The leading authority in photography and camera gear.
Become a better photographer.
4.8 Million
Annual Readers
Newsletter Subscribers
Featured Photographers
Photography Guides & Gear Reviews
How to Create an Engaging Photo Essay (with Examples)
Photo essays tell a story in pictures. They're a great way to improve at photography and story-telling skills at once. Learn how to do create a great one.
By Ana Mireles
Photography is a medium used to tell stories – sometimes they are told in one picture, sometimes you need a whole series. Those series can be photo essays.
If you’ve never done a photo essay before, or you’re simply struggling to find your next project, this article will be of help. I’ll be showing you what a photo essay is and how to go about doing one.
You’ll also find plenty of photo essay ideas and some famous photo essay examples from recent times that will serve you as inspiration.
If you’re ready to get started, let’s jump right in!
Table of Contents
What is a Photo Essay?
A photo essay is a series of images that share an overarching theme as well as a visual and technical coherence to tell a story. Some people refer to a photo essay as a photo series or a photo story – this often happens in photography competitions.
Photographic history is full of famous photo essays. Think about The Great Depression by Dorothea Lange, Like Brother Like Sister by Wolfgang Tillmans, Gandhi’s funeral by Henri Cartier Bresson, amongst others.
What are the types of photo essay?
Despite popular belief, the type of photo essay doesn’t depend on the type of photography that you do – in other words, journalism, documentary, fine art, or any other photographic genre is not a type of photo essay.
Instead, there are two main types of photo essays: narrative and thematic .
As you have probably already guessed, the thematic one presents images pulled together by a topic – for example, global warming. The images can be about animals and nature as well as natural disasters devastating cities. They can happen all over the world or in the same location, and they can be captured in different moments in time – there’s a lot of flexibility.
A narrative photo essay, on the other hand, tells the story of a character (human or not), portraying a place or an event. For example, a narrative photo essay on coffee would document the process from the planting and harvesting – to the roasting and grinding until it reaches your morning cup.
What are some of the key elements of a photo essay?
- Tell a unique story – A unique story doesn’t mean that you have to photograph something that nobody has done before – that would be almost impossible! It means that you should consider what you’re bringing to the table on a particular topic.
- Put yourself into the work – One of the best ways to make a compelling photo essay is by adding your point of view, which can only be done with your life experiences and the way you see the world.
- Add depth to the concept – The best photo essays are the ones that go past the obvious and dig deeper in the story, going behind the scenes, or examining a day in the life of the subject matter – that’s what pulls in the spectator.
- Nail the technique – Even if the concept and the story are the most important part of a photo essay, it won’t have the same success if it’s poorly executed.
- Build a structure – A photo essay is about telling a thought-provoking story – so, think about it in a narrative way. Which images are going to introduce the topic? Which ones represent a climax? How is it going to end – how do you want the viewer to feel after seeing your photo series?
- Make strong choices – If you really want to convey an emotion and a unique point of view, you’re going to need to make some hard decisions. Which light are you using? Which lens? How many images will there be in the series? etc., and most importantly for a great photo essay is the why behind those choices.
9 Tips for Creating a Photo Essay
Credit: Laura James
1. Choose something you know
To make a good photo essay, you don’t need to travel to an exotic location or document a civil war – I mean, it’s great if you can, but you can start close to home.
Depending on the type of photography you do and the topic you’re looking for in your photographic essay, you can photograph a local event or visit an abandoned building outside your town.
It will be much easier for you to find a unique perspective and tell a better story if you’re already familiar with the subject. Also, consider that you might have to return a few times to the same location to get all the photos you need.
2. Follow your passion
Most photo essays take dedication and passion. If you choose a subject that might be easy, but you’re not really into it – the results won’t be as exciting. Taking photos will always be easier and more fun if you’re covering something you’re passionate about.
3. Take your time
A great photo essay is not done in a few hours. You need to put in the time to research it, conceptualizing it, editing, etc. That’s why I previously recommended following your passion because it takes a lot of dedication, and if you’re not passionate about it – it’s difficult to push through.
4. Write a summary or statement
Photo essays are always accompanied by some text. You can do this in the form of an introduction, write captions for each photo or write it as a conclusion. That’s up to you and how you want to present the work.
5. Learn from the masters
Making a photographic essay takes a lot of practice and knowledge. A great way to become a better photographer and improve your storytelling skills is by studying the work of others. You can go to art shows, review books and magazines and look at the winners in photo contests – most of the time, there’s a category for photo series.
6. Get a wide variety of photos
Think about a story – a literary one. It usually tells you where the story is happening, who is the main character, and it gives you a few details to make you engage with it, right?
The same thing happens with a visual story in a photo essay – you can do some wide-angle shots to establish the scenes and some close-ups to show the details. Make a shot list to ensure you cover all the different angles.
Some of your pictures should guide the viewer in, while others are more climatic and regard the experience they are taking out of your photos.
7. Follow a consistent look
Both in style and aesthetics, all the images in your series need to be coherent. You can achieve this in different ways, from the choice of lighting, the mood, the post-processing, etc.
8. Be self-critical
Once you have all the photos, make sure you edit them with a good dose of self-criticism. Not all the pictures that you took belong in the photo essay. Choose only the best ones and make sure they tell the full story.
9. Ask for constructive feedback
Often, when we’re working on a photo essay project for a long time, everything makes perfect sense in our heads. However, someone outside the project might not be getting the idea. It’s important that you get honest and constructive criticism to improve your photography.
How to Create a Photo Essay in 5 Steps
Credit: Quang Nguyen Vinh
1. Choose your topic
This is the first step that you need to take to decide if your photo essay is going to be narrative or thematic. Then, choose what is it going to be about?
Ideally, it should be something that you’re interested in, that you have something to say about it, and it can connect with other people.
2. Research your topic
To tell a good story about something, you need to be familiar with that something. This is especially true when you want to go deeper and make a compelling photo essay. Day in the life photo essays are a popular choice, since often, these can be performed with friends and family, whom you already should know well.
3. Plan your photoshoot
Depending on what you’re photographing, this step can be very different from one project to the next. For a fine art project, you might need to find a location, props, models, a shot list, etc., while a documentary photo essay is about planning the best time to do the photos, what gear to bring with you, finding a local guide, etc.
Every photo essay will need different planning, so before taking pictures, put in the required time to get things right.
4. Experiment
It’s one thing to plan your photo shoot and having a shot list that you have to get, or else the photo essay won’t be complete. It’s another thing to miss out on some amazing photo opportunities that you couldn’t foresee.
So, be prepared but also stay open-minded and experiment with different settings, different perspectives, etc.
5. Make a final selection
Editing your work can be one of the hardest parts of doing a photo essay. Sometimes we can be overly critical, and others, we get attached to bad photos because we put a lot of effort into them or we had a great time doing them.
Try to be as objective as possible, don’t be afraid to ask for opinions and make various revisions before settling down on a final cut.
7 Photo Essay Topics, Ideas & Examples
Credit: Michelle Leman
- Architectural photo essay
Using architecture as your main subject, there are tons of photo essay ideas that you can do. For some inspiration, you can check out the work of Francisco Marin – who was trained as an architect and then turned to photography to “explore a different way to perceive things”.
You can also lookup Luisa Lambri. Amongst her series, you’ll find many photo essay examples in which architecture is the subject she uses to explore the relationship between photography and space.
- Process and transformation photo essay
This is one of the best photo essay topics for beginners because the story tells itself. Pick something that has a beginning and an end, for example, pregnancy, the metamorphosis of a butterfly, the life-cycle of a plant, etc.
Keep in mind that these topics are linear and give you an easy way into the narrative flow – however, it might be difficult to find an interesting perspective and a unique point of view.
- A day in the life of ‘X’ photo essay
There are tons of interesting photo essay ideas in this category – you can follow around a celebrity, a worker, your child, etc. You don’t even have to do it about a human subject – think about doing a photo essay about a day in the life of a racing horse, for example – find something that’s interesting for you.
- Time passing by photo essay
It can be a natural site or a landmark photo essay – whatever is close to you will work best as you’ll need to come back multiple times to capture time passing by. For example, how this place changes throughout the seasons or maybe even over the years.
A fun option if you live with family is to document a birthday party each year, seeing how the subject changes over time. This can be combined with a transformation essay or sorts, documenting the changes in interpersonal relationships over time.
- Travel photo essay
Do you want to make the jump from tourist snapshots into a travel photo essay? Research the place you’re going to be travelling to. Then, choose a topic.
If you’re having trouble with how to do this, check out any travel magazine – National Geographic, for example. They won’t do a generic article about Texas – they do an article about the beach life on the Texas Gulf Coast and another one about the diverse flavors of Texas.
The more specific you get, the deeper you can go with the story.
- Socio-political issues photo essay
This is one of the most popular photo essay examples – it falls under the category of photojournalism or documental photography. They are usually thematic, although it’s also possible to do a narrative one.
Depending on your topic of interest, you can choose topics that involve nature – for example, document the effects of global warming. Another idea is to photograph protests or make an education photo essay.
It doesn’t have to be a big global issue; you can choose something specific to your community – are there too many stray dogs? Make a photo essay about a local animal shelter. The topics are endless.
- Behind the scenes photo essay
A behind-the-scenes always make for a good photo story – people are curious to know what happens and how everything comes together before a show.
Depending on your own interests, this can be a photo essay about a fashion show, a theatre play, a concert, and so on. You’ll probably need to get some permissions, though, not only to shoot but also to showcase or publish those images.
4 Best Photo Essays in Recent times
Now that you know all the techniques about it, it might be helpful to look at some photo essay examples to see how you can put the concept into practice. Here are some famous photo essays from recent times to give you some inspiration.
Habibi by Antonio Faccilongo
This photo essay wan the World Press Photo Story of the Year in 2021. Faccilongo explores a very big conflict from a very specific and intimate point of view – how the Israeli-Palestinian war affects the families.
He chose to use a square format because it allows him to give order to things and eliminate unnecessary elements in his pictures.
With this long-term photo essay, he wanted to highlight the sense of absence and melancholy women and families feel towards their husbands away at war.
The project then became a book edited by Sarah Leen and the graphics of Ramon Pez.
Picture This: New Orleans by Mary Ellen Mark
The last assignment before her passing, Mary Ellen Mark travelled to New Orleans to register the city after a decade after Hurricane Katrina.
The images of the project “bring to life the rebirth and resilience of the people at the heart of this tale”, – says CNNMoney, commissioner of the work.
Each survivor of the hurricane has a story, and Mary Ellen Mark was there to record it. Some of them have heartbreaking stories about everything they had to leave behind.
Others have a story of hope – like Sam and Ben, two eight-year-olds born from frozen embryos kept in a hospital that lost power supply during the hurricane, yet they managed to survive.
Selfie by Cindy Sherman
Cindy Sherman is an American photographer whose work is mainly done through self-portraits. With them, she explores the concept of identity, gender stereotypes, as well as visual and cultural codes.
One of her latest photo essays was a collaboration with W Magazine entitled Selfie. In it, the author explores the concept of planned candid photos (‘plandid’).
The work was made for Instagram, as the platform is well known for the conflict between the ‘real self’ and the one people present online. Sherman started using Facetune, Perfect365 and YouCam to alter her appearance on selfies – in Photoshop, you can modify everything, but these apps were designed specifically to “make things prettier”- she says, and that’s what she wants to explore in this photo essay.
Tokyo Compression by Michael Wolf
Michael Wolf has an interest in the broad-gauge topic Life in Cities. From there, many photo essays have been derived – amongst them – Tokyo Compression .
He was horrified by the way people in Tokyo are forced to move to the suburbs because of the high prices of the city. Therefore, they are required to make long commutes facing 1,5 hours of train to start their 8+ hour workday followed by another 1,5 hours to get back home.
To portray this way of life, he photographed the people inside the train pressed against the windows looking exhausted, angry or simply absent due to this way of life.
You can visit his website to see other photo essays that revolve around the topic of life in megacities.
Final Words
It’s not easy to make photo essays, so don’t expect to be great at it right from your first project.
Start off small by choosing a specific subject that’s interesting to you – that will come from an honest place, and it will be a great practice for some bigger projects along the line.
Whether you like to shoot still life or you’re a travel photographer, I hope these photo essay tips and photo essay examples can help you get started and grow in your photography.
Let us know which topics you are working on right now – we’ll love to hear from you!
Check out these 8 essential tools to help you succeed as a professional photographer.
Includes limited-time discounts.
Ana Mireles is a Mexican researcher that specializes in photography and communications for the arts and culture sector.
Don't Miss These Articles:
Own a Sony Camera? You Need At Least ONE Of These 26 Incredible Lenses
We asked 1,000 photographers what camera they use - the results were surprising, 121 amazing photography hacks you won't believe are possible with your camera, why was the lens crying read these 58 hilarious photographer jokes to find out, 14 unbelievable food photography secrets revealed (number 2 is yuck), the world's most dangerous jobs (images may disturb some viewers), prepare to be amazed: 25 mind blowing facts about cameras & photography, 13 clever ways to immediately make more money with your photography, 31 famous photographers that shook the world - do you know them all, 80 professional photographers reveal the weird things they carry in their bags, when money is no object: check out the world's most expensive cameras, take a sneak peek at 67 workspaces of pro photographers from around the world.
WELCOME TO SHOTKIT
Enter your email to be sent today's Welcome Gift: 19 Photography Tools
Thanks for subscribing! Please check your email for further instructions.
Don't Miss:
96 Inspirational Quotes About Photography (Download the Images to Use on Instagram)
174 hilarious zoom backgrounds (wallpapers) to liven up your next video call.
Shotkit may earn a commission on affiliate links. Learn more.
45 Photo Essay Topics
Most academic writing assignments involve just that – writing. But in the case of a photo essay, the assignment becomes one of both writing and photography. A photo essay is simply an essay that uses images instead of (or in addition to) words to tell a story or make a point.
A good photo essay will capture your audience’s attention and tell a story that resonates with them on an emotional level. To create a successful photo essay, there are a few things you should keep in mind.
This detailed guide will walk you through the essential steps of creating a photo essay and provide you with 45 photo essay topics to get you started.
What Is a Photo Essay?
A photo essay is a written piece that uses images to tell a story or make a point. In other words, it’s an essay that depends primarily on visuals rather than text to communicate its message.
Photo essays are usually themed around a particular subject or topic and can be created for a variety of purposes. They can be used to:
- Tell a news story
- Raise awareness about an important issue
- Share a personal experience
- Document a place or event
- Highlight the work of a specific artist or photographer
No matter what the purpose of your photo essay is, there are a few key elements that should be included in order to impact the audience to the best degree.
What Makes a Good Photo Essay?
A good photo essay will have a clear focus, with each image adding something new to the story. It should also be structured to make sense so that the viewer can easily follow along and understand the point you’re trying to make.
When choosing images for your photo essay, be sure to select ones that are high quality and have a consistent theme or style. This will help create a cohesive story that is visually pleasing and easy to follow.
It’s also important to ensure that your images are appropriately captioned and credited, especially if you’re using someone else’s work. This ensures that your photo essay is both accurate and legal.
Steps for Creating a Photo Essay
Creating a photo essay is a process that requires time, patience, and careful planning. Follow these steps to create a successful photo essay:
1. Choose a topic or theme
The first step in creating a photo essay is to choose the topic or theme you want to focus on. This can be anything from a place, an event, or even a person. Once you’ve decided on your subject, it’s time to start brainstorming ideas for your essay.
2. Do your research
If you’re documenting a place or an event, it’s important to do your research beforehand. This will help you understand your subject’s background and give you a better idea of what to include in your essay.
3. Gather your material
Now it’s time to start gathering the material for your essay. This includes both images and text. Remember, if you’re using someone else’s photos, be sure to get their permission first.
4. Choose a format
There are a few different ways you can format your photo essay. The most common is to create a series of images that progress in a linear fashion, such as from left to right or top to bottom.
Another option is to arrange your images more abstractly, such as in a grid or collage. This can help to add visual interest and variety to your essay.
5. Edit your material
Once you have all of your material gathered, it’s time to start editing. This includes both choosing which images to use and writing the accompanying text.
For the images, you’ll want to select those that are the most visually appealing and that best support the story you’re trying to tell. As you edit, also be sure to crop and resize your images as needed.
For the text, you’ll want to write a brief introduction and conclusion, as well as captions for each of your images. The goal is to provide just enough context and information to help viewers understand what they’re seeing.
6. Design your essay
Now it’s time to start putting your photo essay together. If you’re using a linear format, begin by arranging your images in the order you want them to appear. Then, add the accompanying text.
If you’re using a more creative format, start by playing around with different ways to arrange your images. Then, add the text once you’ve settled on a design you like.
7. Finalize and Hand it in
Once you’ve designed your photo essay, it’s time to finalize it and hand it in. Be sure to proofread the text for any errors and check the images to ensure they’re properly captioned. It is highly recommended to use a professional printing service to print your photo essay to ensure the best possible quality.
Understanding how to create a photo essay is only half the battle. The other half is finding a topic that you’re passionate about that will also interest your audience. To help get you started, here are 45 ideas for photo essay topics:
Photo Essay Topics About Places
- Your hometown
- A nearby city or town
- A favorite vacation spot
- An interesting landmark
- A place from your childhood
- A hidden gem in your town
- The most beautiful place you’ve ever been
- The most interesting place you’ve ever been
- The strangest place you’ve ever been
- A place that is significant to you for personal reasons
- A place that is significant to your family
- A place with a lot of history
- A place that is in danger of disappearing
Photo Essay Topics About Events
- A sporting event
- A music festival
- A parade or procession
- A protest or demonstration
- An annual celebration in your town
- A once-in-a-lifetime event that you witnessed
- An event that had a significant impact on you
- An event that had a significant impact on your community
- An event that is widely considered to be positive
- An event that is widely considered to be negative
- A controversial event
- A natural disaster
- A man-made disaster
Photo Essay Topics About People
- The people in your neighborhood
- The people at your job
- Your family
- Your friends
- The elderly
- A group of people with a common interest or hobby
- A group of people from a different culture than your own
- A group of people who are disadvantaged or marginalized in some way
- A group of people who are often misunderstood
- Celebrities
- Politicians
- Everyday people
Photo Essay Topics About Concepts
A photo essay is an interesting assignment that can help you express your creativity while also teaching you how to pay attention to detail, tell a story, and edit images. If you follow the steps outlined in this article, you’ll be well on your way to creating a successful photo essay.
Related Posts
- 70 Casual Essay Topics
- 80 Holocaust Essay Topics
- 60 Abortion Essay Topics
- 240 History Essay Topics
- 140 Environmental Essay Topics
Categories:
- Essay Samples
- Essay Topics
- Essay Writing Guides
Recent posts:
- 170 Ethics Essay Topics
- 160 Satire Essay Topics
- 160 Rhetorical Essay Topics
- 155 Criminal Justice Essay Topics
- 150 Political Essay Topics
- 145 Classification Essay Topics
- 140 Sociology Essay Topics
- 140 Opinion Essay Topics
- 135 Controversial Essay Topics
- 125 Classification and Division Essay Topics
- 120 Literary Essay Topics
- 100 Profile Essay Topics
- 90 Heart of Darkness Essay Topics
Testimonials
Photo Essay Examples
Have you run out of interesting photo essay ideas? I have prepared a number of examples for you to draw the inspiration from. Find the photo essay example you like and you are sure to create a lasting emotional impact with your work.
30 Photo Essay Examples to Inspire
What is a photo essay? It is a series or a collection of shots created for the purpose of provoking feelings and emotions. They exist in a variety of forms – from photos only to images with brief comments or captions and written essays accompanied by shots.
Check out the following 30 photo essay examples I have found.
1. Protests
- View the “Resistance” photo essay by David Moore .
A great idea for photo essays is to shoot the protest to show its power. Don’t forget about angles, composition and framing. Go up to the front and photograph the leader of the protesters walking forward.
After that, go back to the end of the group to take pictures of families joining the protest. As a result, you will gain experience shooting big groups of people in motion.
2. Abandoned Building
- View the “Lost Collective” photo essay by Bret Pattman .
