Creating a Photo Story by Kathy Seaward
In response to COVID-19 the ‘Live Up’ COVID COMMUNITY was set up to support our communities with practical wellbeing resources that can be used for these extraordinary circumstances of social distancing, community lockdown and quarantine. This article is from Kathy Seaward 2 of the 5 Ways of Wellbeing (learning and noticing).
Here is a printable PDF from Kathy on ‘How to Create a Photo Story’.
Hi, I am a retired teacher from Marian College. I taught PE, Health & Science. When I was at school an English teacher told me that I had no imagination (criminal I know!) so I never really pursued my creative side. My passion was for sports of any kind. I picked up skills easily so was never bored as I was always out playing something.
Then my sister-in-law introduced me to photography and I discovered that creativity didn’t have to be in writing or drawing. I began to see the world through different eyes. Now I have a passion for the arts and want to share that with you through a simple photography exercise that you can do with your smart-phone.
ACTION PLAN: To use your smart-phone to create a photography story.
1. Look around your house or outside and look for something that you would not normally notice or look at. It could be a flower in the garden or maybe a weed! It could be the latch on a gate, or the opening of your letter box.
2. Get out your phone and take a photo of it. Do you know how to use the editing tools? Time you learned! I have an iPhone so hopefully you can follow the task even if you have another brand.
3. Firstly I want you to crop your photo.
4. Go to Edit – use the little square with arrows to crop. Look at your photo and decide what you can take out of the photo that doesn’t need to be there. Here’s an example. I don’t really want the neighbour’s house in the photo so I will crop it out (I will also get rid of some of the lawn).
You can also use the little wand to auto enhance your photo.
5. Back to your photo – How does it look? You can be adventurous and try some of the other editing tools.
6. Now for your creative project. Once you are happy with your editing skills you are now ready to create your own Photography Story.
7. You need to choose a theme for your photos. It can be anything that you think might be interesting. For example – you might like a particular sport, let’s say netball. What photos might tell a story about netball? A photo of a person shooting ball, a photo of the hoop, a close up of a hand with the ball ready to shoot, a photo of a close up of a chest pass, the logo on the ball, jumping for a pass. The sequence of photos will tell the story.
Another might be your favourite pet – a photo of its eyes &/or other body parts, a full shot photo, a photo of its food, toys, cat door, a photo of it sleeping.
There is no right or wrong theme, you just have to tell a story with your photos.
8. Make sure that the first photo shows the wider picture. For example, the netball photo would show a person playing the game, e.g. shooting for a basket.
The cat photo would show a full shot of the cat. Try to capture 5-6 photos.
Once you have all the photos you need you can put them onto a sharing medium such as Facebook or do what I have done below and paste them into an app such as pic collage below.
9. Time to get out there and start shooting.
Here is an example of a Photo Story I have done to show my sculpture garden!
Here are some links that might be useful:
Here is a printable PDF from Kathy on ‘How to Create a Photo Story’
Link to Belinda Leen’s Making Memories post which teaches you how to do a Pic Collage
Link to creating a Photo Blog
If you would like to share what you’ve created I would love to see and you can email me your finished product: krseaward@xtra.co.nz
