How To Create A Story With Your Photography

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A Picture Is Worth a Thousand Words.

Creating a story with your words on paper can also be done with your photography. And I will show you how.

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Your photography does not have to be just an assortment of random shots. Although, I told you previously, in my article: “How To Create Portrait-Like Photos” to practice, practice, practice, you can start creating a log of various images that create a story that depicts the start of your photographic journey.

Think of your end game when you go out with your camera. There are many ways you can start to tell a story with your photography. Think of why you wanted to start this journey into photography.

how many ways can you tell your story through photos

Is it because you want to take better photos of your new family, or maybe you got a new pet or perhaps you want to capture your family during the holiday seasons. If you can’t think of where to start, here are some ideas to give that motivation of what to shoot for:

story ideas

Newborn and Family – You just had a baby and you want to take beautiful family photos to share with the rest of your family. Perhaps even put the photos in frames and display them throughout your home. That’s what I did. I took hundreds of photos, printed some and put them in pretty frames and displayed them on my fireplace mantle, the foyer table, my bedroom end tables. You can take monthly photos of your child to see how your child changes from month to month.
New Pet – You decided to get a new pet either for the children or before the children come along. Go out and take some beautiful candid shots of your new pet frolicking in the park or kissing your kids’ cheeks. Nothing is more adorable. Am I right? Take monthly shots of your pet as well.
School Days – You can capture your child’s first day of school. You can do this for every year your child is in elementary school and high school. It’s a wonderful story to see how your child progresses throughout the years.
Halloween – Well this should be a must. Lol!! Snap a number of shots of your child every Halloween. I did this with my family. We made it a tradition to dress up as a family every year. It’s so much fun. Check out an article I wrote about how we celebrate Halloween: “10 Things You Need To Have a Happy and Spooky Halloween”
Christmas – Can’t forget Christmas right? Snap away here. You can never get enough at Christmas time. Watching your child experience their very first snowfall. I wish I had my camera for that. It is priceless. Our son freaked out when he felt the snow for the first time. It was so adorable. You need to capture ALL these moments. Trust me. For example, see the photo below. We put both of our children into a huge stocking (a Christmas gift from God). It tells the story of how different our children are.
Valentine’s Day – All holidays and special occasions are important for your family.
Easter – we can’t forget the Easter Bunny. Spring is around the corner and you dress up in your easter best outfit. Lol!
Birthdays – and last but not least . . . birthdays. I can’t tell you enough how special is your child’s first few birthdays, especially their first. You need to record all their birthdays. Just watching their reaction as you let them have at the cake, as they squish their tiny little fingers in it.

My son loved the Christmas stocking
My daughter obviously didn’t (LOL)

So, I gave you 8 ideas about how to create a story with your photography. I’m sure you can come up with a lot more. Throughout the years, I captured my children’s adventures together. In my files, I labeled it Brother and Sister + the year. I can watch them grow up through the years by just going to those files. And that is the sweetest story of all.

organizing your photos

You can store the images on your computer, organized in a special way. When you download your images, group them in files right away in a way that will make sense for you. For me, I downloaded all my images to the files the photographs were about.

For example, as I mentioned, I labeled my children separately when it was just that child along with the year. So I made a folder for each child and within that folder, I made folders of each year. When I took photos of both of my children together, I labeled the folders: Brother and Sister and then within that folder I created folders for each year.

Unfortunately, it’s getting seldom that I capture them together but I still try. Lol. I did the same for birthdays, first communions, confirmation, Halloween and Christmas. I organized it all so that I can tell a story.

I hope you can appreciate the importance (at least to me) of how much photographing your family is. Without photographs, our lives would have some kind of void. When your kids are all grown up, move away from home and you are feeling down and missing your children, you have your “stories” right?