The timing of your work captured a pivotal moment in the UK rave scene, as your work continues to feature in exhibitions such as move/003. How do you feel now when you look back at your work from that time?
I feel like I was a part of something special, something that people now look back at as history, a time that cannot be brought back of course, but the music lives on and hints at what it was like for young people. It brings back memories for those who were there. I’m happy that I was there and can help people remember the time and let younger people get an idea of what it was like.
move/003 is about capturing the experience of the rave, which is the very essence of your photography, how would you describe the atmosphere in the rave in the 90s/00s?
It was often hot and sweaty, full of lights, with lasers flashing everywhere and smoke from the smoke machines. Everyone would be dancing, no one caring, just having fun, guided by the music, moved by the huge bass, watching the dancers on stage, listening to the MCs and the DJs as if they were controlling the crowd, everyone possessed by the music with their friends, and having the time of their lives after a long week at work.
Tristan’s work is currently being displayed at the move/003 exhibition, curated by SHERELLE and fyn studio, at London’s 180 Strand. To check it out, sign up for a free time slot here.
The Photography & Video Show is making its return to the NEC in Birmingham next weekend from Saturday March 16 to Tuesday March 19.
And, to celebrate the biggest imaging event of the season returning to its traditional March slot, the Show has teamed up with Canon to give away an amazing mirrorless camera package: a Canon EOS R6 Mark II with Canon RF 24-105mm f/4-7.1 IS STM lens. A combination that’s worth £3,130!
Canon will be one of over 200 exhibitors currently announced for The Photography & Video Show, covering all aspects of imaging and image making. From mirrorless cameras and DSLRs to action cams and film cameras, lenses and lighting to bags and backdrops, image editing to video post-production.
And that’s not all. There are hundreds of free talks, demonstrations, workshops, and seminars over the four days, featuring some of the biggest and most exciting names in the industry. From Royal photographers to YouTube personalities, BBC journalists to brand ambassadors, there’s an amazing amount of knowledge, wisdom and anecdotes to soak up.
You can find all the details on , and buy your tickets, on the official website. To save 20% on your tickets use the code DCWTPS24 before March 14.
And if you want to be in with a chance of winning that amazing Canon EOS R6 Mark II with RF 24-105mm f/4-7.1 package worth £3,130, you can enter the competition via the link below! Full terms and conditions can be found on the competition page. The prize competition closes at 00:00 on March 20 2024. The winner will be announced on March 21 2024.
The Photography & Video Show is organized by Future Plc, which is the parent company of Digital Camera World.
Nearly everyone with a foothold in punk rock has some sort of origin story. For photographer Jim Saah, his unlikely path to the music he loved involved a certain cult film. “I discovered punk rock at, of all places, The Rocky Horror Picture Show midnight showing at a theater in DC,” Saah tells InsideHook. “They had a DJ, and before the movie started, they played music.”
Young Saah found himself drawn to the music playing at the theater that night: “He was playing a lot of British stuff like The Stranglers and The Buzzcocks and maybe The Sex Pistols. And I thought, What’s this music?”
And so Saah did what countless people before him did: he sought out some local experts. “I went to the record store and asked, ‘Who are these bands?’ The old heads at the record store were great — they were turning me onto stuff and they told me, ‘You know, there’s local punk rock bands too,’” he says.
“My first show was a Minor Threat show,” he adds. “I really got into the scene — the punk scene and the hardcore punk scene.”
Now, a new edition of Saah’s book of photographs, In My Eyes Photographs 1982-1997 is out in the world. Fans of the DC punk scene will not be disappointed — legends like Fugazi, Minor Threat and Nation of Ulysses are in here. (So are the Holy Rollers, who — fun fact — I saw at the second punk show I ever attended.) But this isn’t just a trip through DC musical history; the likes of Wilco, Iggy Pop and Lou Reed are also featured within its pages.
