How to find and tell your story

"There was once a time that I didn’t think much about my family stories. It’s not that I didn’t care, but I just didn’t make time for it. I think what changed my course was having children. They start asking me questions like, “did you do that when you were a kid?” Or maybe it went more like, “back in the olden days did you…?”

Once I had children, I realized that it was important to share my stories of childhood and family with them. One of the best story prompts is a picture, and it only takes one to start the journey."

Read the full article to find out more about using pictures as story prompts as well as an example of telling a story with a photo.

"I frequently hear from B2B business owners that they want to use Instagram but they just don’t know how it translates to their businesses. They don’t necessarily have tangible products to sell which can be displayed on Instagram. They don’t think they have much visual content to share so they have instead focused on blogging and other content strategies to connect with their audiences.

Whether you’re a solopreneur or a large company, there are a variety of ways to use images and videos on Instagram to grow your audience, and your business."

Read the full article to find out more about these ideas on using Instagram for your business:

• Share Your Business Story
• Highlight the People in Your Business
• Go Behind-the-Scenes
• Show Off Your Geographical Area(s)
• Promote Your Educational Content
• Promote What You Have To Sell
• Just Keep It Visual!

As travellers in the digital age, with every image we share, with every post we write, we’re adding to the larger narrative of how travel and place are described around the world. We become, by default, storytellers.

 

A final note: As so much of travel media and the Internet is image-driven, or ‘visual storytelling’, the following points take ideas from image-based work and draw parallels with writing / journalism, or vice-versa.

 

Whether you just want to share your travels with friends and family, or you want to develop writing, photography, or video as part of your career (or even pursue a career in travel journalism), these simple tips can help supercharge your work.  Read the full article to find out about:

1. Good things happen at sunrise

2. Don’t just write when it’s convenient to your schedule

3. Simplify your composition

4. Focus on the key events or “windows” into your overall journey

5. Always put a subject in your images

6. People are what make a travel story

7. Carry a tripod

8. Imagine your narrative as a camera

9. Expect to lose or break something

10. People are just waiting to tell you their stories

We all have emotions within us and a careful shot of a scene can make us laugh, cry or even angry. This is the magic of a photo that tells a story.

When a person feels an emotion out of anything, process or event, the person will hardly be able to forget that specific thing, process or event. May it be a good, positive or even negative feelings. Same holds true when a person sees a photograph. The fun part with a photograph is that it “always” tells us a story, actually there can be multiple stories that can be associated with a photo. But it is in the mind of the photographer to “direct” or “channelize” the minds of the viewers to a particular, strong and appealing stories. And if the photographer is not successful in this endeavor than the photograph loses its distinctiveness and falls under the “normal” category.

As any other properties of storytelling, a photo should comprise of 1 or more of 5 elements. Read the full article to find out more about these characteristics:
- Mood
- Emotion
- Narrative
- Ideas
- Messages

"Today, illustrations can also come in the form of photos. And in some cases, especially in classrooms, a series of photographs is used to tell a story. There are little to no words needed, just the photographs. This is what visual storytelling is all about."

Read the full article to find out more tips and tricks to help you create a moving story by using:

These five basic elements of a good storytelling photo:

1. mood
2. idea
3. emotion
4. narration
5. the message

And ways to come up with photos that tell clear, focused stories.

"The photostory is one of the great inventions of the last century and in a great photostory we can see all aspects of our daily lives – the extraordinary and the beautiful as much as the ordinary and the ugly."

National Geographic is the pro at this.  Read the full article to see images taken by Paul Nicklen of his experience with a leopard seal, view David Griffin's TED talk, and discover this list of items you should consider when putting together a short photo-story:

• Impact
• From the ordinary to the extraordinary and back
• Unique perspectives
• Amazing sights, sounds and colours
• Lovely light
• People or animals
• Insight into a situation
• The shock from an event
• Excitement
• Great beauty or great ugliness – or both!
• Different lives…
• Something from within you