What’s the Story?

There are a number of different attitudes towards street photography. One is that it should only really be a documentary exercise, another is that it should be about human emotion, and the third is that it is art and abstraction and anything you want it to be.

My own take is a mix of all of that, i don’t think it matters as long as you are happy with what you take and the pictures mean something to you.

Above all else though, is the idea that these pictures should tell a story. The best pictures, the ones that impact me the most, are always ones that have some sort of story connected to them. It doesn’t have to hit you over the head with the narrative, it can be subtle, but it should make you think “Yeah, i can see what is happening here, i get the story.”

I find it easy to overlook this when i am out shooting myself. Sometimes all i am thinking about is, are there any interesting people? When will the light improve? Am i going to get any decent pictures today at all? I missed focus on that one, etc etc. But really that is all irrelevant, if a picture has a story you will see it and take it without all of that stuff even mattering.

This is something i am working on improving. Too often i get caught up in taking “nothing” pictures just for the sake of having something and not feel like i wasted the day. Don’t get me wrong, sometimes “nothing” pictures turn out my favourites, but there are different types of “nothing” pictures. A picture of nice light hitting a building and making a shadow that frames a discarded umbrella could be thought of as a “nothing” picture, but it’s not, that’s actually a picture with purpose, intent and appeal, a real “nothing” picture is when you took one of a person walking across the road for no other reason than they were there and it was an easy picture to take, you had no actual point in taking it.

I have plenty of pictures that fall into that latter “nothing” category. I don’t hate them, sometimes i could argue that they documented my day, they show places and people, but if i’m honest, it was just a cheap snap, i didn’t intend anything other than “I better take something and this guy’s not looking, i’ll just take it quick”.

The picture at the top of this post is an example of one that i feel has no story and i took simply because i had the opportunity to take it. I don’t think it’s a bad picture, it’s well taken, the environment is ok, the girl looks good and overall it’s not a fail. The problem though is i feel nothing looking at it. I could pretend there is some thought process around “i wonder what she’s thinking, who is she texting? why did she stop in the middle of a street?” but that’s all just fluff, there is no story or purpose to this picture.

Finally, using the picture above as an example again, could it count as documentary? If we think of documentary as purely “showing what happens as it happens” then there is no need for any sort of story, all the image has to do is present a place and time and what was there. In that case, this image meets that goal. I would argue though, that the best documentary images actually do have a story and often involve an event that contains conflict or emotion, be it war, celebration, anger, happiness, sadness etc etc.. It may well be documentary, but it documents something of importance.

So, what do you think?