How did Saah go about deciding what to include? He harkened back to an influential conversation when he was assembling the book. “Ian MacKaye said something pretty profound to me when I was going to put the Beastie Boys in the book,” Saah says. “It was a pretty seminal show, playing in Madison Square Garden in the early- or mid-’90s. He said, ‘Why’d you shoot that show?’ I said, ‘It was a job for New Musical Express — they sent me and the writer up to New York to see them.’”
“He said, ‘Oh it was a gig, then?’ and I said it was, and he said, ‘Well I think you should only put photos in this book that you had to take,’” Saah recalls. “I knew exactly what he meant, because I couldn’t miss a show back then. I had to go and I had to take pictures and there was no thought about it. I didn’t even know what I was going to do with the pictures, or if anyone would care about these pictures. Certainly I didn’t think I’d be talking about them 40 years later and selling a book of them — but he was right, and I only put pictures of bands in the book that I loved and that I was compelled to photograph.”
Talking Heads, from “In My Eyes.”
Jim Saah
Minor Threat, from “In My Eyes.”
Jim Saah
In My Eyes, which takes its title from a Minor Threat song, may be Saah’s first book, but his work has shown up in some earlier documents of the DC scene. “I had a lot of photos in Cynthia Connelly’s Banned in DC and then I did the movie Salad Days with my friend Scott Crawford,” he says. “He put out a book [Spoke: Images and Stories from the 1980s Washington, DC Punk Scene] that was related to the movie where I had a bunch of photos in there. I kind of felt like, well, my stuff’s out there.”
As Saah explains, he and Crawford traveled to a film festival in Buenos Aires where they met the eventual publisher of In My Eyes. “He was really enthusiastic, and it was really DIY, which I like. It’s basically like doing a record deal with Dischord,” he says. The parallels to the DIY scene appealed to Saah, and the book soon followed.
The first edition of In My Eyes was published at a time when the pandemic limited the amount of events that Saah could do for it — and he stresses that he is looking forward to doing more events now that this new version has been published.
“It’s just really nice to just talk to people,” he says. “There are young people that miss the scene or are photographers and say, ‘I’m inspired by your work,’ and then there are people who are around them who say, ‘I’m buying a book to find myself because I was at this Minor Threat show.’”
Saah stresses that the new edition of In My Eyes hasn’t been radically revamped from the first edition. One change has to do with the cover image — not the image itself, but how it’s presented. “It’s the same photo on the cover but it’s a different crop,” Saah says. “I just wanted to be immediately noticeable that it’s the second edition.”
As for why he made that change, it has to do with the overall composition. “It’s that picture of Ian McKaye at Minor Threat’s last show. I always call it, ‘Ian on the Cross.’ It’s not just because his arms are outstretched but the way his head is and stuff — it’s like a very Jesus-like pose. And if you crop it a little bit higher and show the ceiling, there’s a cross in the ceiling, so it mimics what he’s doing.”
The Cramps, from “In My Eyes.”
Jim Saah
Fugazi, from “In My Eyes.”
Jim Saah
One of the striking things about reading In My Eyes is just how many of the artists in it are still going strong. Readers will encounter the likes of Foo Fighters and Stereolab in its pages — to say nothing of the members of countless DC bands who continue making music today. At one point, our conversation turns to Jawbox’s J. Robbins, whose second solo album Basilisk was released last month — and who’s represented here via photos of Jawbox and an interview. Did Saah expect that the artists he was photographing decades ago would have such longevity?
“It’s interesting, because when I think about DC bands, a lot of them put out records after they broke up,” Saah says — citing Minor Threat’s Salad Days single as one high-profile example. “People were young and people were going to college and doing things — and people are always starting new bands. I kind of knew Ian would always make music, and Brendan Canty — all the guys in Fugazi.”
“I didn’t really think about it,” he adds. “And I definitely didn’t think that Dischord would not only still be around but be very active. I didn’t really think about it but I’m very happy.”
Jawbox, from “In My Eyes.”
