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Research
Before even thinking about what pictures I would want to take for this project I had to research all areas of Storytelling Photography. The main difference between usual photography and the storytelling photography is that you are trying to say something through both photos but only the second one tells the story. For example you could take a photo of a random apple. Photo says 'that is how an apple looks'. That is it. More or less. However for the storytelling photography I would take a sequence of photos showing how an apple grow and then decay. It would tell the 'life of an apple'.
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Laura Cook, a professional photographer, says that in the storytelling photography it is very important to think about the details and point of view. I totally agree with her opinion as different angles might show one situation (story) from a totally different perspective.
This graphic created by TANGO is a perfect example how different point of view might change your image. On the one side it could be just a silly photo of a cat, while on the other side it is a shadow of a guitar.
I have created this picture as another example how point of view works. For one person A is chased by B, while for someone else A is trying to kill B.
This set of pictures shows the decay process of an apple. I like this picture because of how simple it is; author just had to bite it once and then get a picture every day.
This sequence is more complicated than the previous one. It shows different stages of life. Story is being told by different objects placed on the table.
On the other hand Story Telling Photography does not need to be sequence only. This picture shows an old man in the bus looking somewhere at the ground. This picture makes its viewers to think a bit deeper as picture does not explain anything itself.
Photos
For this project I have decided to come up with something a bit different, something that does not come up to your mind when thinking about story telling photography.
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Story telling photographs mostly consist of dark photos showing deep shadows on a grey-scale scene. Usually the make us to thing deeply about them and make us feel sad or melancholy. But not mine.
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I think that story telling photography can be happy and stories shown by photos do not have to be dark.
I have decided to use wooden doll and take his 'self portraits' in order to tell a story through photos. This one shows him next to the LEGO car just as teenagers pose with their cars on social media like Facebook. In order to emphasize different layers of the photo I had to played a bit with light. I have turned the light off and then used a lamp and a flashlight on my phone to create two angles of light, one on the doll and the other one on the car. Because of that doll looks much brighter than the car, but car is still clearly visible in the dark background.
In order to take those photos I had to do something I have not done too much before. I had to manipulate light, in order to make those photo interesting. Depending on the light I wanted to use, I had to open and close windows for the natural light or use lamps at specific angles with cardboard to block light from some sides. I really liked that process and it gave me a very positive results. I think that I could do it more often in the future as well as work with wooden dolls.