School of Art, Long Beach State University
Introduction to the Visual Arts

Storytelling (Photography)

Alyssa Rocca, 12, From South Pasadena Middle School Marches In Front Of Los Angeles City Hall In The Youth Climate Strike On Friday, March 15, 2019. Rocca Said She Was Marching Because “I Thought It Was Important To Come Here And Support Reducing Climate Change.” “Fridays For The Future” Is Organized By 16-Year-Old Swede Greta Thunberg. The Los Angeles Youth Climate March Is Organized By 17-Year-Old Los Angeleño Arielle Martinez-Cohen.
Alyssa Rocca, 12, From South Pasadena Middle School Marches In Front Of Los Angeles City Hall In The Youth Climate Strike On Friday, March 15, 2019. Rocca Said She Was Marching Because “I Thought It Was Important To Come Here And Support Reducing Climate Change.” “Fridays For The Future” Is Organized By 16-Year-Old Swede Greta Thunberg. The Los Angeles Youth Climate March Is Organized By 17-Year-Old Los Angeleño Arielle Martinez-Cohen.

Why take pictures?

Photographers create images for many reasons:

  • Fine Art
  • Professional Clients
  • Personal Pleasure

We can discuss whether a single photograph is compelling or boring. Yet we live in an age of almost infinite visual images. Why do we look at an image? Because our friends or family or someone we find interesting posted it on Instagram? Do we like photos because of qualities in the photography? Or because we like, or want to be liked, by the person who took it? How long do you look at a photo on Instagram? More than one second? Or less?

Social Documentary

In fields like

  • Photojournalism
  • Social Documentary
  • Art Installation

photographers and artists still try to create individually powerful and aesthetic images, but what becomes more important is that each image is part of telling some larger story.

Your Storytelling/Photography project

This week, use any camera – a real one if you have one, or a phone is fine – to tell some story you care about.

Topics

You can choose any topic. It might be a story with Personal, Campus, City, State, National, or Global interest.

  • Puvunga
  • Your campus group
  • Wetlands preservation near Long Beach
  • Surfing in Seal Beach
  • California Wildfires
  • Homelessness
  • SoCal Drought
  • Life in a Family
  • One small DACA story
  • Climate Change
  • or anything else you care about

Personal

Even if your story is big, try to keep it small, local, personal. If you want to do a story on Climage Change or Youth Climate Strikes, you probably won’t have the chance to spend time with Greta Thunberg, but if your friends are making posters for a march, or working on how to have smaller carbon footprints, you can create a Photo Story about them.

Your Photostory Project

  • 6-12 Images
  • 1 (or more) sentence captions for each image
  • Post to your blog

Questions to answer

  1. Why did you choose this story?
  2. How do you think you did?
  3. Which image do you think is the individually "best" image in your story?
  4. Does your photostory contain an image that you think is not, by itself, a "great" image, but that is nonetheless important because it helps to tell your story?
  5. What would you do different next time?
  6. Are there other Photo Stories you might like to tell?
Aubrey Gilman (in the black t-shirt), 18, from UCLA, carries her "You turned the temperature hotter, now we’re burning up!" sign in the Youth Climate Strike at Los Angeles City Hall on Friday, March 15, 2019. Gilman said she came to the climate strike because, "Since the adults aren’t making a change, the students have to step in and do it for them." "Fridays for the Future" is organized by 16-year-old Swede Greta Thunberg. The Los Angeles Youth Climate March is organized by 17-year-old Los Angeleño Arielle Martinez-Cohen. (Glenn Zucman/The Corsair)
Aubrey Gilman (in the black t-shirt), 18, from UCLA, carries her “You turned the temperature hotter, now we’re burning up!” sign in the Youth Climate Strike at Los Angeles City Hall on Friday, March 15, 2019. Gilman said she came to the climate strike because, “Since the adults aren’t making a change, the students have to step in and do it for them.” “Fridays for the Future” is organized by 16-year-old Swede Greta Thunberg. The Los Angeles Youth Climate March is organized by 17-year-old Los Angeleño Arielle Martinez-Cohen.