Jim Saah
And much like the DIY ethos of his publisher sparked a connection there, Saah also speaks about that same spirit informing his own art. “I learned a lot from the music, the politics of the music and DIY stuff. I put out a fanzine early on, and if it wasn’t for knowing the bands that were making their own records and stuff I never would have thought about putting out my own magazine,” he says. “I would have gone to big magazines and tried to get them to put my stuff out — which they ended up doing when I became a professional photographer — but I got my stuff out there initially by self-publishing fanzines.” It’s stance on art that’s served Saah well over the years — and it’s now led to an essential collection of music photography.
This article was featured in the InsideHook newsletter. Sign up now.
To coincide with International Women’s Day on 8 March, the South London Gallery is opening the exhibition Acts of Resistance: Photography, Feminisms and the Art of Protest. Activism and photography have long gone hand in hand but this collaborative exhibition, organised with the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A), attempts to capture a new chapter in this distinguished history, with a particular focus on feminism across the world. We talk to Sarah Allen, the head of programme at the South London Gallery, and Fiona Rogers, the V&A’s Parasol Foundation curator of women in photography, about the show.
Rothschild: banker, collector and philanthropist Image: courtesy of the Rothschild Foundation
The financier, philanthropist, collector and leader of cultural organisations Jacob Rothschild died last week at the age of 87. We talk to Anna Somers Cocks, the founder of The Art Newspaper, who interviewed Lord Rothschild on numerous occasions, about his impact on the visual arts and heritage.
Robert Ryman, Adelphi (1967) © 2024 Robert Ryman/ ADAGP, Paris
And this episode’s Work of the Week is Adelphi, made in 1967 by Robert Ryman. It is one of around 50 pieces by Ryman in the exhibition The Act of Looking, which opened this week at the Musée de l’Orangerie in Paris. Guillaume Fabius, the co-curator of the show, joins us to discuss the painting.
• Acts of Resistance: Photography, Feminisms and the Art of Protest, South London Gallery, London, 8 March-9 June
• Robert Ryman: The Act of Looking, Musée de l’Orangerie, Paris, until 1 July
A wedding photographer at the center of a TikTok storm over her prices says she has faced death threats after revealing she charges $8,500 for her pictures which many have dismissed as “blurry”.
Katie from Southern California, who is @tripp.photo online, posted a video a week ago with the caption, “When someone inquires for wedding photography with a $2K budget and I send back my starting prices of $8.5K.” The video gained a lot of attention (currently on 4.4 million views) with most people expressing astonishment and outrage at the price.
@tripp.photo I even have my starting prices on my website 😅 #weddingphotographer ♬ Psycho – Jack Kittel
“Hearing your price and then seeing your website… I literally gasped,” wrote one TikTok user in a comment that received 17,000 likes.
Katie’s sometimes blurry aesthetic has drawn the ire of people online with nasty comments spreading to her Instagram page too.
“8K?..for some blurry photos of rings on a table..embarrassing as f***,” writes an Instagram user.
Another TikToker by the name of “Haussdrama” made a video reacting to Katie’s price in which she lambasted the photographer’s work which just served to turbocharge the drama.
@haussdrama 8.5k 😮💨 #photographytips #photographersoftiktok #trippphoto #weddingphotographer #weddingphotography #photographypricing #dramatok #haussdrama #trendingnow #viralvidoes #unpopularopinion ♬ original sound – 🍉Haussdrama🍉
The intense backlash prompted Katie of Tripp Photo to make a second video in which she addresses the fallout.
“At the end of the day, saying you don’t like my photos or you won’t pay my prices isn’t inherently offensive,” she writes on TikTok.
“We all have different style preferences, values, and priorities. Harassing my pages saying I deserve to be k?lled, hating on my looks, my voice, my children.
“Fake reviews, inquiries, preaching ‘community over competition’ on your photography page, and then spam commenting hate.
“Grown adults — parents — participating in online bullying. Doing these things says more about you than me. Hurt people try to hurt people.”
It wasn’t all bad comments, Katie also received multiple messages of support from people expressing sympathy for what she was going through.
