Working with masks and story telling

Photography is often described as “Painting with light” and don’t get me wrong, I 100% agree, however there is another thing that I strongly believe is connected to photography (and something I often miss) and that’s story telling.

Ever since we as the human race have found ways to express ourselves it’s “always” about telling stories, starting in the caves with the cave drawings all the way up to the golden age with the great painters. However now a days… a gazillion images are uploaded and in all honesty often they don’t have nice lighting lets alone tell a story.

So what is story telling?
For me it’s a matter of what your mind thinks about when looking at a shot, so it doesn’t have to be an OBVIOUS story, but something that makes you go “what’s going on here”.

In my workshops I always try to give a lot of attention to this, and today I want to show you some images of a workshop where we worked with Ingrid and some masks. In this workshop the main theme was to mix continuous light sources with strobes. The main thing however is that these images will probably trigger your imagination a bit (well I hope).

So the next time you do a photoshoot don’t just think about lightning, but also about posing and story telling, and adding small props like masks and of course expression of the model (can also be without seeing her face by her pose) and that way you will see your shots will quickly grow from ok to WOW.