“If I told you once, I’ve told you a thousand times not to exaggerate!”
That phrase has circulated through my family for at least four generations. Maybe more if I’d had contact with relatives gone before my time. Perhaps on my next trip to Florida I’ll stop in Cassadaga and make contact with one who might have used the term.
Meant to take note of another’s exaggeration, the hyperbolic phrase quiets most children’s verbal complaints about life’s collective inequities and their quest for greater personal identity. At least that’s the way it works in my family.
As a photographer I hold the opposite view.
Exaggeration is your friend. Used properly, exaggerating an object or subject advances the storytelling impact of your photos.
Perhaps exaggeration is not the proper word. Think of it as emphasizing a piece of content. Putting emphasis on something in your photo directs the viewer to what you think is important in telling them what you saw in the viewfinder and what’s important for them to know about the moment.
As a work crew cleared damaged trees from land near Johnstown I used my wide-angle lens to exaggerate the size of the just felled tree’s diameter to create a large, graphically interesting foreground to contrast against the routine imagery of a logger running a chainsaw through timber.
Using a small f-stop, the tree’s rings and the logger are in focus. I could have used a smaller depth-of-field to isolate more on the rings and throw the logger out of focus.
A better way to narrow the focus would be to back off with longer glass, select a wider f-stop and focus on the rings. The subject and storytelling then changes to emphasize the tree’s rings and not the relationship between the tree, the logger and the surroundings.
Telling this relationship in a single photo is best done with a wide-angle lens where you can emphasize a particular part of the photo, have greater depth-of-field, and include objects that help in relating a complete story in a single photo.
Today’s editorial market lacks publishers that are going to be looking for a series of photos to tell the story. Photographers who can supply one storytelling photo is more likely to find publishers eager to purchase their work.
The process of studying your subject, looking for that single image that tells a complete story increases you opportunities for additional photos that may complement the single image for clients and publishers who have space and budget for more photos.
Shooting one storytelling photo should be your primary objective. Finding two or three others strong storytelling images with additional photos to complement the first series is the challenge.