“The people that paid her prices seem to be very happy with what they received. If you don’t want to pay 8.5k, then don’t pay it and use someone else? These comments are so unnecessary,” writes Kylee Nixon on Instagram.
According to The Knot Real Wedding Study, the average cost of a wedding photographer is $2,900 which makes photographers the fourth most expensive vendor or service that couples will splash out on.
And the blurry photo aesthetic is undoubtedly popular right now. In 2022, wedding photographer Asantae Haanstad told PetaPixel, “I think that blurry photos are a great way to provide variety in your gallery and images that you provide to a client. They have become more popular this year and I am consistently having clients request them as they find them unique and beautiful.”
And last month, Michigan wedding photographer Shuhrat Choudhury told PetaPixel that she thinks blurry photos are not just a trend, but a style that is here to stay.
“It’s not just a technique; it’s a creative tool that can elevate the storytelling aspect of your wedding album in breathtaking ways,” she says.
The Leica Women Foto Project has been giving out awards for five years now. This year, four awardees were selected. Each winner will receive a cash prize of $10,000, along with a Leica SL2-S camera and a Vario-Elmarit-SL 24-70mm f/2.8 ASPH lens.
In a press release announcing this year’s winners, Karin Kaufmann, art director of all Leica galleries worldwide, said:
“For this year’s Leica Women Foto Project, we encouraged applicants to share visual stories of reclamation, resilience, or rebirth. … Through these lenses, the Leica Women Foto Project continues to empower and amplify the voices that capture these profound narratives, adding depth to our collective visual tapestry while reflecting our commitment to celebrating the power of visual storytelling.”
The four awardees, in no particular order, are:
Camille Farrah Lenain, a French Algerian documentary and portrait photographer. Lenain’s work, “Made of Smokeless Fire,” examines LGBTQ+ representation in Muslim culture in France.
Adenike Sogbesan, also known as Dola Posh, is a Nigerian-born, U.K.-based photographer. Sogbesan’s project “OMO MI” explores what it means to be a new mother and, according to the press release, “Themes of self-discovery, resilience and the renewal of feminine strength resonate throughout” the work.
Next up is Luvia Lazo, a Zapotec Indigenous photographer born in Teotitlán del Valle, Oaxaca, Mexico. Lazo’s project, “Women From the Clouds,” looks at the lives of Indigenous women of varying ages. The project is described in the press release as such: “Through this project, she endeavors to contribute to a rich and unique understanding of the diverse experiences of indigenous women, shaping a broader and more enriched perspective on womanhood as a whole.”
Last, but certainly not least, is Stasia Schmidt, a fine art photographer from Calgary in Alberta, Canada. Schmidt’s project, “Ephemerality,” according to the press release, “is a testament to her ability to confront societal norms, specifically exploring the feminine presence in traditionally male-dominated adventure realms, prompting viewers to reconsider preconceived notions about women in these spaces.
You can find out more about the award panel’s judges and the Leica Women Foto Project Award here.
Denise Maxwell returns to the NEC in Birmingham 16 and 17 March to give talks at The Photography & Video Show about how to make money from photography and photographing big events.
A regular visitor to the show, first as a punter and then as a speaker, Maxwell has enjoyed a successful and rewarding photographic journey.
Focusing on more than one genre, Maxwell just loves taking photos – and inspiring and teaching others to do the same.
And she will appear at the Show with a new title – she was recently awarded a Doctor of Arts by the University of Wolverhampton.
We sat down with Maxwell to discover more about her career to date, and to get a taste of her upcoming speaking engagements in March.
• Standard entry tickets to The Photography & Video Show 2024 start from £14.95 and are valid for any one day of the event, and students and professionals can get in for free. Click here to buy your tickets
Everyone can expect a frank and honest workshop where I will explicitly talk about money – one thing that so many photographic workshops shy away from – what can I actually earn from doing job X, Y or Z?
