Usually, photographers are supposed to isolate their subject. Extraneous items clutter up the photo and take the focus away from the subject. But occasionally, that other “stuff” can help tell a story. We just have to make it look like we included them intentionally. The simple way to do this is to literally point to the items in the picture and say what they mean.
I was just playing around with the camera when I took this photo of my husband while we were on a bike ride this past summer. I thought I was just taking a picture of him sitting on a bench. But when I got home, I noticed that there was more stuff in the picture besides just him. It occurred to me that someone could tell what we were doing even though there was no bike in the picture.
I decided to make this into a checklist-style layout. I pointed to parts of the photo to tell the who, what, when, where, and why. The helmet obviously says that were were on a bike ride. He was also holding a cup of coffee from our destination point, McDonalds. You can tell it's summer because he's wearing shorts. I also pointed to his watch to say that we had left the kids with a babysitter, and his ring to say that we were out on a date.
I added the graph paper in the background to go with the analytical theme.
Do you have photos with lots of “stuff” in them? Use them to help tell the story!
I like this- the main photo, the repeated small pics, the color scheme, the grid background, the list... it all works so well to tell the story without taking away from the pic.
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