• Rebecca Edwards (Flickr | YouTube | Becca Akroyd)
• Christine French (Flickr | YouTube | Serene Seesaw)
• Aisling Ireland (Flickr | YouTube | Saraide Indigo)
• Kara Kilgore (Flickr | YouTube | Annagram Gregan)
• Dominique Massey (Flickr | YouTube | Dominique Sosa)
• Will Stanley (Flickr | YouTube | guitars125 Stransky)

Start by making a free account on Flickr, a photography web site. Customize your account settings and email me the URL for the front page of your account. You may begin to use Flickr anyway you’d like, but your should create a set that titles your story, and be sure it’s understandable that this is your assignment.

Next, join the group Tell a story in 5 frames (Visual story telling). Your assignment is as follows (taken from their introduction page and modified accordingly):

Tell a Story in 5 Frames has two important parts. The first part is creating and telling a story through visual means with only a title to help guide the interpretation. The second part is the response of the group to the visual story. The group response can take many forms such as, a poetic or prose rendering of the visualization, a critique on the structure of the story, comments on the photograph, or other constructive forms of response. Telling and enjoying stories should create entertainment for the group as well as offer insight into the universal elements that help create a story for an international audience. The more people who respond, as either story tellers or respondents, the greater the reward for all.

Creating a story in five frames is not easy. Short stories of three or even one photograph are also welcome.

The Rules of the Game

1. Submit a sequence of up to five photographs that create a story in order, in your 5-frame story set.
2. Choose any subject, but the entire sequence should visually tell a story.
3. A title for each photo should be the only words used. Rely on the photographs to bring the story to life.
4. Class members respond by relating in their own words the story that they see, or critique the story and/or photographs and open the story up to discussion.

Guidelines for Telling a Story

Guidelines are not rules, but a formula that can be used to suit your creative imagination. Several avenues exist for story telling, such as journalistic reporting, sequential photos that reveal a moment, photographic poetry, and narrative. The following guidelines are for narrative.

A good story has characters in action with a beginning, middle, and an ending. Fortunately a lot of information can be given in a single photograph, enhancing the limitations of five photographs for your story. Location, time, and atmosphere aid viewer imagination. Keep standards of pictorial beauty, but pack as many story telling elements in one photograph as possible to develop an action.

• 1st photo: establish characters and location.
• 2nd photo: create a situation with possibilities of what might happen.
• 3rd photo: involve the characters in the situation.
• 4th photo: build to probable outcomes
• 5th photo: have a logical, but surprising, end.

Your completed exercises will be shared with the group on September 13. During this meeting, we will all respond to each other’s exercises both in written comments on Flickr and discussion in class. The class will elect 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place winners. All will be encouraged to submit their exercises to the Tell a story in 5 frames pool on Flickr.