Old buildings are excellent photo essay topics since you can capture a large number of elements. Get approval before going in but mind that such places are far from being totally safe. Bring various lenses: the macro one – for details and the wide-angle one – when you want to include many elements in one shot.
3. Local Event
- Check out the “Monday Marathon” photo essay by Quinn G. Perini .
It doesn’t matter if you are a resident of a large city or a small town, there may be an upcoming local event, like a marathon or a festival. This is a nice opportunity to realize photo essay ideas.
You can capture the before, while and after stages of the event. Arrive earlier and take pictures of the preparation activities, then shoot the actual event starting with the official beginning.
Keep photographing even when the event is over, capture the cleaning up and disassembling processes.
- Check out the “Behind the Scenes with Obama” photo essay by Callie Shell .
Many people find behind-the-scene activities more fascinating than their results shown to the viewers. Movie filming, photo sessions, tours or stories of successful people are amazing photo essay themes. This always finds an emotional response from the audience. Such shootings show us the other side of a person or events which we knew nothing about.
5. Sport Fans
- View the “Homes of Football” photo essay by Stuart Roy Clarke .
Sport doesn’t only unite people but also evokes their passion and enthusiasm. Fans throughout the world are vigorously rooting for their favorite teams and players, regardless of the kind of sport.
The emotions are running high during different games and it is a perfect time to capture a photographic essay. No need to buy tickets to a big game, a local high school one will be enough to practice.
6. Social Issues
- View the “Juveniles in Prison” photo essay by Isadora Kosofsky .
The brightest examples of photo essays are related to social issues, like unemployment, domestic violence, gender discrimination and more. Address the topic carefully, with consideration and look for a proper perspective.
Your shots may draw the people’s attention to a truly burning and relevant matter and have a stronger effect than any text.
- View the “Last Moments” photo essay by Ross Taylor .
You don’t necessarily have to focus on profound photo essay topics to evoke emotions. Capturing pets enjoying their worry-free and untroubled life seems like an easy but at the same time interesting activity.
Choose any animal – from a domestic bird to a dog, cat or horse. For more emotional images, take pictures of a pet when it is still a baby and recreate these shots when it is older or is in its final days.
8. Street Style
- View the Tribal Street Photography photo essay by Hans Eijkelboom .
People often express themselves with the help of clothes. The way passers-by on the streets are dressed may reflect the clothing style of a whole society. That’s why you can travel around the world and capture people’s outfits in various areas.
This photo essay example allows you to get familiar with the identity of the inhabitants of various countries. You might be surprised to see that some stereotyped beliefs about people from a particular area aren’t true.
9. Landmarks
- View the “Volte-Face” Oliver Curtis .
The pictures of landmarks are typically taken from a certain spot. One of the best photo essay ideas is to try shooting sights from various angles. You will also have an opportunity to improve composition and your framing skills.
TA variety of perspectives is endless: through the streets, in the morning, afternoon and evening, with a drone or including reflections.
10. Charity
- Check out the “Helping to Heal” photo essay by Chris Usher .
Connect your persuasive photo essay to a relevant global problem. Look for a volunteer organization in your area, they will be eager to participate in your photography project.
Capture what exactly the volunteers are involved in, focus on the subjects they are providing help to and show why it matters.
11. Religious Traditions
- Check out the “Shanghai Sacred” photo essay by Liz Hingley .
Religion is an important part of any culture. The most prominent photo essay examples are connected to religious traditions across the world.
There are no limits on how you can interpret and reflect this topic in your shots. Pay attention to popular religious occasions, traditional religious clothing and dishes typical of these holidays.
- Check out the “A Look Inside a Public Boarding School” photo essay by David Burnett .
Consider visiting the school and capturing day-to-day activities of teachers and pupils as one of photo story ideas. Try to go unnoticed but feel free to ask people to take part in the shooting if they want to.
You can find plenty of captivating scenes at school: children and teachers on a break, different classrooms, cooks preparing food in the canteen.
13. Native Cultures
- Check out the “Indigenous Transitions” photo essay by Hannah Reyes .
Because of globalization, various cultures gradually begin to resemble each other. That’s why you can base your photographic essay on capturing native cultures.
In North America, you can try to find some Native American cultures. In Australia, you can visit aborigines and in Scandinavia – the Sami nation. Highlight their daily routine, traditions, the way of life, eating habits, etc.
14. Personal Space
- View the “Hackney Studios” photo essay by Jenny Lewis .
The working and living space of a person has a lot of peculiar details and is an ideal background for photo essays. You can narrow down this idea to representatives of certain professions.
For instance, the rooms and houses of people of creative professions will definitely surprise and tell a lot about those who live there.
15. Bodypositivity
- Check out the “Epidermis” photo essay by Sophie Harris-Taylor .
Modern beauty and fashion industry promote an unrealistically slim and perfect body. Therefore, the bodypositivity will make an excellent topic for powerful photo essays. For this project, you can invite people of different age groups, sizes, disabled people, etc.
Then place a real and retouched shot next to each other for comparison. Try asking your models the questions regarding parts of their bodies they are unsatisfied about the most and highlight them in the images.
16. Alternative Lifestyles
- Check out the “We are the Youth” photo essay by Laurel Golio .
Some people decide to lead a lifestyle that differs from the one generally accepted by society. Explore different areas and look for people with an unusual way of living. Take pictures of those, who reside in extraordinary conditions, representatives of various subcultures or the LBGTQ community.
These photo essay topics show other people that it is okay to go out of the comfort zone and run against the wind.
17. A Day in the Life
- Check out the “A Day in the Life of a Fashion Week Model” photo essay by Joseph Chi Li .
One of the best photo essays concepts is related to a day in the life. The main character can be any person – a relative or a family member, a teacher, a writer or policeman, etc.
People are generally interested in finding out facts about the lives and daily routine of others. A life of every human is incredible, especially if you learn it in more detail.
- Check out useful environmental photography tips .
18. Climate Change
- Check out the “Extreme Ice Survey” photo essay by James Balog .
It is possible to bring to life a variety of photo story ideas concerned to climate changes. Travel to places most affected by climate change, for instance, glaciers or famous resorts.
Capture the way the continuous drought has influenced the environment, animals and the inhabitants. As an alternative, take pictures of environmentalist protests or inexhaustible energy sources.
19. Struggles of Weight Loss
If you look at photo essay examples devoted to the improvement, they always attract plenty of attention from viewers. Capture the whole process of losing weight and show the results with the help of before/after shots. You are sure to get an inspiring and motivating photography essay.
Don’t hesitate to involve other people who have also become thinner. To add more emotions, snap pictures of people with loose skin after losing weight.
20. Pregnancy
- View the “What the Bump?” photo essay by Danielle Guenther .
As you already know, body changes are appealing and intriguing photo essay topics. Many shooters love capturing the way woman’s body is being transformed during pregnancy. In case you feel like experimenting and touching upon social matters, choose teenage pregnant girls as models for your project.
- Check out more maternity photo ideas .
21. Seasonal Changes
The most eye-catching photo story examples feature seasonal changes. This idea isn’t exactly an innovative one. But if you are ready for creative experiments, you can take fantastic pictures.
Come up with the way you can make this photo essay more unique. For instance, shoot your favorite location, a place where you spent your childhood or met the love of your life.
- View photography series ideas you can try to repeat.
22. “Every Day” by Noah Kalina
Noah Kalina, a photographer, has been taking photos of himself for 12 years every single day. After that, he managed to include all these shots in a video lasting for 7 minutes.
Noah isn’t going to stop and will continue taking pictures of himself till the last day of his life. A photography essay of a person growing up and then gradually getting older will be a touching and attention-grabbing story.
23. “42nd and Vanderbilt” by Peter Funch
One of the best photo essays 2018 was created by Peter Funch, a Danish photographer. He has been shooting one and the same place on a particular NY street at the same time for 9 years.
Peter combined shots of regular passers-by he captured on different days, focusing on identical activities, like drinking coffee or smoking, similar hairstyles and outfits.
24. “Standard” by Roger Eberhard
Hotel rooms in different areas of the world sometimes literally copy each other. Roger Eberhard, a photographer, traveled to 32 countries with the aim to capture repetitive interiors of Hilton hotel rooms.
Then he combined them with the shot of a window view for his book named Standard. Working on his photographic essay, Roger couldn’t help but wonder why people go traveling to different countries and in each new area, they live in identical-looking spaces.
25. “Riding the Tube” by Stefan Rousseau
On his way to the center of London, photographer Stefan Rousseau began taking photos of other passengers. People going in public transport often had their heads in the clouds and didn’t even notice him shooting.
Stefan takes pictures in black and white to avoid bright tones that divert attention from emotions on the people’s faces.
26. “Harlem Family” by Gordon Parks
Gordon Parks, the first African-American photographer of LIFE magazine, got an assignment to take pictures of the basis of urban violence in America.
He has been taking numerous pictures of one family for four weeks. This photo essay example touches the topic of racism, economic exclusion and poverty of many American citizens.
27. “Undocumented” by John Moore
John Moore has been concentrating on the problem of undocumented immigrants to the USA for ten years. He managed to photograph the entire US southern border, actively traveled all over Mexico and Central America, visited immigrant groups in the USA.
John’s unique photo essays feature massive deportations, ICE raiding immigrant groups and their growing panic that followed all these terrible events.
28. “Signed, X” by Kate Ryan
Among the most moving photo essay examples is “Signed”. It depicts various aspects of life after a sexual assault. Kate Ryan interviewed and photographed the sexual assault victims.
In this way, she wanted to reflect their traumatic experience and psychological stress that doesn’t go away even after many years.
29. “Aging in Prison” by Jessica Earnshaw
It took Jessica Earnshaw almost two weeks to take pictures of elderly inmates in prison. Her shots can be found on the pages of National Geographic and other well-known magazines.
Jessica’s project impresses people with its profound idea and special emphasis on people, who spend their last years being locked away. Prison photo essay themes should be explored even further.
30. “Breach of Piece” by Eric Etheridge
Eric Etheridge snapped photos of people approximately 50 years after their mugshots were taken. It is especially interesting to compare the portraits of that same women and men many years later.
Eric has added brief interviews to his picture study essay for a viewer to get familiar with these people’s stories.
Best Photo Essays Freebies
While editing your photography essay, remember that it is highly important to accentuate the concept and feelings you want to convey. With the following 5 freebies, stunning results are guaranteed.
Black and White Classic
Thank you for download!
Check your email to download freebies. (approx. 1-2 min)
This black and white Ps action will put an emphasis on the artistic features of your shot and give a timeless B&W touch. Apply this action if you want to add a bit of mystery to your images. Due to the contrast between black and white tones, the photo will be more detailed.
HDR Contrast
Choose this Ps HDR action for photography essays with scenery and nature. It increases the detalization and saturation of pictures.
Smoke Mystery
Add more drama to your images with this Ps smoke overlay. With its help, you will be able to add subtle grey smoke wisps to shots for visual appeal.
Cool Soft Light
Make elements of a good photograph more prominent by applying this preset. It gives images blue toning, adds slight drama to the entire scene. Moreover, the preset increases the darkness of other shades and creates colder skin tones.
Portrait Vintage
A vintage effect will beautifully suit photography essays. If you like a film-looking style of pictures with deep tones, apply this Lr preset. It is equally perfect for enhancing shots taken inside and outside.
Hi there, I'm Tata Rossi - a professional blogger, read more
- Freebies
177 Photography Essay Topic Ideas & Examples
🏆 best photography topic ideas & essay examples, 👍 good essay topics on photography, 🎓 simple & easy photography essay titles, 💡 most interesting photography topics to write about, 🔍 interesting topics to write about photography, ❓ photography essay questions, 💯 free photography essay topic generator.
- Photography as a career It is of essence to note that a number of variations exist in the field of photography, for example, self-employment and commercial photographing are just some of the ways one can successfully earn a living […]
- Evolution of Photography: Trying to Seize the Moment In his book A Concise History of Photography, Helmut Gernsheim takes the reader onto a time travel, explaining the origins of photography and telling about the opportunities that photography offers.
- The Exhibit Twilight Visions at the International Center of Photography The medium of photography in the post World War I period was almost too deliciously convenient a vehicle for certain proponents of the Dadaists and the Surrealists.
- Social Uses of Photography: Post-Mortem Photographs The art of photography was invented by Louis Daguerre in the 18th century; this invention promoted the representatives of the middle class family with an opportunity to memorize the events and people and not to […]
- Photographer – Robert Frank This element is evidenced by Rodeo which was taken in 1954 in New York city because one can not identify the face of the guy who is leaning on the dustbin but since Robert’s photos […]
- Photography: Jimmy Nelson’s Piece of Art According to Nelson, the Maasai are part of the few tribes in the world that are quickly fading due to civilization and the increasing need for the world to form a global community.
- Gordon Parks, an American Photographer After the death of his mother in 1926, Parks was forced to move to Minneapolis, where he made a living by affiliating himself with a number of odd jobs, such as the job of a […]
- Concept of Documentary Photography The purpose of composition in this case is to bring out a distinction between the different elements of a work that is being portrayed in such a manner that the elements of the work that […]
- Photography Art in 20th Century In its turn, this reflected the fact that during the course of the 20th century’s initial phase, the classical conventions of physics have been thoroughly revised, due to the emergence of the Theory of Relativity.
- Photographer Jeff Wall and His Paintings The room is clearly in a state of disarray as the dishes and several other things in the room are unattended to.
- Exhibitions at the International Center of Photography Focusing on the photographs by Chim, it is possible to feel as the part of the European society between the 1930s and 1950s.
- Critique of a Photographer, Tom Williams The major point is that the works of Tom Williams can be found in both private and public collections, this is why the popularity of his works raises day by day, and, it is quite […]
- The Art of Photography: Seizing the Moment Flying The vividness of the gender stereotypes which the art of photography disclosed was incredible, because of the new ideas of gender gap and the gender prejudices which the boldest photographers dared to take picture of.
- Impacts of Photography on Advertising So as to discuss this topic, this paper shall: trace the development of photography on advertising; discuss the positive impacts of photography on advertising; and discuss the negative impacts of photography on advertising.
- Surrealism in Photography Surrealism, which started after the World War I, in photography is one of the indicators of most important revolutions that have taken place over the history in the area of photography.
- “Escaping to Reality: Fashion Photography in the 1990s” by Elliot Smedley Written by Elliot Smedley, “Escaping to Reality: Fashion Photography in the 1990s” explores how contemporary fashion photography is adopting realistic styles by using realistic activities contrary to ideal styles that had dominated art and photography […]
- The development of lithography and photography in the nineteenth century For this reason, when the reproduction techniques of lithography and photography came up, most of the artists at the time viewed this as a gold mine. As to whether lithography and photography resulted in a […]
- Critical analysis of Barthes’s Camera Lucida-Reflections on Photography He maintained that a picture has a potential to create deceitfulness in the fantasy of ‘what is’, where the description of ‘What was’ is so specific.
- History of Photography Culture Thus, as a result of the credibility, reliability and realism of photography, the development of photography was closely related to the industrial revolution, the scientific revolution and advancement in philosophy.
- Mads Nissen, a Danish Documentary Photographer He has helped in expressing the plight of the minority groups in the society and also in championing of human rights of the people all over the world.
- Weegee and Goldin’s Photography This paper compares Weegee and Goldin’s photography to address the connection between the middle years of the twentieth century, when photography began to expose realities in life, and the modern distrustful era.
- The Impact of Nineteenth Century Photography on Visual Representation and the Development of Visual Culture The essay concludes with a showcasing of a number of nineteenth century photographs that illustrate the wide range of uses, particularly in the realm of portraiture, that photographers of the nineteenth century employed the photographic […]
- Eastman Kodak and Photographic Film Industry Major Changes This kind of study enables the marketer to evaluate the performance of the company in the market. Therefore, the application of the model is inevitable in case the market is to understand the performance of […]
- Photography’s Impact on Society The pictures taken from scenes of dying soldiers in the American civil war are some of the reasons that evoked strong emotions, which led to the end of the war.
- Jack Dykinga’s Outdoor Photography The works of Jack Dykinga have longed appealed to because this photographer is always able to emphasize the beauty of nature by paying attention to color patterns and space.
- The Description of Nature in Jack Dykinga’ Photographs There are several aspects of these photographs that I would like to discuss, namely the interplay of light and shadow and structured space. This is the main lesson that I learned from the works of […]
- Photography of High-End Art However, in order to capture the beauty and uniqueness of the original artwork, as well as incorporate a range of innuendoes concerning the artist, the era that the art was created in, etc, very specific […]
- A Comparison of Photographic Approaches Towards American Culture Siskind, on the other hand, used photography as a skylight into the subconscious minds of Americans and a technique to react to the dirty happenings experienced in World War II.
- Photographic Approaches Towards Landscapes: Peter Henry Emerson He insisted that science was a core part of art and photography and thus, he endeavored to prove how the two were completely dependent. He was able to capture the economical effects of the depression […]
- Araki Nobuyoshi and Photography He promoted a new genre of art which is up to date cherished in Japan and other parts of the world.
- Privacy and Photography in Public Places According to the protectors of privacy, it is inappropriate to take photographs and circulate them without the consent of the individuals.
- Photography and Beauty Perception His resistance stemmed from the fact that in the early decades of photography, photographs were meant to idealize images and for a picture to be considered beautiful, its subject had to be something beautiful.
- Surrealist Photography and Experimental Photography These two techniques showcase objects in an in-depth manner, concentrating specifically on the surroundings of the image and creation of an abstract form of art that shaped the history of photography.
- Reflection of Photographic Arts The knowledge influences the choice of image and the position of the subject in the photograph. The knowledge of the fundamentals of photographic arts creates a world of possibilities.
- Photographic Approaches for Manuel Alvarez Bravo and Ann Parker In this review, a comparison is made of the photographic approaches of Ann Parker and Manuel Alvarez Bravo, looking for similarities and differences in their art.
- The Photographic Approaches Towards American Culture of Robert Frank and Gary Winogrand Frank practiced many forms of photography and he did photography both for the commercial and fashion purposes and was considered an influential American photographer who was also a mentor to many young American artists.
- Melancholy Objects in Photography The purpose of this paper is to develop a critical evaluation of Sontag’s claim of melancholy and Photography, with reference to a photograph taken for a tombstone in a cemetery. In fact, the grave looks […]
- Photography: Finding Beauty in the Ordinary Therefore, the beauty that the photo represents is largely derived from the actual object. While Sontang acknowledges that the close-up is a reflection of truth, it is still subject to the photographer’s viewpoint.
- Photograph Discussion: Physical Elements and Content Telling from the photograph, the three boys were part of the group playing games in the background and were called to attention by the photographer.
- The Photography of the Arctic Ice Panoramic View The vivid play of light and color in the picture brings out the striking separation of the detached mass from the main iceberg.
- The Pool’ Pictures Balance in Photography Because of the unique combination of urban background and the green elements, as well as the presence of such details as the cast iron, the change in the pictures of the pool not only shows […]
- Photography in Arabic Countries New and new tendencies and fashion took over the generations of European and American photographers, while for the photographers of Arabic and Middle Eastern countries the art of taking pictures was still new.
- Photographic Representation of War Photography captures the moments that are gone, portrays the reality of the past, and preserves the images that used to be real at the second when the photo was taken.
- Technologies: Amateur Film vs Cell Phone Photography An analysis of the advantages and disadvantages of the two forms of photography concludes the paper. Cellphone and film cameras have apertures that regulate the quantity of light passing to the sensor and film, respectively.
- Lewis Hine’s Photography Art Being born at the age of great changes and stresses, Lewis since his childhood was interested in the imprinting of some great moments of the history of American society.
- Photography as a Mass Medium To demonstrate this fact, the study explores the works of Sontag in her article titled, On Photography, and shows how digital photography changes her analysis about the “photographic way of seeing” life.
- Andy Goldsworthy: Sculptor and Photographer Besides, the vast majority of artworks of this sculptor are installed in nature in the woods, fields, plains, at the ponds, or rivers.
- The Basic Critical Theory for Photography According to Berger, images depend on the way of seeing of the person who has taken them. Berger insists that ‘publicity images’ and ‘advertising images’ have the same meanings.
