Challenge 2 - Five Frame Story

a composite image of The Jump - by Canon Camera

Challenge

In the spirit of Flickr’s Visual Storytelling Group, I would like you to create and tell a story in five (5) frames. Still no audio, video, hyperlinks, transitions, animation or any other multimedia elements. You may use text for the title, unless it is already in the photographic image itself. Compose a series of pictures that tell a story.

Objectives

• Compose a visual story with only images
• Apply basic visual storytelling techniques
• Experiment with visual storytelling tools

Rationale

Check the group About page for the rules and more details. You do not need to join the group or post your photographs to the group but feel free to do so. You might get some great feedback from the participants.

• What’s the story?
• What sequence of images will help you show the story unfold?
• What is the conflict or obstacle to be overcome?
• What are the results or consequences, success or failure?
• How can you create a twist or surprise in the last frame?

From the About Page
Guidelines are not rules, but a formula that can be used to suit your creative imagination. Several avenues exist for storytelling, such as journalistic reporting, sequential photos that reveal a moment, photographic poetry, and narrative. The following guidelines are for narrative.

A good story has characters in action with a beginning, middle, and an ending. Fortunately a lot of information can be given in a single photograph, enhancing the limitations of five photographs for your story. Location, time, and atmosphere aid viewer imagination. Keep standards of pictorial beauty, but pack as many storytelling elements in one photograph as possible to develop an action.

1st photo: establish characters and location.
2nd photo: create a situation with possibilities of what might happen.
3rd photo: involve the characters in the situation.
4th photo: build to probable outcomes
5th photo: have a logical, but surprising, end.

As the group explains guidelines are not rules, but understanding the limitations of the task can give a you a stronger sense of purpose and audience expectations. Feel free to deviate but make sure that it is a deliberate choice and you know and understand why you are doing so.

Instructions

• Compose your shots. Use whatever camera you have available.
• Post your Five Frame Sequential Story on your blog, deciding how you want to present it. 
• Write a narration of the work and a reflection on the process of your finished design story.

Legal

• Create a series of original images.

Exemplars

Flickr Group Samples

Take another look at the Visual Storytelling Group Discussions on Flickr for plenty of examples. Of course you can explore the group discussions on your own, but here are some examples that vary in approach and prompted a lot of reaction.

• The Jump - by Canon Camera
• Gender Miscommunication - by nightingai1e
• Revenge of the Strawberries - by JeanMaria
• The Life of a Can - by Seuny
• Learning to Roar! - by Shes on Falla
• Beast to Beauty... - by  Gale's Photographs
• Bird Bathing in the Teeniest Bit of Water It Could Find - by anusrinivasan
• If You Go Out to the Barn Tonight . . .You Better Not Go Alone - by Xylonets

Previous Student Samples