Beyond snapshots: let your art tell a story

Proper photography demands a large amount of specialized knowledge, expensive and heavy equipment, and chutzpah (can you bribe an amputee beggar in Delhi? Approach fierce fur-swathed babushka in Moscow? A Buddhist monk?). “Hone your photographic skills until they become second nature,” wrote Susan McCartney, author of Travel Photography: A Complete Guide to Shoot and Sell. This permits concentration on “the important things, which are aesthetics and logistics.”

Yet she acknowledged that almost anyone “with luck” could take the odd brilliant picture or two. And fortune flows easier and easier, thanks to technology. Thus any intelligent and dedicated blogger can produce original images to accompany their text. Granted, the photographs may not be Ansel Adams or Walker Evans quality, but even a functional snap adds color, texture and context (a picture's worth 1,000 words...).

Photojournalism, called "reportage photography" in Europe, pushes beyond snapshots and illustrations. An image – or carefully-chosen series – tells a story about a place and its people. Interpret the scenes, don't just photocopy Uluru or Angkor Wat. Make the tale compelling; the viewer has no obligation to examine the photo (or proceed on to the headline, captions and … finally … to the blog text itself).

Here's the difference: a hiking tour company wins an award. The jaded hack photographer herds the employees together with their plaque, producing a hideous “grip and grin” shot. A dynamic photojournalist shoots them camping by a lake or cresting a mountain in full outdoor regalia. She's gone to more trouble, but the active image captures the essence of the company, rather than a tired lineup.

Try to think like a photojournalist. Vary your images – horizontal and vertical, interesting crops – so that six or seven could be used on a spread. Take overview shots that set the scene, workplaces, landmarks, food bazaars, houses and signs and flags. Capture groups of locals, faces close-up (or other details, like hands, feet or one aspect of ceremonial costume), piles of souvenirs and plates of food. Consider how the images work together. What do they convey?

Sunsets, small furry animals and postcard views aren't the goal, stressed David Hurn in On Being a Photographer. “Most great photographs displaying beauty reveal a sensation of strangeness, not predictability … They are the opposite of clichés; they have a quality beyond the visually obvious.”

Such storytelling often involves contrast. This stretches far beyond light and shadow, however. Look for contextual friction, which adds emotional depth. For example, shoot a solemn person's portrait with gregarious diners behind. The bubbly background adds information: the subject is withdrawn even in a boisterous environment. Similarly, some of the most poignant developing-world illustrations may not depict poverty per se, but of the persistence of human spirit despite it, like a child building a rope swing in a refuge camp. Link the familiar and unfamiliar to help viewers connect.

As in writing, seek the universal theme. Can you evoke an emotion – nostalgia, awe or tenderness – from a single image or series? A well-composed photograph captures a time and place, conveying a message. You don't illustrate a story, you tell it, Peter Turnley once urged his colleagues. This photojournalist – with 40 Newsweek covers to his credit – sees his mission as even larger: “an on-going photographic expression of the key moments of history and a humanistic view of the 'Family of Man'”.

Such craft requires talent and honed skills (in Outliers, science writer Malcolm Gladwell suggests it takes 10,000 hours to reach "genius" mastery...). Be patient with yourself. Even National Geographic photographers take 2,000 images for each image printed. Bloggers rarely have the time to amass such a stockpile. But permit yourself a margin of error, say a 1:10 ratio of published images to discards. The ironclad rule here is: Snap a lot. Don't hold back, don't skimp. You may never return to that place, retry that activity or recapture that moment.