- Melbourne’ Keith Gallery: Photography Analysis However, at the entrance of the gallery, I took a picture that shows the entry of the gallery that has photos on it.
- The Photography Gallery in Melbourne The photos are mounted on glass and owing to the fact that the setting is indoor, a lot of lighting is applied to prevent any darkness.
- Hine’s Indianapolis and Kruger’s Help! Photography Nevertheless, unlike Lewis Hine, Barbara Kruger chooses to combine different media, and in this way, she departs from the canons of the modernist art. Overall, this comparison indicates that the works of Lewis Hine and […]
- Social Documentary Photography Then and Now In the first place, he tried to inform people about the diversity of life in the city, which was a common trend for the beginning of the twentieth century.
- Child Labor, Great Depression and World War II in Photographs The impression is of isolation and yearning for daylight, freedom, and a childhood foregone, in the midst of a machine-dominated world.
- Steve McCurry’s Photographs This approach has revealed the impacts of war on the lives of many people across the globe. McCurry had the opportunity to capture the portrait of a monk in Tibet.
- Photography Company’s Public Relations Campaign The accomplishment of each aim will be performed following the specificity of the targeted audience that is supposed to be composed of the middle-class population of the Seattle Area. In the meantime, they expect that […]
- The Photograph Description and Criticism In this picture, the foreground is where the woman is seated and the background depicts transparent window of the apartment The photograph was likely taken in a broad daylight since outside the apartment to be […]
- The “We Are All Equal” Photography by Haley Bell In spite of the fact that the photograph is rather straightforward in its message, it is important to focus on this image of a young white woman’s hand with words saying that we are all […]
- Photography Ethics, Reliability, and Principles As a result, it is often possible to guarantee that the photo provided in the news is not a product of Photoshop.
- Pathos, Ethos, and Logos in Photography The audience’s personal experiences affects its interpretation of what the picture depicts, it might be close to the communication the photographer had wished to convey or a totally different perspective.
- Timothy Hogan’s Photography Taking into consideration the infinite backing from the greatest producers, retouchers, and workshops in the professional photography niche, it is quite reasonable that Hogan and his team managed to furnace the lifelong contacts that provide […]
- Photography: the Art of Seeing The images that she deals with are associated with saucer magnolia blossoms and she aims to capture the exquisiteness of trees hence bringing-forth that magnificence to the attention of her audience.
- Fascination With Crime Through the Art of Photography The image is not for the faint of heart; however, it is fascinating in a way it is shot. It is evident that the robber fired a bullet into the camera to hide his identity.
- The History of War Photography The purpose of this report is to identify basic trends in the development of war photography and determine the conceptual, stylistic, and technical changes observed in the course of its formation.
- “Film und Foto” Exhibition and Surrealism in Photography Surrealism is considered to be a cultural movement of the early twentieth century and is commonly reflected in the works of art and writings.
- Perspectives on Photography In his essay, John Berger states that the war in Vietnam was one of the most influential transformations of the world.
- Photographs in a Written Society Visual literature requires one to have the ability to analyze, interpret, and understand images with the aim of acquiring meaning through the cultural context in which the image exists.
- Modern Art: Painting, Sculpture, Architecture, Photography Duchamp and his work have a connection through the refusal to accept the views of the majority of artists and art lovers.
- Michael Lesy’s Wisconsin Death Trip: Photograph Analysis As highlighted by the focus of the light and the enlargement of the image, this makes the ribs of the horse to be the photo’s point of focus.
- Photography and Its History This is termed as documentary photography in which a value of a photograph is measured by its worth of objectivity, which depends on the subject matter, the perception of why it is taken, and the […]
- Photography and Society Through History: Political and Ideological Functions Another example of a thoroughly politicized photo, which during the course of the thirties was meant to promote the cause of Communism, is Alexander Rodchenko’s Pioneer with Trumpet:
- “Memorial Day” by Anthony Suau: Photography Analysis The background of the image is blurry, indicating that when Suau took the photograph, he had one central area of focus and opted to indiscriminately isolate the other items in the shot.
- Hector Mediavilla Photographic Series “The Congolese Sape” The photographer’s decision to organize the order of photographs influences the viewer’s interpretation of the image. The photographer captures an image from a focal position; the decision to capture the image is influenced by the […]
- Richard Drew’s Photography: Visualizing September 11 This would have ensured that I had accommodated the rights of media, clients, society, and other stakeholders while still adhering to media ethics.
- A Critique of a Photographer’s Works: Matthew Abbott Matthew Abbott underlines one simple fact that Istanbul is the only place where East has all chances to meet West, this is why it is hard to predict the traditions and interests of Turkish people, […]
- Photography: A Cultural History In the middle of the 1850s, there were many photographers, whose projects caused people’s admiration, and the works of Edouard Baldus, Imperial Library of the Louvre, and Roger Fenton, Rievaulx Abbey, may be considered as […]
- Personal Interest in Photography Most of Cotton’s photographs were devoted to the exploration of the serenity and beauty in the natural world, as can be seen in the photographs below.
- Photography: Is It Possible to Recapture the Past? The problem of photography is twofold: the problem of representation, and the presumption of reality that the photographic images elicits in the viewer the pervasive belief that a photograph depicts a referent, a real “how […]
- Nature and Animals in Photographs In the picture, a viewer sees the glassy and smooth water surface, the banks and fir trees covered with snow, and a high dome of the mountain in the center of the photograph.
- Andreas Gursky’s “The Rhine II” Photography In The Rhine II, the photographer attempts to deliver “an accurate image of a modern river” and invites viewers to see the river enclosed in the deep-colored stripes of grass, concrete, and the clouded sky.
- Moholy Nagy’s “Laci and Lucia” Photography In order to make it fit the life in the 21st century, the famous quote by Laszlo Moholy Nagy can be rewritten in the following way: “The illiterate of the future will be the one […]
- A Distinct Camera Vision in Jacques-Henri Lartigue’s Photograph Also, there is no focus on the man’s feet because the camera concentrated on the leap in water, and the feet remain out of the water.
- Photography Changes Who We Think We Might Be This essay is interesting and was chosen because Bergen is famous for her acting and not for photography, yet she clearly has a passion for this trade.
- “The Valley of the Shadow of Death” the Photography by Roger Fenton Finally, from the standpoint of war, such a large number of cannonballs on the road testifies to the scale of the hostilities, which also makes one wonder about the alarming consequences of attacks. Therefore, the […]
- Robinson, Emerson, and Photography as an Art Both of them viewed the newly created form of image capture as a medium for the expression of art, but their views on the nature of the movement were radically different.
- Photographs and Danto`s View on Art This argument comes from the idea of the philosophic meaning of art and its ability to impact viewers by representing some objects of reality in unusual ways.
- Philosophy of Photography as an Art In conclusion, it is necessary to stress that photography is a specific form of art that involves the use of technology.
- ”Preferences for Photographic Art Among Hospitalized Patients With Cancer” by Hanson ET Al. The opinions of stakeholders, who are patients and nursing staff, as well as the outcomes of treatment, are factors that influence the response to the research question.
- Photography & Folk Art: America in the 1930s Exhibition The exhibition “Photography + Folk Art: Looking for America in the 1930s” is a remarkable venue where visitors can see and even feel the atmosphere of the years of the Great Depression in the United […]
- Edward Weston’s Modernist Photographs More attention should be paid to the analysis of Weston’s photographs and the comparison of their style to my photographs. The object in my black-and-white photograph looks like a kind of tubes, which texture is […]
- Imogen Cunningham, an American Female Photographer The high contrast and neutral tones of the image bring to the viewer’s attention a variety of details, including the woman’s hair, her wrinkles, and the unevenness of her skin.
- Publishing Controversial Photographs: To Be or Not To Be? Harte took some pictures of the rescue operation, including an image capturing the moment when the rescuers found the body of a drowned boy and showed it to the family.
- Snapshot vs. Fine-Art Photography in Digital Age The scale of distribution of everyday photography is associated with the improvement of photographic technology and the spread of electronic and digital technologies, making exploring snapshot photography particularly relevant. To analyse the functions of snapshot […]
- History of Photography: Road and Poplar Trees Analysis The picture artistically depicts the distance between the poplar trees making the trees on the right side to be smaller than the left side.
- History of Photography: Brief Overview of the Most Exciting and Impressive Ways of Cultural Representation Photography is one of the most interesting and impressive ways and techniques of culture representation. For instance, photography documented the culture of the 1920s and world wars, the Great Depression-era, and the liberation movement.
- Contribution of Modernity to Photography and Film Movements Modernity in visual arts and cinema is part of the ever-changing world, wherein the establishment of ideas, different people in the world of art participates in experimenting with the forms and styles of art, thus […]
- Edward Steichen in History of Photography Edward Steichen is one of the central figures in the history of photos. The astonishing sale charge of the print is, in part, featured to its one-of-a-kind personality and to its curiosity.
- Photographic Pioneer: Paul Strand One of her eyes is a stone eye and with the other eye she is trying to view something on her left side.
- Visual Art and Photography Ice Sculpting is truly an art of its own, and even though this style of art is not permanent, unless a person were to place the item into the freezer, this would still be categorized […]
- Photography: Brief History of Invention At that time all images produced were in black and white and eventually all masters of the art came to believe that the only artistic way to record photographic images was in black and white. […]
- Atta Kim: Presentation of a Photographer While many techniques Atta uses are not new, in some context the works of Atta can be considered as a philosophical opinion that was visualized using photography.
- “China and Its People in Early Photographs” by John Thompson In spite of the fact the majority of his works are believed to be documentaries, Johnson is often referred to a photojournalist, because he often focused attention on the social aspect of human relationships, it […]
- Yosemite National Park and Connecting With the History of Photography By the time the Yosemite series was started, Carleton Watkins was a famous master of the so called wet-collodion technique that made use of the “mammoth” plates made of glass to allow for the better […]
- Invention of Photography and its Social Impact Although photography was invented in its full form only in 1835, an understanding of the social impact that was a result of the invention of photography is rightly portrayed by Azoulay in his article “The […]
- The Exhibition “The Arlen Ness Photographic Exhibition” Watching the landscape in reality and the same view on the photo, the viewer may not notice the difference as the professional photographer, the artist tries to make his/her photos so realistic and inconceivable that […]
- Photographic Exhibition in Melbourne Australia The concept of space in the exhibit depicts that of loose and un-articulated. But nowhere in the exhibit were photos shown of men or women building gabions baskets, or showing the river.
- Photo Art: Photographic Exhibition This is the photo produced by Samantha Everton in 2009 as a part of her Vintage Dolls series: The photo is installed in a frame during the exhibition to ensure the considerable attention the viewers […]
- Three Questions About Photography If they do, it is through the main webpage where it is displayed and the user is not allowed to copy the image.
- Pia Johnson’s Photography Exhibition The main aim of the photographer is to stop the time and to make people to be delighted by the beauty of the picture, as the time is the substance which flows fast and the […]
- Photography Exhibition “Threads” in Melbourne The subject matter of the photograph under consideration is the nature of identity or, to be more exact, the exploration of it.
- Photograph Description: Nature The photograph reflects a marvelous landscape combining the elements of human interference in the form of buildings; it is necessary to underline the fact that the picture is to be referred to as representational […]
- Evaluating Evidence: Paperwork and Photographs The paperwork evidence is one of the main evidence, as it is the prejudicial evidence of the witness, who walked the cemetery and saw the act of vandalism of the tomb.
- Photograph Works by Laura McPhee This particular feature in the works of Laura McPhee impresses the viewer owing to the mastership of the photographer in playing with the background and foreground.
- Sports Photography and Its Evolution The death of Niepce was announced in 1833, but the experiment was still been performed by Daguerre and he succeeded in the development of the daguerreotype finally in 1837.
- Has Digital Technology Improved the Quality of Photographs? In the case of our apple, most of the wavelengths are absorbed with the exception of those that lie on the red end of the spectrum.
- Ansel Adams and John Sexton: World Photography The first assumption that we can make about these works is that both of them achieve an effect of optical illusion and this is one of the most difficult tasks for a photographer to carry […]
- Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography The photographs in Without Sanctuary provide a record of the intolerance and racism that was standard in the United States at the turn of the twentieth century.
- Knowing Andy Warhol’s Life and Photography The Post-Modernist Movement of pop art and culture in the latter half of the twentieth century was a revolutionary movement and it was started by the American artist Andy Warhol’s very amundane’ looking paintings of […]
- Photography Exhibition: Examples of the Works This is an outstanding piece of art which made me, for instance, think of our world and humanity: first of all I thought about the perfection of the both, and then I passed to contemplations […]
- Horst Wackerbath and His Great Photography This mystic twist in Wackerbath’s work keeps people looking out for more of his works in a bid to try to understand not only how he manages to pull such a delicate feat, but also […]
- Photography: Robin Fox’s Proof Of Concept The subject and concept of the exhibition is as unique as it can be and the gallery is the best place where the photos can be exhibited.
- Photography: Critical Analysis The vertical, restive position of the pencil in each of the slides is indicative of a resort to have finished a particular task, presumably that of writing on the foolscap, with the pencil resting in […]
- HDRI and Tonal Mapping in Photography The science of High dynamic range imaging has developed the dynamic range of processing, transmission, and representation of imaging photography beyond the traditional forms.
- History in Abbass Studios Ltd. Fonds’ Photographs The approximate creation date of the collection is mentioned as 1940 the year when the eldest of the Abbass brothers became interested in photography. George was in charge of the office and the studio.
- Julia Margaret Cameron: A British Photographer As the photographer later wrote in her unfinished memoir “Annals of my glass house”, from the moment of the first shot, the camera had become a link to the world of artists, scientists, and writers.
- Nikki S. Lee and Photography Considered to be one of a kind, the unique nature of this exhibition placed her in the limelight. In ‘The Seniors Project’, Lee managed to transform herself to fit the image of an old woman […]
- Margaret Bourke-White: A Historically Significant Photographer Among Bourke-White’s exclusive works are the photos of the First Five-Year Plan in the Soviet Union, the daily struggle of the Allied infantrymen in the Italian campaign, the siege of Moscow, and the conflict between […]
- Jack Dykinga’s Photography In addition, this use of light adds to the beauty of color harmony and color saturation in the picture. Because of the duly chosen perspective and the angle of shooting along with the time of […]
- Chris Hondros: War Photographer This leads the author of the current paper to discovering the key three topics that have to be covered in order to evaluate Hondros’ contribution to war photography during the first decade of the 21st […]
- The Beauty of Photography: An Opinion However, ultimately, I leaned toward the DSLR cameras and still photography rather than the motion of the film. As a result, good photos make one look at the situation from a different angle, capturing a […]
- Photographer Diane Arbus’ Creativity Analysis Therefore, Arbus showed consistency with the portrayed ugliness of the subjects in the photographs. This enabled Arbus to capture moments that genuinely depicted the feelings of the people in their environment.
- Dream Deferred: Timeless Relevance. Poem and Photograph Review The relevance of showcasing social inequality through voices and faces of the Afro-Americans in the United States draws the parallel between the historical and contemporary context.
- Town Photography Studio Online Branding In order to convince our potential customers about the quality of our new product, we need to use attractive images of the new product which can easily capture the attention of our potential customers.
- Macro Photography: Features, Techniques, and Common Mistakes It is customary to call macro photography the shooting of objects comparable in size to the size of a film frame or much smaller than it.
- Photography, Impression and Alfred Stieglitz A striking example of this is the emergence of photography as a category of art after the invention of the camera.
- Photography in the E-Business: Marketing Strategy Business owners or those in the photography business are now thinking of possible and probably the best way to reach a wider market in the most fashionable and quickest way.
- Composing With Light or Color in Photography Light, shadow and color are the components of an image. The balance between each element affects the quality of the image.
- Ethics in the Age of Digital Photography by Long In his article, ‘Ethics in the age of digital photography,’ Long expresses his concern over the problem of “the public…losing faith” in photojournalists.
- The History of Photography of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Century They assured the recognition of photography as a kind of art. Alfred Stieglitz created a series of clouds photographs that combined the technical and aesthetic principles of his work.
- Photography: An Artist Statement In the first image, I arranged the details in the composition to guide the observer through the place I captured by the camera. With the help of the play of the light and shadow, I […]
- An Analysis of a Photograph By Mike Wells This spread of technology-enabled many people to document the environment around them and allowed millions of people to relate to stories of others told through photographs.”A Starving Boy and a Missionary” is one of the […]
- Photography: Art Creation & Reflection The thematic connection between the two pieces is based on the illusionary vision of the simple scenes and experimental approach to the art of photography.
- “Tom Torlino Student File” Photograph Analysis The before and after photo of a native American student is vivid evidence of American influence on the disappearing cultural heritage. What was the impact of such boarding schools on the identity and values of […]
- Note-Taking and Crime Scene Photography Concerning the effectiveness of notes, generally, they should contain a high level of detail, and straightforwardness and cover all areas of the crime scene.
- Photographer Lene and The Heart Project Lene has had an opportunity to work in a large variety of creative mediums, utilizing the skills acquired in a number of projects. The use of paint, charcoal, and mosaic in her art creates a […]
- Significance of the Photographs Created by T. Simon and J. Riis In turn, Riis presents a unique perspective on the immorality of the Victorian neighborhoods serving as evidence of erroneous people’s attitudes towards appropriateness.
- Jeff Wall, a Contemporary Photographer and His Works Most of the photographer’s works are staged, depicting everyday scenes related to the problems of representation and the history of art.
- Special Features of the Photography by Luc Delahaye and Ansel Adams The above photograph is one of the works by Ansel Adams, who is recognized as a pioneer in the evolutionary field of expertise.
- What Is the Difference Between Film and Digital Photography?
- What Is the Most Popular Photography Website?
- How Does Photography Affect the Social and Political Arena?
- How Photography Has Changed Our View of the World?
- Why Was Post-mortem Photography Popular?
- When Was Photography First Invented?
- How Romanticism and Photography Shaped Western Modernitymodern?
- What Was Photography Originally Called?
- How Digital Processes Change Photography?
- What Photography Can and Really Should Document?
- What Is the Best Photography Course for Beginners?
- Why Photography Is an Art?
- What Would the World Be Like Without Photography?
- How Photography Has Changed Changing Business Environment?
- How Did Joseph Nicephore Contribute to the Early Development of Photography?
- What Is the Target Market for Portrait Photography?
- What Are the 4 Styles of Photography?
- How Has Fashion Photography Changed and Developed Over the Years?
- How Did Photography Reflect the Values and Stereotypes That Underlay European Colonialism?
- Why Is Photography So Important?
- How Does Photography Affect Our Lives?
- Which Type of Camera Is Best for Photography?
- Why Is Digital Photography Better Than Traditional?
- How Are Music and Photography Related?
- What Are the 7 Principles of Photography?
- How Did Female Surrealists Aim to Subvert the Male Gaze Within Surrealist Photography?
- How Photography Works and Has Evolved?
- How Have Photography and Photojournalism Transformed Media?
- What Was the Effect of Photography on Painting in the Nineteenth Century?
- What Makes a Good Food Photography?
- Chicago (N-B)
- Chicago (A-D)
IvyPanda. (2023, January 29). 177 Photography Essay Topic Ideas & Examples. https://ivypanda.com/essays/topic/photography-essay-topics/
IvyPanda. (2023, January 29). 177 Photography Essay Topic Ideas & Examples. Retrieved from https://ivypanda.com/essays/topic/photography-essay-topics/
"177 Photography Essay Topic Ideas & Examples." IvyPanda , 29 Jan. 2023, ivypanda.com/essays/topic/photography-essay-topics/.
1. IvyPanda . "177 Photography Essay Topic Ideas & Examples." January 29, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/topic/photography-essay-topics/.
Bibliography
IvyPanda . "177 Photography Essay Topic Ideas & Examples." January 29, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/topic/photography-essay-topics/.
IvyPanda . 2023. "177 Photography Essay Topic Ideas & Examples." January 29, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/topic/photography-essay-topics/.
IvyPanda . (2023) '177 Photography Essay Topic Ideas & Examples'. 29 January.
