I’ve been mailed at least a dozen times by students who have chosen either me or the theme “narrative photography” for a presentation / project / etc. People usually find me either from seeing my previous projects of because I come up as the top result on Google on a “narrative photography” keyword search (www.narrativephotography.com also ends up here). Most emails I get are usually questions of what / who my influences are / were, what gear I use, how I manage lighting, etc. I’m always happy to answer but to I also figured it was time I posted some thoughts on this topic. I won’t write a detailed guide into the techniques / philosophy / equipment / etc required to produce photography of this type , rather this is an intro to some of the work I’ve done and the approach I took.

This was how I used to define Narrative Photography when I was very active with this style a couple of years ago:

“Narrative Photography… If I had a style, narrative photography would be it.

This is a growing catalog of all the work that I consider to be worthy of the phrase that a picture is worth a thousand words.”

I was talking about this site, where my work in this area is hosted. The two projects which I’m most well known for in this genre are what I called “Fragments” and “The Cell”.

Fragments was probably my most major undertaking for me re Narrative Photography and I enjoyed every minute of it… The project itself was v popular online, hitting Pbase’s #1 popular galleries in the month of Jan 2007 and there are countless copies of my shots floating around on other peoples’ sites. To end up with the final 16 shots, I visited a single location in Singapore 15 times over 6 weeks, shooting several thousand pictures of nine different models in the process. Time has changed my view a little on how I feel about each of the shots, but there are four or five I still consider among my best, and would hold up against similar images being shot today. These shots would be:

For my Fragments work, I shot everything with a Canon 5D (Mark I) and a Canon EF 24-105mm f/4L zoom (the last time I seriously used a zoom lens for any photographic work – I have almost exclusively shot with prime lenses since). All images were post processed in Photoshop CS2, with processing times ranging from 2 mins to 25 mins for the more challenging scenes.

You can read more about the project and what I was thinking at the time in the following two posts – here and here.

The second project I get asked about was “The Cell” – this was a series I shot over a month or so during March / April 2007.

Everything shot with Canon 5D, Canon L 35mm F/1.4 Lens. The project was shot using 6 different models in a room using natural light only. I discovered the location by accident – an abandoned building which while unremarkable from the outside, had the most amazing, beautiful natural light streaming in from one window in the corner of the room. I posted only 6 images from this project, which are posted below.

Each time I used a separate models but the same scene was to underscore a theme… I believe the best narrative is where you pose questions but don’t necessarily provide all the answers – it’s about stimulating a train of thought, just enough to pull the viewer in and then force them to complete the rest. Specifically with my Cell project, I attempted to provide specific points (clues) to stimulate – through repetition and the user of the man who is blindfolded, there is a clear suggestion of imprisonment – but not all subjects are kept / react in the same way. An ideal viewer reaction for me would be for the viewer to be pulled in and use their imagination about why the subject is in that room, what their story is, what will happen next.

With this and my Fragments series, I often get asked about whether I use a tripod. The simple is that I have never actually owned at tripod (and never intend to purchase one). Generally speaking, I prefer to be handheld so I can move more quickly and recompose without hindrance. Another question is whether everything was planned. This one is slightly harder to answer – I always had an idea of what I wanted to shoot before I got there but lighting conditions, the interaction with the model, new ideas, etc would always end up affecting what i had planned. So often things ended up being impromptu and a reaction “on set”.

Finally, I always get asked about influences and who else’s work to check out in this area. One place is to start with is to swing by check out other photographers on www.lostinfocus.org which is a site I run. Chuck Inglefield, who is a member there, was an early inspiration of mine with his Urban Melancholy project. For me, this is a wonderful example of street-turned-narrative-photography. It’s a series of perfectly understated scenes that, like once peeled back, contain many layers of thought provoking imagery. Chuck’s project remains one of my all-time favourite photo series on the web.

Someone who actually found me through my Fragments project, who has herself gone onto produce some amazing work in this area is Kirsty Mitchell. I strongly encourage you to check out her flickr photostream – her enthusiasm, painstaking attention to detail and immensely creative scenes practically redefine the term “passion”.

Finally amongst professional circles, my main influence for narrative photography is a well known artist called Gregory Crewdson. Crewdson is the best photographer living or otherwise at the staged scene. He has a book available on Amazon at a reasonable price called Twighlight which contains page after page of amazing photography (if you do want to get it, feel free to click through on the link below which will help support this site):

For those who have mailed me with questions, I hope this sheds some light on an interesting area of photography. For those who happened to stumble upon this post (and made it thus far), I hope it’s been interesting. If there’s sufficient demand, I’ll go into more detail and break down some specific images with all the behind-the-scenes details on what it took to put them together (incl post processing).