The Art of Visual Storytelling

Whether you plan to work on completing an existing project or start a new one, this online experience focuses on building your skills and defining a personal voice in order to create visually compelling stories. Is there a topic, a place, or a character you have been photographing that you want to unearth from your hard drives and create a thoughtful, engaging photographic narrative? Or maybe there is a new story to tell that you can photograph near home. Come join us as we dive into the art of visual storytelling.

Deanne helps each participant develop a refined eye to create a photographic narrative—whether it’s a personal project or a visual story for a magazine, foundation or nonprofit. We discuss the skills required that contribute to a memorable and impactful story including framing and composition, camera equipment, and lighting to help capture the telling moments and raw emotion.

Showing examples from her own Pulitzer Prize winning photo story, Deanne discusses how to find a story, or what to do when a story finds you. We discuss different approaches to documentary storytelling, how to gain access to the story you want to tell, how to find an authentic project that is personally meaningful, and how curiosity, intuition, and serendipity play a part in finding and photographing your story. Deanne reveals her thought process and problem-solving techniques in creating images that in themselves tell a story. We delve into the techniques to creating a single storytelling image, and how to build images together to create a narrative. The business aspects of sustainable visual storytelling including finding an audience through editorial publishing, funding sources for your work including grants, and distribution including social media are also discussed.

Using the Santa Fe Workshops facilitated and interactive Zoom classroom, our group sessions include are lively discussions, lectures, and in-depth image reviews that dive into the fun and creative challenge of editing, sequencing, pacing, and curating your project into a structured, cohesive storyline. Whether you are new to visual storytelling or you want to take your long-term personal projects to the next level, you are welcome to be part of a supportive environment where we review individual stories to help each other build impactful narratives.