The audience can also expect some jokes because we are also going to be there to have fun, and a relatable workshop that will help them understand how doable making money from photography is. There will be no talk about f-stops, the best lenses or buying the latest cameras… just a snippet of how I make my money and how the audience can, too.
I have attended so many workshops over many years and have always felt like they have stopped short of sharing real gems – often peripheral general details – which has left me feeling cheated. It’s as though everything is secretive. In all of my courses, I share real pounds and pennies, state how I go into this type of work and give people the formula for how they can, too. In the eight-week course I deliver, participants have already started to implement what they have learned before the course ends.
I run courses that teach photographers how to earn £5-10k per month from photography, as I do. My talks will be a snippet of some of the information I teach in my courses. I got tired of hearing some photographers and even lecturers speak about how there was no money in the industry anymore when I have found the opposite; it is a great industry to be in and people have never needed as many images as they do now. Clients need images for their social media feeds, websites, newsletters and events, to bring their businesses online – and so much more.
This is why I decided to speak on this subject and create workshops and courses. It was something I was not taught when studying, and I still speak to photographers leaving three-year degrees and master’s degrees with no clue about how they will earn money after the course. So it is still not largely being taught. Yet it is the one thing photographers need to know to make a go of being a full-time photographer. I find this is one of the most asked questions I see in photography groups, so I know it is still a mystery to so many people.
Currently, I have 10 income streams from photography. In the time I have for the talk, I will teach participants how to set up and earn from different streams and what they can earn from them. So this workshop will be for anyone who is serious about wanting to earn an income from their photography, wanting to make it their full-time job as I did and have done. Yes, it is a joy to be creative and do it for the fun of it, but photographic equipment is expensive and we still all have bills to pay! Imagine being able to combine both – being creative and paying your bills at the same time. This is my life as a full-time photographer.
Do I start from when I used to borrow my mum’s 110 Kodak film camera to take to junior school? Or my own 35mm camera from the days before mobile phones which I used to take everywhere with me? I started with on-site event studios, weddings and portraits. I was made redundant from a career in the NHS, which was devastating at the time. I earned a good salary, did a job I loved and worked with colleagues I liked; I could not imagine finding anything better. That was a blessing in disguise. The saying ‘Good things come to an end to make way for more good things’, has been my experience; I became a full-time photographer.
I now cover a wide mix of different genres, everything from sports to red carpets, events, fashion, portraits, campaigns… I like the variety and I love the fact that I’m shooting different things on different days – it means nothing gets boring. Now, 13 years in, I still love my job and I am not sure how many others can say that.
I now also give back in many ways. I mentor emerging photographers, I do equipment giveaways as an ambassador, I also offer opportunities where emerging photographers can shadow me on real commissions sponsored by MPB and I lecture in various educational establishments around the UK.
My journey has taken me to places beyond where I dreamed of, events I used to watch on TV, working with people I grew up watching. In December, for example, I worked with two of my childhood icons, Linford Christie and Baroness Floella Benjamin. When I was little, I used to have the same plait and beaded hairstyle as Floella and I grew up watching Linford beat the USA in athletics. I would never have thought I would ever end up working with them. They are now both proudly added to my selfie collection!
I am a master of many and, yes, I can proudly say that. I don’t subscribe to the idea that you can only cover one genre well. In other parts of the creative world, people cover multiple genres: people like Jamie Fox and Kano are both actors and musicians. We have so many singers and songwriters, and multidisciplinary artists, like Dr Vanley Burke. We are surrounded by examples of creatives covering many genres, but do not label it as such, or make anything of it – except in photography.
That is not to say there is anything wrong with being a master of one genre. It suits some people; it just would not suit me. I have always had jobs that require variety, where I do different things on different days. As a photographer, I am just continuing what I have always done in previous roles.
It has turned out nothing like what I expected. I always thought I would be successful shooting weddings and events – there is nothing wrong with these genres, I would have been happy if this was my path.