- Hobby Research Ideas
- Entertainment Ideas
- Artists Research Ideas
- Contemporary Art Questions
- Photoshop Questions
- Kodak Titles
- Andy Warhol Topics
- Music Topics
- Forensic Science Essay Topics
- Fishing Research Topics
- X-Ray Questions
- Surrealism Research Topics
- Expressionism Research Topics
- Individualism Topics
- Cell Phone Ideas
17 Awesome Photo Essay Examples You Should Try Yourself
Subscribe Below to Download the Article Immediately
You can also select your interests for free access to our premium training:
If you’re looking for a photo essay example (or 17!), you’ve come to the right place. But what is the purpose of a photo essay? A photo essay is intended to tell a story or evoke emotion from the viewers through a series of photographs. They allow you to be creative and fully explore an idea.
But how do you make one yourself? Here’s a list of photo essay examples. Choose one that you can easily do based on your photographic level and equipment.
[ Note: ExpertPhotography is supported by readers. Product links on ExpertPhotography are referral links. If you use one of these and buy something, we make a little bit of money. Need more info? See how it all works here . ]
Top 17 Photo Essay Examples
Here are some fantastic ideas to get you inspired to create your own photo essays!
17. Photograph a Protest
Protests tend to be lively events. You will find people standing, moving, and holding banners and signs. This is a great way to practice on a moving crowd.
Try to capture the essence and atmosphere of the protest itself. There are many ways to do so and you will need to utilise all your skills.
Think about framing , composition , and perspective . Run to the front and capture the head of the group moving forward. Then run towards the back to capture the families walking along.
16. Transformation Photo Essays
Transformation is one of the most used photo essay topics. It is a great way to show change. The change can be slow, such as a woman going through pregnancy , or watching a baby turn into a toddler and beyond.
As a photo essay project, this doesn’t even need to be about people. A building being torn down and rebuilt can make for a great time-lapse or photo series.
This is a great way to practice how to show change through images. You will need to be creative and meticulous in your approach. You will need to take the same image over and over again, but changing them enough to be interesting.
15. Photograph the Same Place
Have you seen the movie Smoke with Harvey Keitel? His character goes out every morning at the same time and takes a photograph. The photo is from the front of his shop. He then prints the image and stores them in huge photo albums. Another character flips through these images to see all the different scenarios.
These are easy photo essays to do as you use a simple set up. It might be a challenge to find somewhere accessible to you at the same time every day. The great thing about this photo essay project is that you can create it about anything.
14. Create a Photowalk
As a photographer based in Budapest, I give guided photography tours. The idea is that you join me for three hours, and in that time I show you the streets and how to photograph them.
You will learn about your camera, composition, and what to look for. There is nothing stopping you from doing the same in your hometown. This can make for really interesting photo essays.
Have a clear idea of what you want to achieve and create it as if you were teaching someone else. Look at reflections in buildings. Or change your perspective to photograph people in different settings.
13. Follow the Change
This photo essay is like the transformation essay but on a short-term basis. Think about men growing their mustaches for Movember. Or someone who wants to shave their head for charity.
You start by taking a before image, and the end result of an after image, with many photographs in between.
12. Photograph a Local Event
No matter where you live, there will be countless local events throughout the year. They might be fundraisers, farmers’ markets, dances and festivals, or food and music. Their organizers will need a photographer. Even if it’s just for social media images .
They may even offer you money, and if not, they will share the images for you with your name attached. Here, you will capture candid images of people going about their day.
11. Photograph an Abandoned Building
Urban exploration or Urbex is a thing. It is where you enter an abandoned building for the sake of (interest and) photography. It is a great social commentary on the state of our world.
Abandoned buildings also show us how life used to be. It’s time-travel without a time machine. They make for great photo essays because there are so many details.
Get permission before entering. And be careful as these buildings can be dangerous. Photograph the rooms and the details. This means you’ll have to work with different lenses .
10. Behind the Scenes of a Photo Shoot
I used to assist fashion photography studio shoots. This means I had the great opportunity to see what happens behind the scenes.
For me, behind the camera is way more interesting than what is happening in front of it. The models pose, and hundreds of images are taken, so it can be slow and drab.
9. Capture Street Fashion
If you have ever read FRUiTS magazine, you will know what street fashion can be like. I have even heard of a street in Milan where people walk up and down, showing off their best styles.
You can easily photograph these styles in a sort of street photography way. You will also capture portraits while having to be mindful of your environment and surroundings.
And you can even stop people in the street for a quick pose . Photographers have stopped in one location while photographing those who walk past. Here, the background stays the same, and only the people change.
8. Landmark Photo Essay
One photo essay idea that I have always wanted to try is to photograph one landmark from many different vantage points. Think about it. Look at the Eiffel Tower and how many collections of images have been taken of it.
All are from many different angles ranging from many different distances away. This is a great way to practice your positioning and composition through different perspectives .
You can incorporate details and a down-up viewpoint. Or you can photograph it from above with a drone. And there are thousands of ways to capture it through streets and using reflections .
The landmark is your study and it will help you look at the light during different times of the day.
7. Fathers & Children
We live in a very different time than we did 50 years ago. Or even 20 years ago, as more and more fathers stay at home and look after the kids. A great photo essay example would be to capture these small families to show this as social commentary for the times we live in.
These portraits and group photographs are a great way to practice and start building up a network of people. The first images are always going to be the most difficult to take. But once you pick up speed, you will have images to show and persuade the next group.
6. A Day In the Life
There are going to be many jobs and careers that people do that you have no idea about. A great way to understand what people get up to in their day-to-day is to follow them and photograph as you go.
For example, a photo essay entitled A Day In the Life of a Fireman will get you access to inside the station, documenting what they get up to on their downtime. You may not be able to go put out a fire with them, but you never know.
This is great practice for documentary images , capturing portraits and still life of all the equipment they use. Again, let them use the images for social media.
5. Education Photo Essay
One great way to support your community, and possibly even get some of your photographs published is to photograph inside a school. You may find it difficult at first, but lay down your intentions to those in charge.
Offer to let them use and share the image as they see fit. You now have a team of people sharing and liking your images. They are giving you promotion all over Facebook and other social media channels .
Get into the classrooms, photograph the students and the teachers during their daily grind. Be as invisible as you can, but involve and integrate those interested when and where you can.
4. Fictitious Meals
One great photo essay example is putting all those great works of literature to good use. Think about all of the meals that characters in books have eaten.
Some will be as fictitious as the names of the characters eating them. Think of the gruel in Oliver Twist. Make the meals as realistic as possible, with table settings and appropriate mise en scène .
3. Photograph Coffee Shops Using Cafenol
Cafenol is a film photography chemical that sits in place of the developer. The developer is what strips the film down to a negative after it has been exposed. The cafenol is made partly from instant coffee granules, hence the name.
A great photo essay idea would be to photograph a coffee shop, the staff, the patrons, and the equipment. Then use the coffee that they serve as a film developer.
2. Photograph the Photographers
How many times have you seen tourists photograph the same landmark ? These landmarks or points of interest are magnets for foreigners, all hosting cameras and taking the same shot. Sometimes, even pretending to hold up or grab the landmark themselves.
As the area in question has already been captured, why not go 180 degrees in the opposite direction for your photo essay. You will be photographing the photographers, who are the rarely seen artists.
1. Capture the Neighbors
One great photo essay would be to localize your efforts. No matter where you live, you will have neighbors. Unless you live out in the sticks, then you will have to find someone else’s neighbors. This would be a great way to get into portrait photography .
What a perfect scenario would look like is capturing the people in their own space. And everyone’s space is completely different.
You will come across stay-at-home fathers, night-shift workers, grandmas with heirlooms, musicians, and families. There is no telling what is behind these doors. It is a great way to work on your feet, and also meet those who make up your community.
Photo essays tell stories. And there are plenty of amazingly interesting stories to tell! Photographing photo essays is a great way to practice your photography skills while having fun. You might even learn something!
These photo essay examples are here to provide you with the inspiration to go out and tell your own stories through photos!
Share with friends
Related articles.
8 Tips for Bad Lighting Vs Good Lighting
Capture delicious flat lays with our case study & cheat sheet.
Detailed Instructions
From planning to post-processing
Composition tips
Expert tips on arranging unique scenes
Handy Cheat Sheet
Print out the cheat sheet & start shooting
Where should we send the free case study?
108 Photography Essay Topics
🏆 best essay topics on photography, 👍 good photography research topics & essay examples, 🎓 most interesting photography research titles, 💡 simple photography essay ideas, ❓ photography essay questions.
- Photography as a Cultural History The photographer considered, that the main aim of a photographer is to demonstrate how our eyes percept world.
- Public Relations and Photography Public relations are usually related to broadcasting, publicizing, photography, and promoting. The experts require time and talent to advance relations with mass media.
- Photography Exhibition “Charles Harbutt, Departures and Arrivals” The exhibition “Charles Harbutt, Departures and Arrivals” reexamines photographic work and encourages the audience to appreciate photography and relate it to modern printing.
- Hines and Riis’ Photographs Analysis The photographs by Riis and Hine present the poor working conditions, including child labor cases during the late 1800’s and early 1900’s.
- Antikythera Mechanism: Photography and Radiography This paper studies the Antikythera mechanism. It uses recent evidence obtained from photography and radiography assessment of the device.
- “Humans of New York” Photographs by Brandon Stanton In his work “Humans of New York”, Brandon Stanton presented the public with the collection of photographs depicting New Yorkers telling their elaborate stories.
- Africa’s Visual Representation in Photography The article, written by Landau, discusses photography as a source that provides the visual representation of Africa and explains its connection with the colonial administration.
- Art: “Attitudes Towards Photography” by Gisele Freund The massive social and cultural changes of the previous century challenged many of the established traditions, including the perception of art.
- “Pepper No. 30” Photograph by Edward Weston Pepper No. 30 by Edward Weston is a black and white photograph that depicts a close-up of a “bell pepper on the concave surface” against a dark background.
- Photography and Paintings: Depicting the Truth Photography captures the beautiful moments of our lives that can be cherished by us and our children for years to come.
- Photography as Kind of Art Photography is an art and a science. Reflectively, the process is more than just capturing images. Proportionality, and introduction of effects determine the quality of an outcome.
- Photography: Hobby of Millions Unique for Everyone Millions of people take photos on a daily basis in all parts of the world. However, probably only thousands of them manage to capture something purely touching the soul.
- “Close” the Photography by Martin Stranka The present works of well-known photographers inspire other people to create pieces of art to show their perception of the original idea.
- Art Appreciation: Alfred Stieglitz’s Photography Alfred Stieglitz tried to explain the relationship between photography and art by a movement known as Pictorialism.
- Steve McCurry’s Photography “Afghanistan Girl” The Photography “Afghanistan Girl” reveals Steve Mc Curry’s perception of the world through the special inimitable and unguarded moments, which he captured.
- Annie Lebovitz – Famous Photographer Annie Leibovitz is one of the best portrait photographers in today’s era. She focuses her works on a variety of subjects but mostly among celebrity portraits.
- Paul Politis’ Black and White Photography This paper shall be discussing the works and the inspirations of renowned photographer Paul Politis who specializes in black and white photography.
- Photography’s Effects on Modern Art Photography has been hailed by the masses as one of the best means of bringing the rest of the world to the public, affording them views of far-away places and peoples.
- Procurement Management: Selecting Your Wedding Photographer This paper will provide a briefing of the factors that should be taken care of in the process of soliciting, selecting, negotiating with, and launching the wedding photographer.
- San Francisco Photograph by George R. Lawrence The discussed photograph is a daguerreotype of San Francisco taken right after the 1906 earthquake and fire. George R. Lawrence used kites to get photos of San Francisco.
- The Power of Photography: Photography’s Reality Effect The photograph’s evidential worth is held through a transformative method that is being put into play by a dynamic engagement, a stride into the image, on the reader’s part.
- Analysis of Lee Friedlander’s Photographs Friedlander is famous primarily for his street photography – raw, real, brazen. Lee Friedlander’s photos are like music, and that music is jazz.
- Reflection on Photography: An Art Piece or Mass Entertainment? It is important to define whether sphere of photography is only for professionals or, on the contrary, for the users of Instagram, travelers, and amateurs.
- The Birth of Photography: Early Artists and Their Works The popularization of photography coincided with a revolution in art as such. An illustrative example can be found in the works of Alexander Rodchenko.
- The Works of Photographer Steve McCurry: Consequences of the War In his works Steve McCurry aims at portraying the imprudent moment, experiences imprinted on people’s faces, and a soul escaping.
- Photography Impacts on Cultural Identity of Native Americans in America The photos of Native Americans often turn out to be disadvantageous to the appearance of the indigenous Americans, especially in this era of photography.
- The Role of Photography and Views on War Photography changed the attitude to war by demonstrating its horrors, and it triggered public debates about the value of human life and the need to stop military conflicts.
- Photography Art: A Girl on a Bridge on Lake Garda Photographs give information on what real-life scenarios look like away from human influence. A photo of a girl on a bridge on Lake Garda is compared to that taken in real life.
- Attitude to Photography. Art and Design It is paramount noting that art and design are all about the artist’s perspective and what they intend to impart to the audience’s mind.
- Who Should Be Given Credit for Inventing Photography? As a valuable method of visual communication and expression, photography has a broad spectrum of aesthetic capabilities.
- The Influence of Henri Cartier-Bresson on Street Photography Cartier-Bresson aimed for capturing a decisive moment as it was in real life, with no staging and no interference on the photographers part whatsoever.
- Painting as a Translation of Photography in Two Ivans and Oksana The painting uses line, pattern, texture, depth, shortening, cropping, and light to relate more to photography than painting, thus making the picture a photograph translation.
- “The Starving Boy in Uganda” Photograph by Mike Wells The current essay attempts to analyze the context of the picture, details of the image, and the message that the photograph “the Starving boy in Uganda” conveys.
- Digital and Film Photography at a Glance in the 21st Century
- Are Photography and Printmaking Art?
- Crime Scene Photography: Importance and Strategies
- Alfred Stieglitz Revolutionizing the Art of Photography
- Communication, Photography and Social Media Class
- Fashion Photography and the Effects of New Image Technology
- Photography Boundaries and Uses
- Diane Arbus and the Revolutionary Arena of Artistic Photography
- Photography: Society’s Views Through the Ages
- Capturing Great Landscape Photography
- How Has Photography Changed Our View of the World?
- Barbara Rowe and the Art of Photography
- The Recent and Current Trends and Influences in Portrait Photography
- Photography Through the Modernist Movements
- Comparing Traditional Photography and Digital Imaging
- Photography Laws Surrounding Images of Children
- Color Photography and Its History
- ‘War Photography’ Carol Ann Duffy
- Darkroom vs. Digital Photography
- Aerial Photography: Capturing Spectacular Images up in the Air
- Photography and Its Omnipresent Nature in the World
- Calotype Negative and Early Photography
- Artistic and Creative Uses of Photography
- Civil War Life Captured in the Photography of Mathew Brady
- Brand New Images? Implications of Instagram Photography for Place Branding
- 20th Century Photography: Documentary Art
- Photography Books and the Photographers Who Created Them
- How Photography Helped Change People’s Opinions of the Civil War?
- Photography During Colonial Afric an Indispensable Tool
- Capturing the Personal Aspect of Portrait Photography
- Photography Limits Our Understanding of the World
- Black and White Photography in Australia
- Did Photography Destroy Painting Practice?
- World View and the Changes Brought About by Photography
- Photography and Graphic Design at Rinko Kawauchi
- Cultural Understanding and the Reflections of Photography
- Alfred Stieglitz and His Influence on Photography
- The Relationship Between Painting and Photography in the Work of David Hockney
- Beginners Digital Photography Equipment Tips
- How Photography Has Changed Our Lives?
- Ansel Adams: Discovering His Life and Photography
- Trevor Paglen’s Photography Work as a Bridge to Discovery About the Hidden World
- Wildlife Photography Catching the Animals by Surprise
- Photography Doesn’t Always Show the Reality of a Painter’s View
- Cecil Beaton’s Surprising Photography Experiences
- The Reasons for Preference of Photography Over Paintings in Occasions
- Photography: Impact Upon Western Civilization Over the Past Fifty Years
- Will Camera Phones Destroy Photography?
- Camera Technology and How It Changed Photography
- Understanding Water Through Photography: Edward Burtynsky
- Are Photography and Printmaking Really Art?
- Does Photography Have Significant Political Impact?
- Has Television Taken Over Photography?
- How Did Photography Shape Public Reactions to the American Civil War?
- How Did Photography Influenced the History and the Politics?
- How Does Sebastiao Salgardo’s Activist Photography Reflect Against Media Journalism?
- How Joseph Nicephore Contributed to the Early Development of Photography?
- How Photography Affects the Social and Political Arena?
- What Factors Determine the Popularity of Photography in KSA?
- What Are the Historical and Cultural Differences in Photography in the East and West?
- What Are the Seven Elements of Photography?
- How Moholy-Nagy Made Photography Manifestly Modern?
- How Photography and Photojournalism Has Been Transformed?
- Why Photography Matters as Art as Never Before?
- What Are the Paradoxes of Digital Photography?
- What Is the Evaluation of Image Appeal in Consumer Photography?
- What Are the Pitfalls of Nonstandardized Photography?
- What Is a Computational Approach for Obstruction-Free Photography?
- What Is the Performative Force of Photography?
- What Is the Use of Photography as a Qualitative Research Tool?
- Who Are Three Most Famous Inventors and What Are Their Contributions to Photography?
- What Are the Parallels Between Photography and New Media?
- What Is Paparazzi Photography and Why It’s So Exciting?
- What Is Mathew Brady’s Photography Role in Creating the American Empire?
- How Did Louis Daguerre Make First Practical Process of Photography?
- Research paper name generator
- Research question generator
Cite this post
- Chicago (N-B)
- Chicago (A-D)
StudyCorgi. (2022, September 14). 108 Photography Essay Topics. Retrieved from https://studycorgi.com/ideas/photography-essay-topics/
StudyCorgi. (2022, September 14). 108 Photography Essay Topics. https://studycorgi.com/ideas/photography-essay-topics/
"108 Photography Essay Topics." StudyCorgi , 14 Sept. 2022, studycorgi.com/ideas/photography-essay-topics/.
1. StudyCorgi . "108 Photography Essay Topics." September 14, 2022. https://studycorgi.com/ideas/photography-essay-topics/.
Bibliography
StudyCorgi . "108 Photography Essay Topics." September 14, 2022. https://studycorgi.com/ideas/photography-essay-topics/.
StudyCorgi . 2022. "108 Photography Essay Topics." September 14, 2022. https://studycorgi.com/ideas/photography-essay-topics/.
StudyCorgi . (2022) '108 Photography Essay Topics'. 14 September.
Photography Essay Examples That Will Boost Your Knowledge
After composing various essays for learners across the globe, we have come to realize that students taking a photography course can have excellent practical skills but have a hard time communicating their ideas through the text. And that is where our writing service comes in. As our customer, you access photography essay examples based on different topics. As a result, you can read various samples that will inspire or give you an idea on how to draft your next piece.
It becomes easier to write an effective piece after reading through the samples available on our site. Thanks to our collection containing various academic tasks, students interested in knowing more about their subject can practice, gain more knowledge, and improve their skills. Besides, each assignment is worked on by a professional with extensive experience in that specific photography field of study. Therefore, you will learn more about the proper structure, format, and the correct way to add references to your content.
Whether you want to know how to write a level photography essay or have an assignment that covers digital video and advertising, you can get assistance from us. Our experts will be happy to give you content that meets all your requirements. No topic is too complex for our writer to tackle. So give us your specifications, pick a deadline, and your ideal expert will complete the order as per the agreement.
Table of Contents
What an Essay About Photography Should Include
Assignments about photography are great for gauging your writing skills and for the professor to see whether or not you have understood the material taught in class. Unlike other academic projects such as a thesis or dissertation that requires extensive research, an essay about photography involves analyzing a specific image or a collection of photos and coming up with meaningful content. However, just like any other homework, your task must follow the standard structure containing an introduction, body, and conclusion. Remember, a single image can evoke emotion and create a meaningful narrative.
