Mobile Photo Essays – Some Great Tips!
I have detailed below some excellent tips to create your own Mobile Photo Essays. I’ve also added a few links to some excellent favorite essays of my own.
Go here to read our Structuring Tips
Wonderful example photo essay links:
NYTimes
MotherJones
Magnumphotos
Time Lightbox
Photo Essay Tips – Signature Photo
A photo that summarizes the entire issue and illustrates essential elements of the story. This might be a photo of woman — maybe your main character — as with the example above and the link here to the complete photo Essay.
Establishing or Overall Shot
A wide-angle shot to establish the scene.The idea of the establishing shot is this: When you do a photo story you are taking your viewers on a journey. You need to give them a sense of where they are going, an image that allows them to understand the rest of the story in context.
Close-Up
A detail shot to highlight a specific element of the story. Close-up, sometimes called detail shots, don’t carry a lot of narrative. Meaning, they often don’t do a lot to inform the viewer on a literal level but they do a great deal to dramatize a story.
Portrait
This can be either a tight head shot or a more environment portrait in a context relevant to the story. As mentioned above, photo essays are built around characters. You need to have good portrait that introduces the viewers to the character.
Interaction
Focuses on the subject in a group during an activity. Images of your character interacting with others — all helps give a human dimension to your character.
How-To Sequence
This is photo or group of photos that offer a how-to about some specific element of the story or process.
The Clincher
A photo that can be used to close the story, one that says “the end.”
Please help us…
TheAppWhisperer has always had a dual mission: to promote the most talented mobile artists of the day and to support ambitious, inquisitive viewers the world over.
As the years pass TheAppWhisperer has gained readers and viewers and found new venues for that exchange. All this work thrives with the support of our community.
Please consider making a donation to TheAppWhisperer as this New Year commences because your support helps protect our independence and it means we can keep delivering the promotion of mobile artists that’s open for everyone around the world.
Every contribution, however big or small, is so valuable for our future.
Joanne Carter
Joanne Carter is a British photographer, photography journalist, editor and curator and the founder and editorial director of TheAppWhisperer.com, an independent international photography publication established in 2009.Her journalism, criticism and commentary have appeared in The Times, The Sunday Times, The Guardian, Financial Times, BBC, Vogue Italia, LensCulture, Popular Photography, Android Magazine, NikonPro, DPReview, Which Digital Camera and Which Camera. She has lectured internationally on photography and mobile art, served as a juror for international photography awards, and exhibited her own photographic work across the UK, Europe, South Korea and the United States.Alongside her editorial work, Joanne's photographic and postgraduate research explores death, grief, memory, representation and social inequality through contemporary photography, participatory practice and visual research methods, with the longer-term aim of developing this work through doctoral research.Through TheAppWhisperer, she continues to publish independent photography journalism spanning contemporary photographic practice, mobile imaging, photographic apps, computational photography and emerging imaging technologies.Joanne is available for editorial commissions, photography projects, judging, curatorial work, speaking engagements, consultancy and selected collaborations.
