Can One Picture Tell the Story? – Gary Cole
We’re all familiar with those iconic images that tell an entire story in just one shot. Think of the publicity shot of Marilyn Monroe from “The Seven Year Itch,” skirt blowing up as Marilyn laughs and unsuccessfully tries to push it back down. How about the famous photo of a sailor kissing a girl in Times Square in celebration of the end of World War II or young John John Kennedy saluting his slain father’s casket in the Capitol rotunda.
“Magazines publish pictorials, seldom single photos.”However, let’s face it. Even in the hands of a great photographer in the best of situations, there’s never a guarantee that a single photograph will communicate, either directly or by inference, an entire story. Most photography shootings and their subsequent layouts, whether print or digital, need a sequence, a beginning, middle and end in order to be successful. Magazines publish pictorials, seldom single photos. Even if one photo is shot as a cover or selected from the shooting as a cover, there’s typically a pictorial of some sort inside to support it.
How are you approaching your shootings? Is it always trying to capture a single pose, a single perspective? If so, you need to start thinking more in terms of a story. That most effective, most erotic, most perfect picture may be even more effective if you’ve shot a story up to that final photo. I always encouraged photographers to think in terms of sequence.
If you’re shooting nudes, how a girl got undressed may be more interesting and sexy than the shot you were aiming at when you first imagined how you were going to shoot her.”
About Gary Cole
And change perspective—no shooting was ever complete for me without a great face shot or two. Move closer and further away from your subject or use your lenses intelligently. There needs to be continuity in the progression of photos but create a situation and, like a movie director, allow the action to flow from one position to another, from one facial expression to another. And you may find your model more relaxed when you’ve given her a sort of script or story that you want to capture.
You never know. Along the way you may came across that perfect blend of mood, light and expression and create your own iconic image.”
~Gary Cole
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