A well-written photo essay will contain the following crucial details:
- A topic or a theme
Many types of photography can motivate scholars to enroll in such a course. You can be passionate about fashion, street, portrait, or fine art photography. Regardless of where your interest is when it comes to composing top-notch content that will improve your academic performance, you need to base your composition on a specific topic. You can opt to go with a narrative perspective as it helps the writer to focus on storytelling. On the other hand, you can choose a thematic essay that centers on a specific theme or subject.
- Discern what the artist is conveying
What is great about the power of photography essay is that just like any other form of art, photos are subjective which means, there are so many different angles you can choose to use to defend your argument. By observing the photograph, you can be able to get a lot of information. The trick is to look at compositions, emotions, use of light, angles, and colors used to gather data points that will defend your claims.
- Support your main points
Use the information you have gathered from the photo as well as visual evidence to prove to your professor why the specific interpretation you have chosen is the correct one. The introduction should capture attention by providing a brief background story of the photographs from which your essay is based on. The body of your paper should defend your main points by pointing out to the specifics of the pictures such as movement, amount of light or lack of it, the use of color, and how the photographer frames the image. The conclusion should reiterate the key issues and summarize the way they prove your claims.
Photography Essay Ideas That Evoke Emotion or Tell a Story
When it comes to composing a photography paper worthy of praise, your images must tell a story and evoke emotion. Pictures that raise awareness on an important cause or documenting someone you believe has an interesting career are some of the great ideas that can make your essay unique.
Shots from a local event, a protest, weather, climate change, wildlife, native culture, mouthwatering cuisine, subcultures, life-changing moments, and sports can be great sources of photography essay ideas.
When you have a series of images or a specific picture that interests you and is also related, then it becomes easier to craft a composition that appeals to your professor. While such projects can be a lot of fun, there are times when doing assignments is burdensome.
Maybe you have various commitments like two jobs, a lack of exceptional writing skills, or no motivation to compose a lengthy project. Whatever the reasons that are causing you not to work on your project, none of them should result in a poor score. Our vetted experts are ready to give you academic assistance at an affordable rate. So when you do not feel inspired to write an essay on photography in 300 words or any other task, hire our specialists, and you will receive plagiarism free content.
Good Photography Essay Topics That You Can Use
Everyone has a specific topic that they are interested in. The best way to get good ideas is to focus on what you are passionate about. Amazing things about your favorite pet, how cameras have evolved over the years, interesting things about a unique landscape, unsung heroes, and underwater life are some of the photography essay topics that you can write about.
The trick to composing excellent work is to ensure that the snapshots you are incorporating augments with the issue you are discussing. Sometimes the topics available online do not stimulate your creativity. In such cases, you can ask a professional to give you unique issues. However, not every online writer is an expert in photography.
Some will fake their credentials and pose as professionals only to charge high prices yet deliver shoddy work. With us, you will always get value for money and enjoy various unmatched services such as:
- Freedom to choose any of our top native English speaker specialists for free.
- Use safe and reliable payment methods, which makes it easier to pay for your orders wherever you live.
- Enjoy full confidentiality as we never ask for any personal information or resell your content.
- Money-back guarantee whenever you find that your paper did not meet your instructions.
Have you ever placed an order on an online writing site only to ask for progress and get no reply? If you answered yes, then you know how frustrating it is not to have any direct communication with the writer. Besides, the task may have a short deadline, and the longer you do not get a response from the company, the more time you will waste.
By opting for our company, you will never incur such issues as our channel of communication is open 24/7. Use the live chat to ask our customer representatives any questions, and you will get prompt answers. Furthermore, as our client, you have the opportunity to ask for the progress of your photography essay and even give additional instructions that will ensure the essayist crafts a custom piece.
The price of your order is inclusive of the unlimited revisions which you can request when you want the professional to make specific amendments. For such a small amount, you can prevent your documents from having careless mistakes that can hinder you from graduating with your classmates and friends.
We Are Always Available to Assist You
Not every student can compose a high-quality college essay about photography. Even if other writing services refuse to work on your assignment because it is too long and has a short deadline, you can count on our experts.
We have extensive years of experience, and all learners can rely on our assistance for any tasks that you are encountering for the first time or are too challenging to comprehend. Get in touch with us now, and get content that will improve your school performance.
15% OFF Your first order!
Aviable for the first 1000 subscribers, hurry up!
You might also like:
150 Qualitative and Quantitative Nursing Research Topics for Students
Why You Should Read a Data Gathering Procedure Example
What Is Culture and What Are Some Popular Culture Essay Topics?
- College Term Paper
- Custom Research Paper
- English Paper
- Thesis Writer
- Thesis Help
- Free Grammar and Spell Check
- Free Plagiarism Checker
- Free Online Grammar Checker
- Term Paper Editing
- Dissertation Conclusion
- Dissertation Hypothesis
- Dissertation Introduction
- Dissertation Methodology
- Dissertation Results
- Dissertation Abstract
- Homework Help
- College Term Papers
- Thesis Writing
- Writing Thesis Statement
- Science Essay
- University Essay
- Science Paper
- Sample Essay
- Process Essay
- Problem Statement
- Opinion Essay
- Informative Essay
- Exploratory Essay
- Evaluation Essay
- Defining Key Terms
- Comparative Essay
- Classification Essay
- Abortion Essay
- Papers Example
- High School Essay
- Graduate Paper
- Free Papers
- Essay Body Paragraph
- Critical Essay
- Cause And Effect Essay
- Chicago Style Paper
us.MasterPapers.comhelps students cope with college assignments and write papers on a wide range of topics. We deal with academic writing, creative writing, and non-word assignments.
All of papers you get at us.MasterPapers.com are meant for research purposes only. The papers are not supposed to be submitted for academic credit.
- Research paper
- Dissertation
Social networks
[email protected]
Online Chat 24/7
- Terms & Conditions
- Refund & Revision Policy
- Cookie Policy
- Money-back guarantee
24/7 writing help on your phone
To install StudyMoose App tap and then “Add to Home Screen”
Photography essay examples
- 📘 Free essay examples for your ideas about Photography
- 🏆 Best Essay Topics on Photography
- ⚡ Simple & Photography Easy Topics
- 🎓 Good Research Topics about Photography
- 🔖 References and Resources
- ❓ Questions and Answers
Essay examples
Essay topic.
Save to my list
Remove from my list
- The Importance and Future of Photography
- Photography is Favorite for Hobbyist
- Critical Analysis of the Photographic Work of Annie Leibovitz
- Approaching Shadow
- The Life and Photography of Eli Reed
- Cindy Sherman's Photograph
- Photographing History
- Fisheye Camera Lenses
- Events Photography: Moments Bucket
- Imogen Cunningham - Photographer
- Altered Images and Videos
- Photo Processing And Printing
- Selfie as a Modern Form of Art
- In the Eye of the Beholder: Diane Arbus
- Investigating Dangerous Business Management in Kodak
- Module 11 text questions-Creative photography
- Bill Henson
- Gaunt Thorns
- How has technology affected global visual culture?
- The Barnes Museum’s Exhibit
- Photo of Vague Moments of Life
- Recent Technological Invention: Photography
- Henri Cartier-Bresson, Diane Arbus and Anna-Lou “Annie” Leibovitz
- African Girl Sarah Forbes Bonatta
- How to Become a Professional Photographer?
- Growth Mindset: how to Develop Growth Mindset
- Philosophy of Photography
- How to Take a Good Photograph?
- Case Report Of An Elderly Woman Affected By Dementia
- Bruce Davidson
- James Wong Howe
- Victorians and Death: A Period of Morbid Curiosity
- Management of Bark Beetles
- StudentJohn RemingtonENGL10153018Everyone desires meaningful memories Photographers take portraits as a means of
- Huawei Nova 5 Pro Review
- Creative Photography
- Personal Writing: How Photography Changed My Perspective of Life
- Photography
- Annotated Bibliography for Lomography Research
- Kevin Carter
- Barthes, R. (2000). Excerpts from Camera Lucida. London, United Kingdom: Vintage Books.
- Bazin, A. (1967). The Ontology of the Photographic Image. In A. Bazin, & H. Gray (Eds.), What Is Cinema (pp. 9-16). London, United Kingdom: University of California Press Ltd.
- Berger, J. (2013). Understanding a Photograph. San Francisco, CA: Aperture.
- Bostrom, N. (2005). A History of Transhumanist Thought. Journal of Evolution and Technology, 14 (1), 1-25.
- Descartes, R. (2006). Meditation, Objections, and Replies. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc.
- English, P. (2016). Imperfection: Embracing wabi-sabi. Liminalities, 12(4), 1-9.)
- Mirzoeff, N. (1999). The Age of Photography. In N. Mirzoeff (Ed.), An Introduction to Visual Culture (pp. 65-90). London, United Kingdom: Routledge.
- Murray, S. (2008). Digital Images, Photo-Sharing, and Our Shifting Notions of Everyday Aesthetics. Journal of Visual Culture 2008 (7):147.
- Rombes, N. (2009). Cinema in the digital age. London: Wallflower Press.
- Schrey, D. (2014). Analogue nostalgia and the aesthetics of digital remediation. Media and nostalgia (27-38). Palgrave Macmillan, London.
- Sontag, S. (1982). On photography. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
- Stephen Halliwell (2002). The aesthetics of mimesis: ancient texts and modern problems. Princeton University Press
- Valera, L. (2018). Against unattainable models. perfection, technology and society. Sociolog?a y Tecnociencia, 8(1), 1-16.
- Wolfe, S. (2018) How a group of students turned an accidental discovery into an international film photography business that's thriving in the smartphone era. Business Insider.
- Almond, R. (2009) "Exploring the Glitch," Fading Mnemonics and Digital Decay. University of Westminster.
FAQ about Photography
👋 Hi! I’m your smart assistant Amy!
Don’t know where to start? Type your requirements and I’ll connect you to an academic expert within 3 minutes.
These 4 Photo Essay Ideas and Examples Will Get Your Creativity Pumping
Photo projects always sound like a lot of fun, but there are times when the weight of a project eventually becomes too much to bear. This is particularly true of 365 projects .
While making a photo everyday for a year can be fun and educational and tremendously rewarding, it can also grow burdensome and not everyone who starts down this path will arrive at their intended destination. The reasons are varied, from personal and professional commitments and their associated time constraints, to a loss of motivation for such a lengthy undertaking.
None of this means that you’re forever left to stand on the outside looking in at the fun everyone else is having as they start and finish their photo projects. You just need a photo project more suited to your personality, one less taxing on your precious time.
There has to be some sort of photography project that won’t tie you down for an extended period — not 365 days, not 52 weeks. Something that you could even, in theory, complete in one day. There are actually several projects that fit this bill, but today we’ll take a quick look at the photo essay.
What Is A Photo Essay?
A photo essay consists of a series of images related specifically to a topic or subject that interests you. Whether you want to include text ( captions, background info ) is entirely up to you, but in any case you should try to make sure your photos are strong enough to stand alone.
What Is The Purpose Of A Photo Essay?
A photo essay's purpose is to tell a story, evoke emotions in the viewers – so, you photograph with the sole intent of telling a story ( either narratively or thematically ) that takes shape over a number of shots. A photo story allows you to be creative and become a better storyteller, explore a particular topic in detail and look for new ways to connect with your viewers thereby becoming a better photographer.
How Do You Create A Photo Essay?
Here are some steps that you can follow to create a photo essay:
Choose A Topic:
Theere are many topics to choose from to create a photo essay. So depending on your interests, level of reach and photography skills, choose a good topic for your photo essay.
Research The Topic:
Once you have a topic in mind, you will need to jump into the research part. Choose a right location, event or candidate for the essay. Find out what they can and how they can contribute to your photo essay. Check for information on how long it will take from start to completion.
Lay Down A Workflow:
Once you know what you are going to cover, lay a chart or a workflow where you put together an outline of what needs to be done from start to finish. This is important because you do not want to miss out on any details that may ruin your photo essay. This will need to include timeframes, appointments, permissions, props, dress, accessories, etc. if any required.
Shooting The Story:
During this time, take as much shots as possible using different settings, perspectives, techniques and if required, at different locations and times of the day/year.You need to come out with some decent shots for the essay, so make best use of the available time and scenario to get as many photos possible. There may be some moments that happen which you least expected or was not aware of – go ahead and capture them.
Organise, Edit And Create The Essay:
After the shoot, you will need to organise your images and then cull them to sort out the best images out of the set. You could even set aside a few images that you feel would need to be included, go back and look at them with fresh eyes after a few days and then finalise the final set. Ask for help with selecting images, but be sure they are someone who are knowledgeable and interested in the project.
Make use of your favourite post processing software to colour grade your images and for other adjustments that are required. If you have an editing workflow , follow it.
Export the final images and create a photo essay in the form of an online version or if required in the form of a book. There are so many social media platforms where you can share, bit also try the local council or local newsletter people to get your story out to a greater audience. Share in whatever ways you planned when you were creating the story.
If you think a photo essay is something you might want to try, consider some ideas below to get going.
Here Are A Few Photo Essay Ideas:
Capture a day in the life of….
There are many jobs and careers that people around you may do and you may either want to introduce someone to a career or you may want to introduce that person to the outer world. So, capturing a day in the life of those people is a fantastic way to understand their lifestyle and know what they do on a day-to-day basis on their job. This could be absolutely anyone.
Capturing the daily life could particularly be an interesting photo essay topic as many people are generally interested in knowing about the lives of certain professionals or other trained workers and what they do daily on their job. Even someone you perceive to lead the most mundane life might present more than a few surprises once you’ve spent a day with them.
Or you could go a more traditional route and document the day of someone you feel has an interesting job — a firefighter, personal trainer, chef, teacher, attorney, stand up comedian, lifeguard, nurse…there are really no bad choices here and the end result will be captivating.
Depending on their job and job location, you may want to take the required permissions, choose the best time to document them, plan well ahead on what shots need to be taken , etc. For example, if you are photographing an artist, a farmer or other skilled workers, you will want photograph them including the environment they are in.
This photo essay by Chia Loy Chuan captures Indian and Bangladeshi migrant workers enjoying a day off.
Document Do-Gooders
A photo essay is an excellent way to raise awareness of an important cause. In all likelihood, any not-for-profit organization near you will be happy to have you bring attention their work. Show the staff member’s daily routine, with special emphasis on who (if possible) or what they are dedicated to helping and why it is important.
When people have strong feelings about a cause, they will often go to any length to support it — even so far as dressing up in panda suits , as portrayed in this photo essay about conservationists.
Some topics to consider for documentation of good causes or things to create awareness would be, climate change, pollution, preserving culture and traditions, saving wildlife and forests, charity, social issues, protests, etc.
Go to a Local Event
Whether you live in a big city or a small town, there’s probably some local event worth photographing. It could be a food festival or a parade or a 10k run or other sports events. Research and find out the local event near you and choose what interests you.
You will want to photograph a lot of candids, displays and other activities going on there. You will also need to research beforehand to find out the schedule for the events so you can plan well ahead and be there prepared to grab the moments. You could talk to the event organiser about this and even share your photos with them so you can gain exposure.
One way to approaching shooting an event is to capture scenes before, during, and after; get there early to shoot setup and preparations, then put yourself in the midst of the action once the event officially commences. Make sure you have a backdrop of the event in candid shots so you maintain the mood, your viewers know where the image was taken and what things happened in the event. Finally, stick around for post-event happenings: clean up, disassembly, participants and audience departing, etc.
Here is a brilliant and fun example of how to cover a “fun run” — specifically a 5k zombie run .
Follow the Change
Change is one of life’s inevitabilities and lends itself to a photo essay. While an essay covering change or transformation could certainly take place over an extended period of months or years — think of documenting a pregnancy, a child's growth, civilisation in a new urban area or a construction project — it doesn’t require a daily commitment like a 365 project does.
Or you could go for essays relating to extended changes like seasonal changes which may require documenting over a year. It could be how a place transforms over a period of time or how climate and other factors affect a particular location over a period of time under various circumstances.
From 2005 to 2010, Romain Meffre and Yves Marchand periodically visited Detroit to document the once thriving city’s “fall from grace.”
Here Are Some Tips Before You Start Working On A Photo Essay:
- Choose an essay topic that is doable for you and one that suits your photography skills.
- Think about the purpose of the photo essay and create a workflow based on it ( what needs to be photographed, when, where and what time and location, etc. ) so you do not miss out on little but important details.
- When working on social issues, make sure you have the rights and permission to be there and photograph as you do not want to photograph and publish sensitive information that are against the guidelines.
It's not that photo essays don't require your time and dedication, but some photographers find them to be less demanding since, depending on the topic, they can be completed in a day or two. If you're looking for a project that doesn't have to drag on for too long, a photo essay may be perfect for you.
Further Resources:
- How To Create a Meaningful Photography Essay In 5 Steps
- The 6 Fundamentals Of Storytelling In Photography
- Photo Essay: A Good Day of Roadside Photography
- 5 Tips for Creating a Photo Essay with a Purpose
- What Makes a Photo Essay Unforgettable?
- 15 Powerful Photo Essay Ideas That Will Boost Emotional Impact
About Author
Jason Little is a photographer, author and stock shooter . You can see Jason’s photography on his Website or his Instagram feed.
Link of possible interest- Photo essays in black and white http://www.efn.org/~hkrieger
Thanks for posting the link, Herman. I loved your photos and the captions are great. Some day I’ll be there, too, and see if I can do half as well as you did!
Thanks John, I still use a roll film camera for the photos. With 8-10 shots per roll, I take time to view a scene before making a photo. It saves a lot of editing time.
Thanks for this article! I’m pretty new to photography….my husbands job takes us to a different city in this country almost everyday (365 days a year), so I picked up a camera and started going with him While many of my shots are taken from a pick up truck driving 85 mph, but I get to take them standing still once in a while lol. I am planning a family reunion in June and of course I plan to document the event in photos and your article brought somethings to my attention that I otherwise would probably have missed! Thanks to you, I now plan to meet people in the parking lot when they arrive to document time from the beginning and I will get pictures of people heading out also.. I think the story will be more interesting and complete showing people walking towards and away from the reunion. I also plan to keep my camera working during the clean up!! So thank you!!!!
Leave a Reply Cancel
Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *
Table of Contents
Latest Posts
Action Shots And Low Light Scenes – Don’t Miss Our Latest Update
21 Fun Examples Of Creative Product Photography
Water Splash Photography And Gorgeous Nature Shots – Don’t Miss Our Latest Update
19 Colorful Cocktail Photos
How to create an outstanding Photo Essay
If you are working on your photo essay and would wish to know how to create a successful one, we have some tips, tricks, and techniques outlined in this article. With the sophistication of digital publishing, you need to be on your A-game when creating digital photos that tell a story.
As a custom essay writing service , our ultimate goal in this article is to guide you on creating a photo essay without straining. We like it when writing, and creativity is fun altogether. Therefore, we have outlined examples, classifications, and a framework that you can use when creating your photo essay.
This article also bears the definition of what a photo essay is. And although you could use this as a professional or a student, you can pay someone to do your essay on our website. When you do so, a polished essay writer will work with you in creating a good photo essay,
We have creatives with expertise, a knack for experimentation, critical thinking and creativity, and an insatiable urge to produce top content. If it sounds like you could use our help, let us know the best way we can assist you in creating a perfect photography essay.
If, however, all you need is insights to point you in the right direction, here is how to create a good photo essay without straining. Let’s explore!
What is a Photo Essay?
Visual storytelling appeals to everyone who has a sense of sight.
Unlike your typical essay in college, a photo essay is a project where you present a series of photographs or images to tell a story, share a narrative, or push a theme/agenda. Thus, a photo essay facilitates picture-led storytelling , which is a creative innovation in photojournalism.
It is also known as a photographic or picture essay. A great photo essay powerfully evokes emotions and appeals to the understanding of its intended audience without using words or with minimal words alongside the series of images.
A perfectly-created photo essay narrates a story using many photographs that take the viewer along your narrative journey. Indeed, it proves that a picture is worth a thousand words. In this case, since there are many pictures/images, you could say a photo essay is rich in words, flavor, and content, yet it does not have words.
