I like photostories.
Years ago the newspaper at which I worked had a free page every Saturday in the weekend district edition. The ad that ran on the page in City did not run in the regional editions. The paper filled the page, and kept staff photographers happy, by running a photostory.
Recently I shot a photostory for one of my London, Ontario, blogs. I applied the rules which guided my shooting and layout of those newspaper pages to my blog presentation.
London has a wonderful curved ice skating rink in Storybook Gardens. The other night the staff was busy preparing the ice surface for the coming weekend opening.
Staff are busy making ice at the Storybook Gardens skating rink.
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The image of the man watering the concrete pad immediately makes the subject of the photostory clear. This image is played large and up front. It is a visual lede. The Christmas tree lighting makes the time of year clear and the mist tells us that it is cold.
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The park is called Storybook Gardens because it celebrates the myriad traditional children's fairy tales we all learn when kids. One finds Humpty Dumpty in the park along with the old shoe in which the old lady lived, and lots of other fairy tale stuff.
A picture of something showing this aspect of the park is important. The shot of Humpty Dumpty was shot from this harsh angle in order to keep some of the Christmas lighting in the picture. We want to tie all the images together and the Christmas lighting is one obvious motif.
As this picture is not as important as the first, it is played smaller. It is placed on the left of the page to keep Humpty Dumpty looking into the page and not off.
The train is on the right so that the train is heading into the page and not off.
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Adding to the storybook characters that are in the park year-a-round, there are also Christmas lighting displays in themes that make them fit right in.
When shooting something even as simple as some Christmas lights, think of its environment and not just it. I got permission to walk behind the display in order to show both the display and the rink in the background. Location, location, location is not just a good phrase for judging the value of real estate. Setting location is very important in news photos.
The overall look of the rink is still not clear and that cannot be. Ideally, one would add a vertical here. Since all the other pictures have been horizontal, a vertical would be a nice visual change of pace. I actually shot a vertical but I liked the horizontal better and so I ran against the grain and used another horizontal.
The ice rink at Storybook Gardens in London, Ontario, is almost a full kilometer long curving loop.
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Lastly, to round out the story, I reached into my archived pictures and added a couple of shots showing what the rink is like in the middle of the day in full use.
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Sadly, the rink is grossly under-used and if Londoners don't make better use of this facility, it may be closed.
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And that's it. Have a point of view, a topic, and stay with it. Play your pictures in a variety of sizes and use care with page placement. You want to keep the reader's eye on your page. Try and play the pictures in a logical sequence.
Cheers!
p.s. Oh. All images in this photostory were shot using a simple point and shoot.
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