Less is more, but not always.
Choosing a photo or a series of three photos that represent a story that you want to tell can be one of the most challenging steps in this project. In most cases, you may benefit from having a large pool of photos to choose from but you may also get overwhelmed if you have too much.
Making Your Final Selection
A good starting point is to cut your pool in about half at a time. Let’s say you have collected 30 photos that you feel answer one of the research question. You may proceed to cut it down to a selection of 15. Reduce that number to seven, and then four, three, two or even a single image.
Here are two simple questions that you can ask yourself when cutting down your selection:
- Does this photo truly represent the story I want to tell?
- Does this photo provide an important context to one or all the photos in a series?
You may also be tempted to choose a photograph that you are particularly proud of because you like the light, or hit the perfect composition of your subject. However, if that photo do not support the story that you want to convey, consider excluding it from your selection.
Editing
Editing your photos in not mandatory, but minor edits using computer software such as Photoshop (paid) or GIMP (free) can certainly improve and help in conveying a message. This can involve cropping – or cutting certain elements out your frame, or turning your photos from color into black and white.
It’s generally advisable to limit your editing to a minimum. In most cases here, less is indeed more.
Captioning
Adding descriptive text to a photo can give your viewers the right context when interpreting what they are seeing. If you pick up a newspaper or visit an online news site, you will often notice that there are one or two sentences that accompany the photos that are published. While there are certain rules and guidelines that must be strictly followed when writing captions in journalism, in Fathers in Focus, you only need to write whatever you feel best describes or adds context to your pictures.