Talking of photo essays, Ansel Adams is one of the revered and famous photo essayists. Other photo essayists include James Nachtwey, Eugene Smith, and Nancy Borowick .
How to Create a Photo Essay in a step-by-step format
Here is a step-by-step approach to follow to successfully create a compelling and engaging photo essay:
Step 1 – Do your Research
If you are to create an attractive and relevant photo essay, begin by researching the best framework to adopt. Look at what people are doing out there and find out how creatively you can do it better. There are inexhaustible ideas and concepts that you can explore when writing a photo essay. If you’ve not chosen a topic, thorough research can help you decide on a topic and handle it well.
Step 2 - Choose a theme for your photo essay
With the research, you can already identify a specific theme or narrative for your picture essay. Therefore, highlight the theme or narrative, write some notes about the direction you will tackle and how you will reach and satisfy your audience.
Step 2 – Choose a topic that aligns with the theme
Following the findings from your research, choose a great topic. You are not that lucky photo essayist who opportunistically happens upon a story and turns it into a brilliant photo essay. Therefore, you should choose an attractive, reasonable, short, and memorable topic. You are free to select any topic that interests you and one that you find fun to work on. Your chosen theme or narrative can help define the topic for your photo essay.
Step 3 – Pick your subjects
With the theme/narrative and the topic, you can then choose your subjects. These are the people, things, sceneries, or places of central focus in your photography essay.
The subjects are the ones that give your photo essay a voice, strengthen your narrative, and engage the audience.
Step 4 – Select your top images
Define the appropriate number of images that you intend to use when telling the story. For example, if you intend to leave the audience under suspense, choose which images to use and their order of appearance. Your photo essay project does not have to use all your images but the best.
The best way to integrate your theme, narrative, and subjects is to create a storyboard that helps you decide how to tell the story. Then, when you lay your ideas out, a storyboard helps you focus on what is essential, especially when you have little control over a given subject.
Step 5 – ask for insights and input from others
After creating the storyboard, choosing the photos, and writing a narrative or theme statement, you can share it with someone knowledgeable for critique. You should also invite views and comments from another person. Ensure that you give the entire photo cache to the person so that they can choose, then compare with your best photos and tweak your choice accordingly.
Step 6 – Write the captions and text
With everything set, write the accompanying content for your photo essay. As well, make sure you caption each photo to enhance your visual narrative. Nothing is cast in stone here because you can also drop using image captions. You can experiment with lighting, tone, color, composition, angles, and location so that the narrative flows. Also, don’t forget to create introductory messages and closing messages. You need to have your signature introductory and closing images well-decided.
Step 7 – Edit your work
Now that you have created a photo essay, it is now time to edit everything. You can ask for help or rest and do it when you are energetic and objective. If you want a skilled essay writer to write you an excellent narrative to post alongside your photo essay, you can always trust our essay website. We can also edit the narrative to maintain a good flow.
Step 8 – Publish/submit your work
If everything else is okay, convert the photo essay to the correct format and submit or publish it. Remember, photo essays can be a portion of a webpage, a webpage, a document, fashion publication, photo editorial, collage of images, or mixed media.
Helpful Tips when compiling your Photographic Essay
If you are on track to become a photo essayist, you need to grasp the most critical photo essaying tips, techniques, and tricks. Here is some best advice you could use to find a subject for your photo essay.
1. Try to tell a diverse and confident story
When you get out there to tell a story, make sure you do it most awesomely. Understand your target audience, do anything that will resonate with their needs, appeal to their emotions, logic, and thoughts, and leave them musing over your narrative. It is, therefore, vital that you consider what your key message will be and be confident when handling it in your photo essay.
2.Storyboard before building
Architects, surgeons, artists, engineers, you name the profession, all begin with either a sketch, blueprint or a plan to visualize the entire concept or creation before its actualization. In the real of photo essays, you have to be invested right from the beginning. Therefore, you need to create a storyboard that helps you to convert your vision, abstract thoughts, and ideas to a concrete plan that you can execute to succeed in your project. A storyboard also doubles as a shortlist for your photography project.
When storyboarding, you will notice that you take an outsider view, which helps you evaluate how every element fits into the larger picture – your narrative/theme. When doing it, you can discard otherwise burdensome but irrelevant content, which saves you time and leaves you to focus more.
Storyboarding is a critical, creative step when building a perfect photo essay as it ensures the flow to your viewers.
3. Have a visual structure
A contemporary photo essay follows a simple or basic framework that gives your theme direction and scope. Therefore, having a visual structure, marker, or framework helps you transform the photo series into a narrative. For instance, this Growing up young photo essay published in the BBC chooses to have quotes from the subjects running alongside the photos. Likewise, the picture essay done by photojournalist Stefanie Glinski titled One Month in Kabul Under Taliban rule – a photo essay has narrative and captions to further illustrate the themes, content, and narratives.
4. Have a variety of images
To write an exceptional photo essay, ensure that you have as many photos or images as possible. Assemble as much as you think you will need for the project, then use your ruthless photo editing skills to pick the best photos.
Although shedding content hurts, it’s the only best way to achieve the best piece. It is also better to be in a dilemma of which photos to use than wish that you included a specific shot. Having multiple shots ensures that everything is captured. Then compiling your photo series becomes easier.
5. Edit your photos well
When editing, do it ruthlessly. While you cannot be Annie Leibovitz, Stefanie Glinski, or Ansel Adams, you certainly have to up your game to be at par with them. You can either use a professional editor. Alternatively, you can edit your photos using Photoshop, Illustrator, or other image-editing software. Whatever you choose your struggle to be, ensure that you end up with high-quality photos that make sense to your theme or narrative. If you have to refine an image to remove blemish or flaws, use it as long as it ends up fine. Make sure that the focus of each photo is visible and that unwanted areas are cropped out. If you are editing on your own, edit the photos a few days after the shoot to have an objective mind when doing it.
6. Choose the top 10 images
You are not just going to lazily throw images and words all over a structure and have it for the best photo essay out there. Instead, you need to select quality photos that will tell your narrative. Be keen enough to ensure that any photo that makes it to the top 10 list is compelling and poignant. If you notice that you don’t have good equipment to produce or capture quality photos, don’t be afraid to pull in a professional photographer.
7. Use outside input to perfect your choice
When working on a photo essay project, you are not necessarily an island. The photo essayists we’ve mentioned work with teams. You equally need to get a trusted, visually active, and sophisticated individual, professional, or friend to help you.
Have them look at the photos you took and ask them to choose the best. As well, provide them with a written description of your narrative and ask them to select their 10 best photos.
Compare their choice with yours and if they differ, make a point of asking the reason. Listen keenly and tweak your narrative and choice as they most likely reflect what an audience would perceive from the photo essay.
8. Select the best photos from the best
Based on the reasons from your external source (friend, editor, or photographer), select the 10 best photographs to use in telling your story. As well, change the narration if there is a need to tweak it.
9. Write reasonable captions
For your final choice of 10 images, write a befitting caption that will help to enhance your visual narrative. You need to be concise, brief, and clear. If the photos have a strong or exciting background story you wish to run, have the narrative written as content alongside the photos.
However, if you feel like the images can stand alone without captions, don’t beat yourself over it; leave them out. After all, using captions is not a must.
Look at this example of Black Lives Matter Photo Essay (Link to external site).
Apart from the caption, you can add text that contains data, complex metrics, or maps to support your narrative. Using maps can help drive the point home.
10. Focus on the details
Yes, the devil is always in the details. When you eventually display your photo essay to an audience, everybody analyzes it their way. However, when you capture the details, you will take care of each perspective, judgment, and reasoning from your audience. Ensure that you place everything in context and that everything is up to date.
11. Make it fun
Unlike college essays that come with challenges, creating a photo essay should be fun. Therefore, enjoy every bit of the project. Doing so helps you to step up your game, inspire creativity, and relaxes your mind. There is nothing creative and innovative you cannot do in a photo essay with a let loose sort of spirit.
12. Set the scene
When telling a story through photography, you are equally writing your story. Therefore, ensure that you set a scene to capture the moment that appeals to your audience.
For the events that you have no control over, try as much as possible to take photos that match your narrative or theme.
13. Experiment more when taking photos
There is no single bullet to creating an outstanding photo essay. To achieve perfection, let your photo essay express your story in the best way it can. Therefore, you need to test filter effects, use fonts, adjust the visuals, check the contrast, adjust color, hue, and feel, and crop your photos well. With experimentation comes creativity and innovativeness, which birth perfection.
Classification of Photo Essays
In terms of classification, there are two general classes of photo essays where all the genres of photo essays fall. These classes are narrative and thematic.
1. Narrative Photo Essays
A narrative photo essay, as the name suggests, tells a specific story. But, mainly, these types of photo essays tend to tell a peculiar and more direct story.
Unlike thematic photo essays, narrative photo essays give less freedom to the photo essayist. The use of text is to have some sense of completion to the story.
For instance, the 28 Days in Afghanistan by Andrew Quilty published in the SBS is a narrative photo essay that documents the photographer’s experience in the war-torn nation using both text and unadulterated photos.
The picture essay by photojournalist Stefanie Glinski titled One Month in Kabul Under Taliban rule – a photo essay also falls under this category as it highlights her one-month encounter in Kabul.
2. Thematic photo Essays
Thematic photo essays are topic-specific. For example, they can be on politics, pollution, police brutality, global pandemic, poverty, crime, etc.
You have the freedom of choosing the subjects, location, and you do not necessarily have to incorporate text.
An example of a thematic photo essay is the “ They call us bewitched ” picture essay published in the Guardian. We also bumped into the Olympics Photos: Emotion runs high by the NBC News, which we find as an excellent thematic photo essay. Next, look at this Hurricane Katrina photo essay. It is thematic in the sense that it focuses on a natural disaster. Finally, if you want more examples, this photo essay titled “ From Trayvon Martin to Colin Kaepernick ” details the theme of Black Lives Matter/ police brutality.
Typical Photo Essay Examples/Genres to inspire your creativity
- The daily life photo essay – A Day-in-the-life photo essay tells a story about the day-to-day life of a given subject. It could be a lawyer, president, celebrity, farmer, industrialist, pope, student, etc. most of these photographic essays evoke emotions and help the audience enter into the subject's world.
- Transitioning through life photo essay – These are essays that detail photos of how people transform through life. It can be a photo of a celebrity, president, farmer, or famous person since they were young to date.
- Special events photo essays – As the name suggests, these are photo essays on special events, festivities, and occurrences. The events can be weddings, burials, art exhibitions, car shows, auction events, or celebrations. They have very elaborate and relatable background objects that connect to the main idea.
- Family photo essays – These can be photo essays on family members. You can include photos that show how the family has grown or detailing the family tree. They can also be family business photos that detail the leaders assigned roles to family businesses.
- Protest photo essays – These are thematic photo essays that detail how protests occurred and paint a clear picture of the theme of such protests as the Black Lives Matter protests. When creating a protest photo essay, you should have information about the particular protest. Focus on incidents and protests that occurred in history.
- Sports photo essays – Sports essays can be on sports events such as Olympics, Wimbledon, football leagues, or about sportsmen and women. For instance, the Skysports’ picture essay on Diego Maradona titled Diego Maradona: Images of a football Icon .
- Medical Photo Essays – Organizations such as WHO , Universities , or CDC have various examples of medical photo essays. These visual illustrations focus on medical research, medical practice, diseases, and medical breakthroughs.
- Scientific Photo Essays – Like medical essays, these photo essays detail scientific encounters, breakthroughs, inventions, etc.
- Celebrity photo essays – You can create a photo essay on a celebrity.
- Political photo essays are photo essays that capture and narrate political events, history, and news in a series of photographs and narratives. It could be about leftist and rightist politics or geopolitics as well as policy-making.
- War photo essays – Captures the critical and significant elements of conflict, war, and peace. There are many samples online.
- Timelapse photo essays – These are transformational photo essays that capture the changes of a subject through time. They might take longer to develop and can be on buildings, estates, cities, trees, or landscapes.
- Relationship photo essays – This photo essay genre captures the interaction between people, families, and loved ones. It is the most common assignment in journalism class. It offers an excellent chance to capture emotions like love, family, and friendship.
- Poverty photo essays – This genre of photo essays captures poverty from the standpoint of the subject. They can contain infrastructure, housing, amenities, food, water, etc. They are very emotional and can use narratives. They are the same as drought photo essays that capture how the drought has ravaged a geographic region of interest.
- City photo essays – These are photographic essays that capture a city's feel, life, and pleasures. They are thematic in nature and allow you to focus on specific areas, moods, and feeling that such places evoke.
- Education photo essays – Details issues in education. For instance, it can be a photo essay showing the disparity in access, challenges in education, or infrastructure in education. An example is The Many Faces of Learning, published in the Stanford Social Innovation Review. Another one is Embracing Education , published by the Lutheran World Federation.
As long as you can think of any topic, there is always a picture or photo essay genre where it can fall under. Remember, you can be asked to create a photo essay on a Word Document or PDF for class, which is where you get the chance to display your prowess and creativity.
Common Photo Essay Examples
Here are the famous photo essays that you can draw inspiration from:
- Various American Natural Sites by Ansel Adams
- “Everyday” by Noah Kalina
- “Signed, X” by Kate Ryan
- “The Vietnam War” by Philip Jones Griffiths
- “The Great Depression” by Dorothea Lange
Structure/Anatomy of a Photo Essay
Here is a blueprint or skeleton of how a basic photo essay can look like
Introductory text/content
This is where you type the text that explains or introduces the photo essay to your audience.
Signature Image
This is the strongest image that has a visual impact on the story you are running. It should be an image that invites the viewers to your story to be interested in looking further. In simple terms, this is your window, attention grabber, or icon; make it count.
This is the picture of a key player or the main subject of your story. You must ensure that the foreground and background elements reinforce the theme or narrative.
Where the subject is caught in real moments, such as in environmental portraits, is reportedly more compelling. You can use a series of posed portraits as well.
Overall wider view
This is the photograph that gives the viewers a sense of the place or part of the place where the story happens. You use such images to create a scene. It can also be a series of detailed images bundled together to set the scene.
Here, you need to follow up with a photograph that explains the finer details. The photo can be abstract but eye-catching in the sense that it draws the attention of the audience. It should be an image that reveals to the audience some aspect that is otherwise missed in a wider shot. You are allowed to use series of small detail photos as a mosaic in one image .
When defining an action, look for a photograph that shows the main theme in your story. For instance, if it is a Black Lives Matter protest, focus on a photo that captures banners, police, and protesters. Specifically, focus on the most poignant or dramatic images that capture people interacting with one another. You can as well capture gestures or moments that amplify the visual narrative you want to communicate.
Closing Photo and text
This is the powerful closing photograph that lets your audience ponder more about your visual narrative. You can follow it with a text highlighting the thoughts you want the audience to reason with as they come to the end of your photo essay.
Gradecrest is a professional writing service that provides original model papers. We offer personalized services along with research materials for assistance purposes only. All the materials from our website should be used with proper references. See our Terms of Use Page for proper details.
In order to continue enjoying our site, we ask that you confirm your identity as a human. Thank you very much for your cooperation.
- Follow PetaPixel on Facebook
- Follow PetaPixel on Twitter
- Follow PetaPixel on Instagram
How to Create a Photo Essay
The photographic essay, also called a photo essay or photo story, is a powerful way for photographers to tell a story with their images. If you are interested in creating your own photo essay, this article will guide you through the whole process, from finding a story to shoot to the basics of crafting your first visual narrative.
Table of Contents
What is a photo essay.
A photo essay tells a story visually. Just like the kind you read, the photo essay offers a complete rendering of a subject or situation using a series of carefully crafted and curated images. Photo stories have a theme, and each image backs up that overarching theme which is defined in the photo essay’s title and is sometimes supported with text.
From documentary to narrative to essay, photo stories are designed to move their audience, to inspire a certain action, awareness, or emotion. Photo stories are not just a collection of cool photos. They must use their visual power to capture viewers’ attention and remain unforgettable.
History of the Photo Story
In the “old days”, that is, before 1948, magazines ran photo stories very different from what we know today. They were staged, preconceived by an editor, not a truthful observation of life. Along came a photographer named W. Eugene Smith, who worked for Life magazine.
Deciding to follow a rural doctor for six weeks, he gathered material for a photo essay that really showed what it was like to be in that doctor’s shoes, always on the go to help his scattered patients. Smith’s piece, “ Country Doctor ,” shook other photographers out of their scripted stupor and revolutionized the way photographers report what they see.
From then on, photojournalism gained life and an audience through the lenses of legends like Robert Capa, Dorothea Lange, David “Chim” Seymour, Gordon Parks, Werner Bischof, and Henri Cartier-Bresson. The Vietnam War provided many examples for photo stories as represented by Philip Jones Griffiths, Catherine Leroy, and many more.
More recently, photo stories have found a sturdy home online thanks to the ease of publishing a series of photos digitally versus in print. Lynsey Addario, Peter Essick, and Adam Ferguson represent a few of the photographers pushing visual storytelling today.
Ways to Find Photo Stories and Themes
Photo stories exist all around, right in the midst of everyday life and in the fray of current events. A good place to begin developing a photo essay is by choosing a general theme.
Topics that Interest You
The best expression comes from the heart, so why not choose a topic that interests you. Maybe it’s a social issue, an environmental one, or just something you’re curious about. Find what moves you and share that with the world.
Personal Experiences
The more you’ve lived, the more you have to tell. This doesn’t necessarily mean age, it can also refer to experiences, big and small. If you know a subject better than most, like what it’s like to recover from a car crash, you’re an expert on the matter and therefore you have a story to tell. Also, consider the things you read and see or watch, like news or history, and incorporate that into your search for a story.
Problem/Solution
Problems abound in the world. But so do solutions. Photojournalists can present either, or both. Have a look at something that’s wrong in society and show why it’s a problem. Or find a problem that’s been resolved and show the struggle it took to get there. Even better, take your time shooting your story — sometimes it can take years — and document how a wrong is righted.
Day-in-the-Life
One of the most popular formats, day-in-the-life photo stories present microcosms of life that relate to the bigger picture. In a similar vein, behind-the-scenes photo stories show viewers what life is really like for others, especially in situations that are difficult or impossible to access. Events represent another simple yet powerful theme for documenting and storytelling with a camera.
Types of Photo Stories
Most photo stories concern people. If it’s about something like the environment, for example, the photo story can showcase the people involved. In either case, the impactful photo story will present the challenges and dilemmas of the human condition, viscerally.
There are three general types of photo stories.
Narrative Story
Narrative deals with complications and their resolution, problems, and solutions. If there appears to be no resolution, at least the struggle to find one can provide material for a photo essay. Some sort of narrative thread must push the story from beginning to middle to end, just like what you see in a good movie.
A good story also requires action, which in this case must be visual. Good stories are page-turners, whether they’re a Kerouac tale or a series of photos demonstrating the difficulties of single parenting. Adventure stories are one good example of photographic narrative storytelling.
The term “photo story” is generally used interchangeably with “photo essay”, but some photographers hold that there are subtle differences between the two. The essay type of photo story implies opinion, they argue. Essays make a point. They are the opposite of facts-only news. A photo story essay makes a case for something, like showing the danger and consequences of illegal fireworks or advocating for the preservation of a forest.
Documentary
On the other hand, documentaries lack opinion. Their purpose is to inform without adding judgment. Documentaries present the facts and let viewers decide. They illustrate something that’s occurring but they don’t always include a narrative story or an opinionated approach. Historical places, current events, and unique lifestyles always make for good documentary photo stories.
How to Craft a Photo Essay
Several elements come into play when putting together a photo essay. Once you’ve found a theme, it’s time to give your project a name. While out shooting, jot down titles that come to mind. Consider the title a magazine headline that explains in few words what the whole story is about.
Choose your photos according to whether or not they relate to and support the photo essay’s title. Reject those photos that don’t. If your collection seems to suggest a different angle, a different title, don’t be afraid to rename it. Sometimes stories develop organically. But if your title can’t assemble and define your selection of photos, maybe it’s too vague. Don’t rush it. Identify the theme, take the photos and the photo essay will take shape.
