Write an introductory paragraph for your photo essay here. This will help set the stage for the story to come. Find ways to draw your audience in and make them want to see more. Do not write too much text here, because you want the photos to take center stage. Please note that photos and text on this page are intended to model the formatting you should use for your post, not the types of photos you should take for your photo essay, because your photo essay should contain images of people and include an establishing shot, a detail shot, and an action/interaction shot. These are just some personal photos that I had available to use for this example.
Here is where you should write the full length caption for your photo. Your photo essay should be driven and primarily told by your images, but your captions are important because they will weave the images together into a unified narrative. It’s a good idea to begin with your best, most compelling shot to draw your audience into the story.
The paragraph above is exactly 60 words long. Remember that the assignment requires each caption to be at least 60 words long, so this should give you a visual of the minimum amount you’ll need to write for each photo. Feel free to write a bit more, but don’t let your text overshadow your photos when telling the story. If you write a lot of text for your captions, split the text into multiple short paragraphs like this.
Relative to the other photos in this series, this image is an establishing shot because it is a wide shot that shows the context in which the events in the photo essay took place. I put this photo second because the first photo is a better photo and I want to draw readers into the photo story. Once I’ve got their attention I need to give them more details about what is going on and what they’re seeing.
This is an example of a detail shot. It shows a close-up view of something that we don’t see every day. It piques curiosity as the viewer takes in the details of the image. Detail shots also provoke curiosity because the viewer cannot see much contextual information to tell them what they are looking at, so they spend more time looking at the photo to figure out what they are seeing.
You may be wondering why I have all of these photos of burning books. Last January, I went to Ohio to help clear out my parents’ garage. My mom was a kindergarten teacher and the garage was filled with boxes of mildewed school books, so we just burned them because couldn’t be donated. Also, nobody needs old encyclopedias from 1993.
This is the final shot in this example photo essay post. The pictures that comprise your photo essay should be more visually distinct from one another than the images are in this example post. Photo essays are often organized sequentially, depending on the story, so you may want to end your photo essay with whatever happened last when you were shooting your photos. Overall, your goal should be to tell a good story, so you should order your images in whatever way allows you to do this most effectively.
Reflection
At the end of your post, you will write a brief reflection about your experiences working on this assignment. This is the only part of your post that should mention the assignment itself – the rest of the text for Blog Post 3 should work with your images and to tell your story. Essentially, pretend like the rest of the post is not for a class assignment and write it accordingly. Don’t talk about the shot types or the assignment instructions – your post should function as a standalone photo essay.
Your reflection paragraph should contain responses to the three questions provided on the WyoCourses assignment page for Blog Post 3 in paragraph form (i.e., not a numbered list).
Hopefully it was helpful to see this example of how to structure your photo essay for Blog Post 3!
Kaatie Cooper 