impossible to tell the whole story in one single photograph.  You will normally have to choose a single theme, mood or emotion for an image.  Choose one feature of your subject to show your viewers.

Think about it, you go on safari for the first time and snap away hundreds of frames of lions and elephants.  You get home and now your friends and family have to sit through hundreds of images that, well, all look pretty similar.  The painful ordeal could probably be likened to your family making you sit through home movies of little Jimmy kicking a ball for the first time or Auntie Audrey washing the dishes.  Might have been great when you were there but not really something other people want to see.

So why not use more than one image to tell you story?

By taking three, or more, images of you  subject you can create a much more complete story.  Generally your story telling images will be like the parts of a movie or book.

- You introduce your subject.  Set the scene
- You get closer to the subject.
- You end off the story.

This approach will not only help you think about your images, always a good thing, but it will give you a much better platform from which to share your photographs with people.

The following three images were all taken one afternoon as we were following a young male lion through Madikwe.  The whole episode was pretty uneventful and the highlight was some interesting light as the young male showed us a nice Flehmen grimace.  But that was about that.

In order for me to show my one specific image, the meat of my story, I added an intro and ending to my story by first setting the scene and then finishing the whole thing off.

My story goes as follows:

The Intro.  Set the scene.  Introduce the subject.

The Story.  Show the subject up close.  This is the image I wanted to share.

The End.  Wrap up the story with a simple image.

Even an ordinary scene like this one can make for an interesting visual story.  Choose your most important image and give it an intro and an ending. It will also make it easier for you to remember the moments you had on your photo safari and share your stories with your friends and family back home.

Does a visual story only have to consist of three image?  Absolutely not!  If you are lucky enough to witness some of the amazing action scenes that an African photographic safari can offer your story could consist of 10 or more images.  However many images it takes – tell your story!

With August heading to a close, next week sees the return of guest blogger Thursday.  I already have some great photographers lined up so make sure to stay tuned!

I’ll see you tomorrow.  Go out there and tell a story!

Gerry