Certain techniques help tell the photo essay.
A photo essay is composed of a diversity of views, angles, and focal lengths. While masters like Henri Cartier-Bresson could capture a photo essay with a single prime lens, in his case a 50mm, the rest of us are wise to rely on multiple focal lengths. Just like what we see in the movies, a story is told with wide shots that set the scene, medium shots that tell the story, and close-ups that reveal character and emotion.
Unique angles make viewers curious and interested, and they break the monotony of standard photography. Consider working black-and-white into your photo essay. The photo essay lends itself well to reportage exclusively in monochrome, as the legends have demonstrated since W. Eugene Smith.
Visual Consistency
The idea of a photo essay is to create a whole, not a bunch of random parts. Think gestalt. The images must interact with each other. Repetition helps achieve this end. Recurring themes, moods, styles, people, things, and perspectives work to unify a project even if the photos tell different parts of the story.
Text can augment the impact of a photo essay. A photo may be worth a thousand words, but it doesn’t always replace them. Captions can be as short as a complete sentence, as long as a paragraph, or longer. Make sure to take notes in case you want to add captions. Some photo stories, however, function just fine without words.
Tell a Story as a Photographer
Few genres of photography have moved people like the photo essay. Since its inception, the art of visual storytelling has captivated audiences. Photo stories show viewers things they had never seen, have moved masses to action, and have inspired video documentaries. Today, photo stories retain their power and place, in part thanks to the internet. Every photographer should experiment with a photo essay or two.
The method of crafting a photo essay is simple yet complicated, just like life. Careful attention must be paid to the selection of images, the choice of title, and the techniques used in shooting. But follow these guidelines and the photo stories will come. Seek issues and experiences that inspire you and go photograph them with the intention of telling a complete story. The viewing world will thank you.
Image credits: Header photo shows the May 13, 1957 story in LIFE magazine titled, “ The Tough Miracle Man of Vietnam .” Stock photos from Depositphotos
- 'Photography Made Difficult': The Life and Work of Photojournalist W. Eugene Smith
- Photographer Exposed for Using Film Set Shots as 'Documentary' Photos
- W. Eugene Smith: Father of the Photo Essay
- Photo Essay: A Day in the Sulfur Mines of Kawah Ijen
- Blast from the Past: This is What the Photo Industry Was Like in 1978
- Share your Views
- Submit a Contest
- Recommend Contest
- Terms of Service
- Testimonials
Photo Contests – Photography competitions
- Filter Photo Contests
- All Photo Contests
- Get FREE Contests Updates
- Photo Contest Tips
- Photography Deals
What is a Photo Essay? 9 Photo Essay Examples You Can Recreate
A photo essay is a series of photographs that tell a story. Unlike a written essay, a photo essay focuses on visuals instead of words. With a photo essay, you can stretch your creative limits and explore new ways to connect with your audience. Whatever your photography skill level, you can recreate your own fun and creative photo essay.
9 Photo Essay Examples You Can Recreate
- Photowalk Photo Essay
- Transformation Photo Essay
- Day in the Life Photo Essay
- Event Photo Essay
- Building Photo Essay
- Historic Site or Landmark Photo Essay
- Behind the Scenes Photo Essay
- Family Photo Essay
- Education Photo Essay
Stories are important to all of us. While some people gravitate to written stories, others are much more attuned to visual imagery. With a photo essay, you can tell a story without writing a word. Your use of composition, contrast, color, and perspective in photography will convey ideas and evoke emotions.
To explore narrative photography, you can use basic photographic equipment. You can buy a camera or even use your smartphone to get started. While lighting, lenses, and post-processing software can enhance your photos, they aren’t necessary to achieve good results.
Whether you need to complete a photo essay assignment or want to pursue one for fun or professional purposes, you can use these photo essay ideas for your photography inspiration . Once you know the answer to “what is a photo essay?” and find out how fun it is to create one, you’ll likely be motivated to continue your forays into photographic storytelling.
1 . Photowalk Photo Essay
One popular photo essay example is a photowalk. Simply put, a photowalk is time you set aside to walk around a city, town, or a natural site and take photos. Some cities even have photowalk tours led by professional photographers. On these tours, you can learn the basics about how to operate your camera, practice photography composition techniques, and understand how to look for unique shots that help tell your story.
Set aside at least two to three hours for your photowalk. Even if you’re photographing a familiar place—like your own home town—try to look at it through new eyes. Imagine yourself as a first-time visitor or pretend you’re trying to educate a tourist about the area.
Walk around slowly and look for different ways to capture the mood and energy of your location. If you’re in a city, capture wide shots of streets, close-ups of interesting features on buildings, street signs, and candid shots of people. Look for small details that give the city character and life. And try some new concepts—like reflection picture ideas—by looking for opportunities to photographs reflections in mirrored buildings, puddles, fountains, or bodies of water.
2 . Transformation Photo Essay
With a transformation photography essay, you can tell the story about change over time. One of the most popular photostory examples, a transformation essay can document a mom-to-be’s pregnancy or a child’s growth from infancy into the toddler years. But people don’t need to be the focus of a transformation essay. You can take photos of a house that is being built or an urban area undergoing revitalization.
You can also create a photo narrative to document a short-term change. Maybe you want to capture images of your growing garden or your move from one home to another. These examples of photo essays are powerful ways of telling the story of life’s changes—both large and small.
3 . Day in the Life Photo Essay
Want a unique way to tell a person’s story? Or, perhaps you want to introduce people to a career or activity. You may want to consider a day in the life essay.
With this photostory example, your narrative focuses on a specific subject for an entire day. For example, if you are photographing a farmer, you’ll want to arrive early in the morning and shadow the farmer as he or she performs daily tasks. Capture a mix of candid shots of the farmer at work and add landscapes and still life of equipment for added context. And if you are at a farm, don’t forget to get a few shots of the animals for added character, charm, or even a dose of humor. These types of photography essay examples are great practice if you are considering pursuing photojournalism. They also help you learn and improve your candid portrait skills.
4 . Event Photo Essay
Events are happening in your local area all the time, and they can make great photo essays. With a little research, you can quickly find many events that you could photograph. There may be bake sales, fundraisers, concerts, art shows, farm markets, block parties, and other non profit event ideas . You could also focus on a personal event, such as a birthday or graduation.
At most events, your primary emphasis will be on capturing candid photos of people in action. You can also capture backgrounds or objects to set the scene. For example, at a birthday party, you’ll want to take photos of the cake and presents.
For a local or community event, you can share your photos with the event organizer. Or, you may be able to post them on social media and tag the event sponsor. This is a great way to gain recognition and build your reputation as a talented photographer.
5. Building Photo Essay
Many buildings can be a compelling subject for a photographic essay. Always make sure that you have permission to enter and photograph the building. Once you do, look for interesting shots and angles that convey the personality, purpose, and history of the building. You may also be able to photograph the comings and goings of people that visit or work in the building during the day.
Some photographers love to explore and photograph abandoned buildings. With these types of photos, you can provide a window into the past. Definitely make sure you gain permission before entering an abandoned building and take caution since some can have unsafe elements and structures.
6. Historic Site or Landmark Photo Essay
Taking a series of photos of a historic site or landmark can be a great experience. You can learn to capture the same site from different angles to help portray its character and tell its story. And you can also photograph how people visit and engage with the site or landmark. Take photos at different times of day and in varied lighting to capture all its nuances and moods.
You can also use your photographic essay to help your audience understand the history of your chosen location. For example, if you want to provide perspective on the Civil War, a visit to a battleground can be meaningful. You can also visit a site when reenactors are present to share insight on how life used to be in days gone by.
7 . Behind the Scenes Photo Essay
Another fun essay idea is taking photos “behind the scenes” at an event. Maybe you can chronicle all the work that goes into a holiday festival from the early morning set-up to the late-night teardown. Think of the lead event planner as the main character of your story and build the story about him or her.
Or, you can go backstage at a drama production. Capture photos of actors and actresses as they transform their looks with costuming and makeup. Show the lead nervously pacing in the wings before taking center stage. Focus the work of stagehands, lighting designers, and makeup artists who never see the spotlight but bring a vital role in bringing the play to life.
8. Family Photo Essay
If you enjoy photographing people, why not explore photo story ideas about families and relationships? You can focus on interactions between two family members—such as a father and a daughter—or convey a message about a family as a whole.
Sometimes these type of photo essays can be all about the fun and joy of living in a close-knit family. But sometimes they can be powerful portraits of challenging social topics. Images of a family from another country can be a meaningful photo essay on immigration. You could also create a photo essay on depression by capturing families who are coping with one member’s illness.
For these projects on difficult topics, you may want to compose a photo essay with captions. These captions can feature quotes from family members or document your own observations. Although approaching hard topics isn’t easy, these types of photos can have lasting impact and value.
9. Education Photo Essay
Opportunities for education photo essays are everywhere—from small preschools to community colleges and universities. You can seek permission to take photos at public or private schools or even focus on alternative educational paths, like homeschooling.
Your education photo essay can take many forms. For example, you can design a photo essay of an experienced teacher at a high school. Take photos of him or her in action in the classroom, show quiet moments grading papers, and capture a shared laugh between colleagues in the teacher’s lounge.
Alternatively, you can focus on a specific subject—such as science and technology. Or aim to portray a specific grade level, document activities club or sport, or portray the social environment. A photo essay on food choices in the cafeteria can be thought-provoking or even funny. There are many potential directions to pursue and many great essay examples.
While education is an excellent topic for a photo essay for students, education can be a great source of inspiration for any photographer.
Why Should You Create a Photo Essay?
Ultimately, photographers are storytellers. Think of what a photographer does during a typical photo shoot. He or she will take a series of photos that helps convey the essence of the subject—whether that is a person, location, or inanimate object. For example, a family portrait session tells the story of a family—who they are, their personalities, and the closeness of their relationship.
Learning how to make a photo essay can help you become a better storyteller—and a better photographer. You’ll cultivate key photography skills that you can carry with you no matter where your photography journey leads.
If you simply want to document life’s moments on social media, you may find that a single picture doesn’t always tell the full story. Reviewing photo essay examples and experimenting with your own essay ideas can help you choose meaningful collections of photos to share with friends and family online.
Learning how to create photo essays can also help you work towards professional photography ambitions. You’ll often find that bloggers tell photographic stories. For example, think of cooking blogs that show you each step in making a recipe. Photo essays are also a mainstay of journalism. You’ll often find photo essays examples in many media outlets—everywhere from national magazines to local community newspapers. And the best travel photographers on Instagram tell great stories with their photos, too.
With a photo essay, you can explore many moods and emotions. Some of the best photo essays tell serious stories, but some are humorous, and others aim to evoke action.
You can raise awareness with a photo essay on racism or a photo essay on poverty. A photo essay on bullying can help change the social climate for students at a school. Or, you can document a fun day at the beach or an amusement park. You have control of the themes, photographic elements, and the story you want to tell.
5 Steps to Create a Photo Essay
Every photo essay will be different, but you can use a standard process. Following these five steps will guide you through every phase of your photo essay project—from brainstorming creative essay topics to creating a photo essay to share with others.
Step 1: Choose Your Photo Essay Topics
Just about any topic you can imagine can form the foundation for a photo essay. You may choose to focus on a specific event, such as a wedding, performance, or festival. Or you may want to cover a topic over a set span of time, such as documenting a child’s first year. You could also focus on a city or natural area across the seasons to tell a story of changing activities or landscapes.
Since the best photo essays convey meaning and emotion, choose a topic of interest. Your passion for the subject matter will shine through each photograph and touch your viewer’s hearts and minds.
Step 2: Conduct Upfront Research
Much of the work in a good-quality photo essay begins before you take your first photo. It’s always a good idea to do some research on your planned topic.
Imagine you’re going to take photos of a downtown area throughout the year. You should spend some time learning the history of the area. Talk with local residents and business owners and find out about planned events. With these insights, you’ll be able to plan ahead and be prepared to take photos that reflect the area’s unique personality and lifestyles.
For any topic you choose, gather information first. This may involve internet searches, library research, interviews, or spending time observing your subject.
Step 3: Storyboard Your Ideas
After you have done some research and have a good sense of the story you want to tell, you can create a storyboard. With a storyboard, you can write or sketch out the ideal pictures you want to capture to convey your message.
You can turn your storyboard into a “shot list” that you can bring with you on site. A shot list can be especially helpful when you are at a one-time event and want to capture specific shots for your photo essay. If you’ve never created a photo essay before, start with ten shot ideas. Think of each shot as a sentence in your story. And aim to make each shot evoke specific ideas or emotions.
Step 4: Capture Images
Your storyboard and shot list will be important guides to help you make the most of each shoot. Be sure to set aside enough time to capture all the shots you need—especially if you are photographing a one-time event. And allow yourself to explore your ideas using different photography composition, perspective, and color contrast techniques.
You may need to take a hundred images or more to get ten perfect ones for your photographic essay. Or, you may find that you want to add more photos to your story and expand your picture essay concept.
Also, remember to look for special unplanned, moments that help tell your story. Sometimes, spontaneous photos that aren’t on your shot list can be full of meaning. A mix of planning and flexibility almost always yields the best results.
Step 5: Edit and Organize Photos to Tell Your Story
After capturing your images, you can work on compiling your photo story. To create your photo essay, you will need to make decisions about which images portray your themes and messages. At times, this can mean setting aside beautiful images that aren’t a perfect fit. You can use your shot list and storyboard as a guide but be open to including photos that weren’t in your original plans.
You may want to use photo editing software—such as Adobe Lightroom or Photoshop— to enhance and change photographs. With these tools, you can adjust lighting and white balance, perform color corrections, crop, or perform other edits. If you have a signature photo editing style, you may want to use Photoshop Actions or Lightroom Presets to give all your photos a consistent look and feel.
You order a photo book from one of the best photo printing websites to publish your photo story. You can add them to an album on a photo sharing site, such as Flickr or Google Photos. Also, you could focus on building a website dedicated to documenting your concepts through visual photo essays. If so, you may want to use SEO for photographers to improve your website’s ranking in search engine results. You could even publish your photo essay on social media. Another thing to consider is whether you want to include text captures or simply tell your story through photographs.
Choose the medium that feels like the best space to share your photo essay ideas and vision with your audiences. You should think of your photo essay as your own personal form of art and expression when deciding where and how to publish it.
Photo Essays Can Help You Become a Better Photographer
Whatever your photography ambitions may be, learning to take a photo essay can help you grow. Even simple essay topics can help you gain skills and stretch your photographic limits. With a photo essay, you start to think about how a series of photographs work together to tell a complete story. You’ll consider how different shots work together, explore options for perspective and composition, and change the way you look at the world.
Before you start taking photos, you should review photo essay examples. You can find interesting pictures to analyze and photo story examples online, in books, or in classic publications, like Life Magazine . Don’t forget to look at news websites for photojournalism examples to broaden your perspective. This review process will help you in brainstorming simple essay topics for your first photo story and give you ideas for the future as well.
Ideas and inspiration for photo essay topics are everywhere. You can visit a park or go out into your own backyard to pursue a photo essay on nature. Or, you can focus on the day in the life of someone you admire with a photo essay of a teacher, fireman, or community leader. Buildings, events, families, and landmarks are all great subjects for concept essay topics. If you are feeling stuck coming up with ideas for essays, just set aside a few hours to walk around your city or town and take photos. This type of photowalk can be a great source of material.
You’ll soon find that advanced planning is critical to your success. Brainstorming topics, conducting research, creating a storyboard, and outlining a shot list can help ensure you capture the photos you need to tell your story. After you’ve finished shooting, you’ll need to decide where to house your photo essay. You may need to come up with photo album title ideas, write captions, and choose the best medium and layout.
Without question, creating a photo essay can be a valuable experience for any photographer. That’s true whether you’re an amateur completing a high school assignment or a pro looking to hone new skills. You can start small with an essay on a subject you know well and then move into conquering difficult ideas. Maybe you’ll want to create a photo essay on mental illness or a photo essay on climate change. Or maybe there’s another cause that is close to your heart.
Whatever your passion, you can bring it to life with a photo essay.
JOIN OVER 88,176 and receive weekly updates!
Comments are closed.
Photo Contest Insider
The world’s largest collection of photo contests.
Photo contests are manually reviewed by our team to ensure only the very best make it on to our website. It’s our policy to only list photo contests that are fair.
Subscription
Register now to get updates on promotions and offers
DISCLAIMER:
- Photo Contest Filter
- Get FREE Contest Updates
Photo Contest Insider © 2009 - 2023
Advertise Submit Badges Help Terms Privacy Unsubscribe Do Not Sell My Information
How to Make a Photo Essay: 5 Tips for Impactful Results
A Post By: Christina N Dickson
Want to tell meaningful stories with your photos? That’s what a photo essay is all about: conveying concepts and narratives through a series of carefully chosen images.
While telling a story with photos can be a daunting task, there are several easy tips and techniques you can use in your photo essays to create striking, stunning, eye-opening results.
And that’s what I’m going to share in this article: five photo essay tips that you can immediately apply to your photography. You’ll leave as a better photo essayist than when you arrived!
Let’s get started.
What is a photo essay?
A photo essay is a collection of images placed in a specific order to convey certain emotions , specific concepts, or a progression of events.
In other words:
The photo essay tells stories just like a normal piece of writing , except with images instead of words. (Here, I’m using the term “story” loosely; as mentioned above, photo essays can encapsulate emotions or concepts in addition to traditional, time-based narratives.)
Plenty of world-class photojournalists use photo essays, including Lauren Greenfield, James Nachtwey, and Joachim Ladefoged. But the photo essay format isn’t exclusive to professionals, and photo essays don’t need to cover dramatic events such as wars, natural disasters, and social issues. Whether you are a complete beginner, a hobbyist, or a professional, the photo essay is a great way to bring your images to life, tell relevant stories about your own surroundings, and touch your family, friends, and coworkers.
So without further ado, let’s look at five easy tips to take your photo essays to the next level, starting with:
1. Find a topic you care about
Every good photo essay should start with an idea .
Otherwise, you’ll be shooting without a purpose – and while such an approach may eventually lead to an interesting series of photos, it’s far, far easier to begin with a topic and only then take out your camera.
As I emphasized above, a photo essay can be about anything. You don’t need to fixate on “classic” photo essay themes, such as war and poverty. Instead, you might focus on local issues that matter to you (think of problems plaguing your community). You can also think about interesting stories worth telling, even if they don’t have an activism angle.
For instance, is there an area undergoing major development? Try documenting the work from start to finish. Is there a particular park or nature area you love? Create a series of images that communicate its beauty.
One key item to remember:
Photo essays are most powerful when you, as the photographer, care about the subject. Whether you choose to document something major and public, like an environmental crisis, or whether you choose to document something small and intimate, like the first month of a newborn in the family, make sure you focus on a topic that matters to you .
Otherwise, you’ll struggle to finish the essay – and even if you do successfully complete it, viewers will likely notice your lack of passion.
2. Do your research
The best photo essays involve some real work. Don’t just walk around and shoot with abandon; instead, try to understand your subject.
That way, you can capture a more authentic series of photos.
For instance, if you document a newborn’s first month , spend time with the family. Discover who the parents are, what culture they are from, and their parenting philosophy.
If you cover the process of a school’s drama production, talk with the teachers, actors, and stagehands; investigate the general interest of the student body; find out how the school is financing the production and keeping costs down.
If you photograph a birthday party, check out the theme, the decorations they plan on using, what the birthday kid hopes to get for their gifts.
If you’re passionate about your topic, the research should come easy. You should enjoy learning the backstory.
And then, when it comes time to actually shoot, you’ll have a much clearer understanding of the topic. You’ll know the key players in the story, the key ideas, and the key locations. You’ll be able to hone in on what matters and block out the flashy distractions.
Make sense?
3. Find the right angle
Once you’ve done your research, you’ll know your topic inside and out.
At which point you’ll need to ask yourself:
What is the real, authentic story I want to tell?
Every story has a hundred different angles and perspectives. And trying to share the story from every perspective is a recipe for failure.