But my career has gone beyond what I ever imagined. I attended The Photography Show and its predecessor for many years whilst a student and in the earlier parts of my career. I attended talks, met up with friends and made purchases. Now I am one of the speakers that others are coming to see and I have had amazing feedback from speaking in previous years. How about that for the world throwing curveballs I didn’t expect?
Last month, I photographed The Fashion Awards, a red carpet of people I have watched on TV. I have shot premieres for Netflix series, like The Crown, and then suddenly, the actors were standing in front of me.
I spent part of my summer at the Cannes Lions Festival, a festival of creativity for the leading creative agencies and big companies in the world, attending as a delegate creative workshops run by well-known names including Halle Berry, will.i.am, Kevin Hart, Denai Guerra and Issa Ray, to name just a few.
I could offer so many similar anecdotes that could probably fill the magazine! I now earn what I did in a month in a few days. I do a job I love that brings me to amazing places and I have the freedom to give back. It is not where I thought I would be but I always say I feel completely blessed to be where I am.
This is going to sound simple, but practice! Nothing is going to happen without you being able to deliver when opportunities come your way, or having a portfolio so clients will want to hire you. The first thing to work on is your portfolio and getting to know how to deliver in any situation, knowing your camera inside out. I hear some photographers speak about not having picked up their cameras for months and, honestly, I am shocked when I hear this! If you are not yet full-time, this is your time to have fun and practise without the pressure of deadlines and clients. Shoot something, shoot everything!
Imagine getting your dream commission but failing because you are unfamiliar with that kind of shoot and aren’t quite sure how to control your lighting in that environment or which lens would be best. Practice will ensure you do not end up in this predicament.
The first I knew about it was getting a letter one morning. I read it, then wondered who was pranking me. From what I now understand, it works in a similar way to honours, where you are nominated. Then it goes to the university committee, who vote on it. The letter I received confirmed that it was a unanimous decision and that the committee was particularly excited that I was an alumnus of the university and that I had stayed in the local area to pass my skills on to others. It also cited that it was for ground-breaking achievements in my field where I was an inspiration to others. Not bad at all for a working-class girl from the Black Country!
Not specifically, but this is something I do anyway. Being part of the alumni, it also makes sense that I would do some work at my former university. I am currently arranging to do some work with the university photography department. I would have really appreciated hearing from a working photographer when I was at college, not someone who was famous and beyond my reach, so I hope to be that ‘see it so you can be it’ person for others.
One of the young women from the photography degree also won one of my shadowing opportunities and came to shadow me at one of Birmingham’s biggest award events. She got to have selfies with all her favourite influencers as an added bonus, in addition to learning how to cover a big awards event.
The last big item was a Canon RF 70-200mm F2.8L IS USM lens after changing to mirrorless last year with a Canon EOS R5.
I chose that lens because it made sense with my new cameras. Other bits of kit I change periodically, and I am constantly buying stuff.
Softboxes get tatty and look unprofessional on jobs, batteries do not recycle as quickly after a while and with memory cards I either lose them or lend one to a friend on a job then forget to get it back. I am also always buying peripheral stuff like hand warmers and rain covers.
• ‘How DO you make money from photography?’ with Dr Denise Maxwell takes place at The Photography & Video Show on 16 and 17 March at 11.50am.
Tickets cost £10 per person, and are on sale now on the show website.
• ‘Event photography: Mastering big events through the lens‘ with Dr Denise Maxwell takes place on the Behind the Lens stage on 16 March at 2.15pm. This talk is free.
Standard entry tickets to 2024 start from £14.95 and are valid for any one day of the event. Click here to buy your tickets.
The owner and photographer of Lensi Photography for 13 years, Maxwell became a professional photographer after being made redundant from her job in the NHS. She shoots a variety of genres for a wide range of clients and her work has appeared in many different publications. An educator as well as a photographer, Maxwell has spoken at The Photography and Video Show. Born and raised in the Midlands, she was recently awarded a Doctor of Arts by the University of Wolverhampton.
This interview appears in the February 2024 issue of Digital Camera magazine, on sale from 1 March. Click the link below to see our latest special subscription deal!