Instead, pick a single angle and focus on it. If you’re documenting a local issue, do you want to focus on how it affects children? The physical area? The economy? If you’re documenting a newborn’s first month, do you want to focus on the interaction between the newborn and the parents? The growth of the newborn? The newborn’s emotions?
As you’ll find out during your research, even stories that seem to be completely one-sided have plenty of hidden perspectives to draw on.
So think about your story carefully. In general, I recommend you approach it from the angle you’re most passionate about (consider the previous tip!), but you’re always free to explore different perspectives.
4. Convey emotion
Not all photo essays must convey emotion. But the most powerful ones do.
After all, think of the stories that you know and love. Your favorite books, movies, and TV shows. Do they touch you on an emotional level?
Don’t get me wrong: Every photo essay shouldn’t cover a sappy, heartstring-tugging tale. You can always focus on conveying other emotions: anger, joy, fear, hurt, excitement.
(Of course, if your story is sappy and heartstring-tugging, that’s fine, too – just don’t force it!)
How do you convey emotions, though? There’s no one set way, but you can include photos of meaningful scenes – human interactions generally work well here! – or you can simply show emotion on the faces of your photographic subjects . Really, the best way to communicate emotions through your photos is to feel the emotions yourself; they’ll bleed over into your work for a unique result.
5. Plan your shots
Once you’ve done the research and determined the angle and emotions you’d like to convey, I recommend you sit down, take out a pen and paper, and plan your photo essay .
Should you extensively visualize each photo? Should you walk through the venue, imagining possible compositions ?
Honestly, that’s up to you, and it’ll depend on how you like to work. I do recommend that beginners start out by creating a “shot list” for the essay. Here, you should describe the main subject, the narrative purpose of the image, plus any lighting or composition notes. Once you become more experienced, you can be looser in your planning, though I still recommend you at least think about the different shots you want to capture.
You can start by planning 10 shots. Each one should emphasize a different concept or emotion, but make sure to keep a consistent thread running through every composition; after all, the end goal is to create a powerful series of images that tell a story.
One final tip:
While you should stick to your plan pretty closely, at least at first, don’t ignore the potential for spontaneity. If you see a possible shot, take it! You can later evaluate whether it’s a worthwhile addition to your essay.
Photo essay tips: final words
Now that you’ve finished this article, you know all about what photo essays are, and – hopefully! – how to create a beautiful essay of your own.
Just remember: storytelling takes practice, but you don’t have to be an incredible writer to pull off a powerful photo essay. All you need is a bit of photographic technique, some creativity, and a lot of heart.
Once you start to tell stories with your photos, your portfolio will never be the same!
Now over to you:
Do you have any tips for doing photo essays? Do you have any essays you’re proud of? Share them in the comments below!
Read more from our Tips & Tutorials category
is a visionary artist and philanthropist in Portland Oregon. Her work includes wedding photography www.BrideInspired.com and leadership with www.RevMediaBlog.com .
Some Older Comments
- Guaranteed for 2 full months
- Pay by PayPal or Credit Card
- Instant Digital Download
- All our best articles for the week
- Fun photographic challenges
- Special offers and discounts
Susan Sontag’s Radical Views Still Shape How We See Photography
Photography, more than any other art form, is subject to intense moral scrutiny. We question the proliferation of violent images, worry about subjects’ consent to be photographed, fear that manipulated pictures will create harmful misreadings of critical issues, and fret that taking pictures excessively diminishes our ability to experience the world. These concerns can feel immediate and timely, yet before the close of the 1970s, writer Susan Sontag had already articulated all of these concerns.
Sontag’s 1977 collection of essays entitled On Photography is perhaps the most prescient and influential book ever written on the medium. Though it is now regarded as a seminal art-historical text, Sontag was neither an art professional nor an academic: She was alternately celebrated and derided as a “public intellectual.” Her cogent writing style and full embrace of her status as an amateur allowed her ideas to seep into the mainstream—though she found many detractors. Writer Tom Wolfe once called her “just another scribbler who spent her life signing up for protest meetings and lumbering to the podium encumbered by her prose style.” Scholar Camille Paglia accused her of becoming “synonymous with a shallow kind of hip posturing.” Nevertheless, Sontag’s radical thoughts on photography are as potent as ever.
Born in 1933, Sontag wrote plays, essays, and fiction until her death in 2004. She had no formal training in art or photography—she studied English and philosophy at Harvard—but immersed herself in the New York cultural scene from 1959 onward. The origins of her interest in photography are still debated and analyzed. In addition to her work on the subject, Sontag became famous for her anti-war essays, plus writings on illness and camp. Her 1964 essay-turned-book “Notes on Camp,” a radical dissection of a particular sensibility, helped make her name—and inspired this year’s Met Gala theme.Alternately celebrated and derided during her life, Sontag became an icon herself: chic, queer, vocal, and brilliant. A forthcoming biography on the writer, Benjamin Moser’s Sontag: Her Life (2019), further solidifies her as a formidable thinker and character—teaser press for the book asserts that in her twenties, she wrote a major biography on Sigmund Freud, for which her husband received all the credit.
Though she wrote about artists and aesthetics, political convictions underpinned Sontag’s arguments. Her true concerns over photography featured a Marxist edge. She discussed the “class condescensions” in the work of August Sander , who took pictures of Germans beginning in 1911. Sontag noted that he shot portraits of the wealthy indoors, while laborers and derelicts received a setting and props that announced their professions. The latter strategy, she wrote, portrayed the lower class as lacking “the kinds of separate identities normally achieved in the middle and upper classes.” If we want a more equitable society, Sontag argued, we can start by thinking about who we photograph and how we depict them.
Sander is hardly the only photographer that Sontag faulted for using his lens to enjoy “class tourism.” Edward Steichen , Bill Brandt , Henri Cartier-Bresson , and Richard Avedon , she noted, all captured either the very wealthy, the very poor, or both.
Yet not all photographers Sontag commented on simply captured subjects at opposing ends of the economic spectrum. She discussed Diane Arbus at length, who photographed people Arbus affectionately called “freaks,” from the inner city to the suburbs. “All her subjects are equivalent,” wrote Sontag. “The subjects of Arbus’s photographs are all members of the same family, inhabitants of a single village. Only, as it happens, the idiot village is America.” Photography, in Sontag’s mind, can offer a meaningful condemnation of the absurdities plaguing an entire society.
While Sontag delved into a few photographers’ careers, she was most prescient in her broader discussion of the medium’s proliferation. She referenced the camera’s addictive nature, but warned that taking pictures only gives “an appearance of participation”—our fevered adoption of Instagram today is the best evidence of her foresight. When we take a photo, we inherently distance ourselves from the world and people around us. Obsessive picture-taking is alienating—those with the most cluttered Instagram feeds, by Sontag’s logic, may be the most isolated, regardless of what their sunny snapshots broadcast.
But more unnerving was Sontag’s proclamation of the camera as a weapon. “To photograph people is to violate them,” she wrote. The more images of violence we see—of war; of victims of hunger or famine; or other injustices—the more immune to them we become.
In recent years, the Black Lives Matter movement has decried the circulation of pictures showing violence against the black body. This issue was at the root of the 2017 protests at the Whitney Museum , which challenged a white painter’s depiction of a photograph of the mutilated Emmett Till in his coffin. “Photographs shock insofar as they show something novel,” Sontag wrote four decades before the brouhaha. “Unfortunately, the ante keeps getting raised—partly through the very proliferation of such images of horror.”
More than any other 20th-century critic, Sontag gave readers a reason to care about photography. Whether at a conscious or subconscious level, the images that bombard us daily affect how we finetune our sense of morality and our perceptions of the world. In 2019, her writings still incite more mindful looking, picture-taking, and consideration of the way we experience so much of modern life: through screens and lenses.
- Vertical The Example Article Title Longer Than The Line By Example Name Jan 1, 1970
Candid cameras: Deutsche Börse photography prize shortlist – in pictures
- Share on Facebook
- Share on Twitter
- Share via Email
Historical figures, myths and the Black experience are among the weighty themes tackled by the four shortlisted artists for the prestigious art award
Thu 2 Mar 2023 02.00 EST Last modified on Thu 2 Mar 2023 06.55 EST
Samuel Fosso: Self-Portrait (Angela Davis) from the series African Spirits, 2008
Samuel Fosso: Autoportrait, from the series 70s Lifestyle, 1976
Samuel Fosso: Self-Portrait (Tommie Smith) from the series African Spirits, 2008
Samuel Fosso: Self-Portrait (Malcolm X) from the series African Spirits, 2008
Bieke Depoorter: Michael at Home, Portland, Oregon, USA, May 2015
Bieke Depoorter: We walked together, Portland, Oregon, USA, May 2015
Bieke Depoorter: Mount Hood, Parkdale, Oregon, USA, October 2021
Bieke Depoorter: Second suitcase, Portland, Oregon, USA, May 2015
Arthur Jafa: Monster, 1988
Arthur Jafa, Ex-Slave Gordon 1863, 2017
Arthur Jafa, Bloods II, 2020
Frida Orupabo: Batwoman, 2021
Frida Orupabo: Turning, 2021
Frida Orupabo: Seated with two hands, 2021
Frida Orupabo: A lil help, 2021
- Deutsche Börse photography prize
- Photography
- Awards and prizes
- Exhibitions
More galleries
Most popular.
'ZDNET Recommends': What exactly does it mean?
ZDNET's recommendations are based on many hours of testing, research, and comparison shopping. We gather data from the best available sources, including vendor and retailer listings as well as other relevant and independent reviews sites. And we pore over customer reviews to find out what matters to real people who already own and use the products and services we’re assessing.
When you click through from our site to a retailer and buy a product or service, we may earn affiliate commissions. This helps support our work, but does not affect what we cover or how, and it does not affect the price you pay. Neither ZDNET nor the author are compensated for these independent reviews. Indeed, we follow strict guidelines that ensure our editorial content is never influenced by advertisers.
ZDNET's editorial team writes on behalf of you, our reader. Our goal is to deliver the most accurate information and the most knowledgeable advice possible in order to help you make smarter buying decisions on tech gear and a wide array of products and services. Our editors thoroughly review and fact-check every article to ensure that our content meets the highest standards. If we have made an error or published misleading information, we will correct or clarify the article. If you see inaccuracies in our content, please report the mistake via this form .
How to use ChatGPT to help you write essays
ChatGPT's advanced capabilities have created a huge demand , with the 'app' accumulating over 100 million users within two months of launching. One of the biggest standout features has been its ability to compose all sorts of text within seconds, including songs, poems, bedtime stories, and essays.
Also: What is ChatGPT and why does it matter? Here's everything you need to know
Contrary to popular opinion, ChatGPT can do a lot more than just write an essay for you (which could be called plagiarism). What is more useful is how it can help guide your writing process. If you are a looking for ways to use ChatGPT to support your writing, here are five different ways you can.
1. Use ChatGPT to generate essay ideas
Before you can even get started writing an essay, you need to flesh out the idea. When professors assign essays, they generally give students a prompt that gives them leeway for their own self-expression and analysis. As a result, students have the task of finding the angle to approach the essay on their own.
If you have written an essay recently, you know this step is often the trickiest part -- and this is where ChatGPT can step in and help.
Also: I wish I had ChatGPT when I was in college. But not for the reason you might expect
All you need to do is input the assignment topic, include as much detail as you'd like -- such as what you're thinking about covering -- and let ChatGPT do the rest. For example, based on a paper prompt I had in college, I asked:
Can you help me come up with a topic idea for this assignment, "You will write a research paper or case study on a leadership topic of your choice." I would like it to include Blake and Mouton's Managerial Leadership Grid and possibly a historical figure.
Within seconds, the chatbot produced a response that provided me with the title of the essay, options of historical figures I could focus my article on, and insight on what information I could include in my paper, with specific examples of a case study I could use.
2. Use the chatbot to create an outline
Once you have a solid topic, it's time to start brainstorming what you actually want to include in the essay. To facilitate the writing process, I always create an outline, including all the different points I want to touch upon in my essay. However, the outline writing process is usually tedious.
With ChatGPT, all you have to do is ask it to write it for you.
Also : ChatGPT productivity hacks: Five ways to use chatbots to make your life easier
Using the topic that ChatGPT helped me generate in step one, I asked the chatbot to write me an outline by saying:
Can you create an outline for a paper, "Examining the Leadership Style of Winston Churchill through Blake and Mouton's Managerial Leadership Grid"
After a couple of seconds, the chatbot outputted a holistic outline divided into seven different sections, with three different points under each section.
This outline is thorough and can be condensed for a shorter essay, or elaborated on for a longer paper. Don't forget, if you don't like something or want to tweak it further, you can with instructions and a quick send.
3. Use ChatGPT to find sources
Now that you know exactly what you want to write, it's time to find reputable sources to get your information from. If you don't know where to start, like with all of the previous steps, you can just ask ChatGPT.
All you need to do is ask it to find sources for your essay topic. For example, I asked it the following:
Can you help me find sources for a paper, "Examining the Leadership Style of Winston Churchill through Blake and Mouton's Managerial Leadership Grid."
Also : The best AI chatbots: ChatGPT and other interesting alternatives to try
The chatbot output seven sources, with a bullet point for each that explained what the source was and why it could be useful.
The one caveat you will want to be aware of when using ChatGPT for sources is that it does not have access to information before 2021, so it will not be able to suggest the freshest sources. However, it is a start.
4. Use ChatGPT to write a sample essay
It is worth noting that if you take the text directly from the chatbot and submit it, your work could be considered a form of plagiarism, since it is not your original work. As with any information taken from another source, text generated by any AI should be clearly identified and credited in your work.
In most educational institutions, the penalties for plagiarism are severe, ranging from a failing grade to expulsion from the school.
Also : ChatGPT is changing everything. But it still has its limits
If you want ChatGPT generate a sample piece of text you put in the topic, the desired length, and watch for what it generates. For example, I input the following text:
Can you write a five-paragraph essay on the topic, "Examining the Leadership Style of Winston Churchill through Blake and Mouton's Managerial Leadership Grid."
Within seconds, the chatbot output exactly what I asked for: a coherent, five-paragraph essay on the topic which can help you to guide you in your own writing.
At this point it's worth remembering how tools like ChatGPT work: they put words together in a form that they think is statistically valid but they don't know if what they are saying is true, or accurate. That means you might find invented facts or details or other oddities. It won't be able to create original work because it is simply aggregating everything it has already absorbed. It might be a useful starting to point for your own work, but don't expect it to be inspired.
5. Use ChatGPT to co-edit your essay
Once you've written your own essay, you can use ChatGPT's advanced writing capabilities to edit it for you.
You can simply tell the chatbot what you specifically want it to edit. For example, I asked it to edit for essay structure and grammar, but other options could have included flow, tone, and more.
Once you ask it to edit your essay, it will prompt you to paste your text into the chatbot. Once you do, it will output your essay with all of the necessary corrections. I think this could possibly be the most useful tool as it can edit your essay more thoroughly than a basic proofreading tool could, going beyond spelling.
You could also co-edit with the chatbot, asking it to take a look at a specific paragraph or sentence and asking it to rewrite or fix it for clarity.
The best AI chatbots: ChatGPT and other interesting alternatives to try
How to use ChatGPT: Everything you need to know
ChatGPT is coming to Snapchat. Just don't tell it your secrets
IMAGES
VIDEO
COMMENTS
Your first photo essay idea is simple: Track a life over the course of one day. You might make an essay about someone else's life. Or the life of a location, such as the sidewalk outside your house. The subject matter you choose is up to you.
Instead, there are two main types of photo essays: narrative and thematic. As you have probably already guessed, the thematic one presents images pulled together by a topic - for example, global warming. The images can be about animals and nature as well as natural disasters devastating cities.
Photo essays are usually themed around a particular subject or topic and can be created for a variety of purposes. They can be used to: Tell a news story Raise awareness about an important issue Share a personal experience Document a place or event Highlight the work of a specific artist or photographer
Photo essays tell a story in pictures, and there are many different ways to style your own photo essay. With a wide range of topics to explore, a photo essay can be thought-provoking, emotional, funny, unsettling, or all of the above, but mostly, they should be unforgettable.
One of the best photo essay ideas is to try shooting sights from various angles. You will also have an opportunity to improve composition and your framing skills. TA variety of perspectives is endless: through the streets, in the morning, afternoon and evening, with a drone or including reflections. 10. Charity
Surrealism in Photography Surrealism, which started after the World War I, in photography is one of the indicators of most important revolutions that have taken place over the history in the area of photography. "Escaping to Reality: Fashion Photography in the 1990s" by Elliot Smedley
Top 17 Photo Essay Examples Here are some fantastic ideas to get you inspired to create your own photo essays! 17. Photograph a Protest Protests tend to be lively events. You will find people standing, moving, and holding banners and signs. This is a great way to practice on a moving crowd.
Photography as Kind of Art Photography is an art and a science. Reflectively, the process is more than just capturing images. Proportionality, and introduction of effects determine the quality of an outcome. Photography: Hobby of Millions Unique for Everyone Millions of people take photos on a daily basis in all parts of the world.
Shots from a local event, a protest, weather, climate change, wildlife, native culture, mouthwatering cuisine, subcultures, life-changing moments, and sports can be great sources of photography essay ideas.
Paper Type: 1200 word essay Examples. HOWE, JAMES WONG (1898-1975), photographer, cinematographer. Howe was born in Canton, China, in 1898 and came to the State of Washington in 1904 with his parents. His original name was Wong Tung Jim, which he continued to use until 1922.
Photo Essay: Definition, Themes & Examples 6:00 Rule of Thirds Lesson Plan Rule of Thirds in Photography: Definition & Examples 3:10 Photography Composition Lesson Plan ...
A photo essay consists of a series of images related specifically to a topic or subject that interests you. Whether you want to include text ( captions, background info) is entirely up to you, but in any case you should try to make sure your photos are strong enough to stand alone. Image by Jeff Sof.
Unlike your typical essay in college, a photo essay is a project where you present a series of photographs or images to tell a story, share a narrative, or push a theme/agenda. Thus, a photo essay facilitates picture-led storytelling, which is a creative innovation in photojournalism. It is also known as a photographic or picture essay.
Well, a photo essay is meant to communicate information, generally in a persuasive way. Photo essays are generally persuasive essays, which means they need a subject or theme, a...
Photo stories have a theme, and each image backs up that overarching theme which is defined in the photo essay's title and is sometimes supported with text. From documentary to narrative...
9 Photo Essay Examples You Can Recreate Photowalk Photo Essay Transformation Photo Essay Day in the Life Photo Essay Event Photo Essay Building Photo Essay Historic Site or Landmark Photo Essay Behind the Scenes Photo Essay Family Photo Essay Education Photo Essay Stories are important to all of us.
Physical changes: One idea you can use for your photo essay is to document a person's small physical change. Some examples include shaving a mustache, dying their hair or getting a tattoo. Local event: Try to take pictures of a local event, such as a parade, local celebration or political rally.
1. Find a topic you care about. Every good photo essay should start with an idea. Otherwise, you'll be shooting without a purpose - and while such an approach may eventually lead to an interesting series of photos, it's far, far easier to begin with a topic and only then take out your camera. As I emphasized above, a photo essay can be ...
Nevertheless, Sontag's radical thoughts on photography are as potent as ever. Born in 1933, Sontag wrote plays, essays, and fiction until her death in 2004. She had no formal training in art or photography—she studied English and philosophy at Harvard—but immersed herself in the New York cultural scene from 1959 onward.
10 Ideas for Creative Photo Essays - Improve Photography 10 Ideas for Creative Photo Essays. What is the difference between a photo essay and a photo project? In "15 Creative Photography Project Ideas to Get 10 Ideas for Creative Photo Essays. What is the difference between a photo essay and a photo project?
Self portrait, Te Kaha, 1963. Dutch-born Ans Westra, one of New Zealand's best-known photographers, died last week aged 86. Photograph: Ans Westra/courtesy of {Suite} Gallery Westra, who died ...
Historical figures, myths and the Black experience are among the weighty themes tackled by the four shortlisted artists for the prestigious art award
What is more useful is how it can help guide your writing process. If you are a looking for ways to use ChatGPT to support your writing, here are five different ways you can. 1. Use ChatGPT to ...