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This first appeared in Lit Hub’s Craft of Writing newsletter—sign up here.
When I get into a writing rut, I like to step back and take inspiration from other art forms, each of which has its own conventions as well as—encoded within those very conventions—all kinds of ways to break with convention and do something fun and new. Perhaps because of its ubiquity, or perhaps just because I love looking at pictures, photography is an art form I turn to often, and I find it nearly always helps: Photography allows me to reevaluate my linguistic and narrative choices from a fresh perspective and reframe the central questions of my work. Sometimes the images become so integral to my story that they actually wind up in its pages, as in my new novel The Extinction of Irena Rey. But images are illuminating regardless of whether your reader sees them or not.
Below are some examples of considerations in photography that can be carried over into literature in myriad productive ways:
Format
Different shapes and structures invite different sets of responses from readers, in the same way a square photo on a cellphone screen will be received and evaluated differently from a 20 X 30-inch matte print.
In prose, short chapters might help maintain momentum; long paragraphs might cause your reader to pause and reflect at a pivotal moment they otherwise might have missed. Lots of white space on the page can open up a text, injecting a little fresh air into moments of darkness, or showcasing positive developments in your plot. I would argue that format in prose also includes decisions like whether to write in present or past tense, first or third person—essential, foundational decisions that are often intuitive at first, but that also often eventually require a more considered working out.
In some ways it might seem easier to play with space in poetry, and there is certainly ample room to arrange and rearrange the material of a poem on the page, but words can be arranged and rearranged in a single sentence to generate all kinds of different effects, and creating interesting syntax is one of the most powerful and underutilized techniques in English-language prose.
Change the order in which a thought is conveyed, and you change the thought itself. Start or end a sentence on a strong word to make the reader pay attention. Slightly unnatural syntax can have the same effect—whenever you defamiliarize language, even if only slightly, readers will take note. (You could also think about this in terms of lenses, if you’re old-school, in which case, adopting a strange syntax might be like putting on a fisheye lens.)
Frame
Will your piece be enhanced by a frame, or an additional frame beyond the margins of the page, and what would that mean in your narration? The classic example of a narrative with a frame is One Thousand and One Nights, but there are so many more: Wuthering Heights, The Princess Bride, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Pale Fire.
Style, and maybe more importantly, whose style?
How much should your subject influence your style? For example, if you’re writing about childhood, should you write like a child? Probably not entirely—but maybe a little? Striking a balance here is crucial, and I always try to think thoroughly about how much of a shadow my own authorial voice is casting over my community of characters, their setting, etc. (That shadow can be thematized, too, of course, just as shadowy self-portraits of photographers crop up every so often in great portraits.)
Contrast
Contrast in sentence length, diction, met expectations vs. unmet expectations may help keep the reader on their toes. (Too much may take them out of the story, just as excessive contrast in photography can feel off-putting or overweening or just gratuitously odd.)
Texture
Sometimes used to refer to sound patterns in a poem, like assonance, consonance, alliteration, texture can also refer to the linguistic features of prose that help shape the reader’s understanding of the story by creating an atmosphere that is particular to your vision and your fictional world.
Depth of field (aka “portrait mode”)
Depth of field is also called “the zone of sharpness.” Deciding on your depth of field means deciding how much environmental context you want to give your reader in your story. You can reduce distraction by blurring or omitting the things that aren’t directly related to your subject. Or you can do the reverse: You can celebrate your subject’s whole vast network by depicting as many connections as you can fit into your frame, creating not so much a portrait as a landscape.
Even more to consider
Try thinking about exposure (brightness), saturation (intensity), grain (the reader’s awareness of your words on the page), the vignette option (Do the edges of the image, or the story, or the poetic reflection darken as a way of helping your reader focus on your central characters, themes, movements?), the circular blur option (same as above, but lighter), or any of the edits you can make to your photographs on your phone. How do you translate shifts like this into your prose?
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The Extinction of Irena Rey by Jennifer Croft is available now via Bloomsbury.
