How to Turn Your Photos Into a Story, Not Just a Camera Roll
Ten years ago, I flew to London with my family.
I took with us my favourite film camera, the Bronica SQ-B, and my ol’ workhorse, a Nikon D4S. They’re big cameras, and thus a kit heavy enough that by the third day I was asking myself why I’d brought it at all. Ha, not really – but my back does hate me…
I had most of the film developed and printed in London instead of risking the airport X-rays. And when the prints came back on that first roll of Portra 400, I made a decision that changed how I shot for the rest of the trip: these photographs weren’t going in an album. They were going in a book.
Psychologists talk about something called a “retrieval cue.” It’s a single well-made object (a photo, a scent, a song) that can pull an entire day back intact, in a way that a thousand loose fragments can’t. It’s why one book you actually open outlasts ten thousand photos sitting on a phone.
A book isn’t just a nicer container. It’s built differently, on purpose, to be revisited.
That’s the part I want to hand you. Not the trip or the gear list. The method.
Shoot for the page, not the moment
The single biggest shift, once I decided the photographs were headed for a book, was that I stopped photographing what was simply in front of me and started photographing what a page would need. What story I wanted to tell.
That’s a different question than “is this a nice shot?” It’s “what job does this shot do, next to the ones before and after it?” I was thinking, “How to turn your photos into a story, mate?”
In practice, that means going into any outing looking for a handful of specific things, not just whatever catches your eye:
The opener. A wide shot that sets the scene before anything happens, the street, the entrance, the weather. This is the shot that tells the reader where they are.
The wide moment. Your people in the space, small in the frame. This is what gives a book its sense of place rather than just a series of close-ups.
The character shot. A real expression, not a posed one. The disappointment, the delight, the concentration. These are the frames people actually stop on.
The detail. A hand, a ticket stub, a texture, something small enough to be missed and specific enough to bring the whole day back later.
The in-between. The walk to the next place, the wait in line, the moment nothing is technically happening. These are often the frames that make a book feel true rather than curated.
The closer. Something that signals the day is ending, the light dropping, the walk home, a tired face.
Treat every outing as a chapter, not a full project
Here’s where I’d go further than I did in 2016. I built one book for one trip. What I’d suggest instead, and what I’d love to see people do through Loop this year, is smaller and more repeatable: treat each outing, a day trip, a weekend, an afternoon in the next suburb over, as a single chapter. Shoot it with the six-shot list in mind. Edit it down to the dozen or so frames that actually earn a place. Then set it aside.
Do that four or five times across a year, and by December you don’t have a phone full of stray photos. (Yes, even if you’re making photos with your phone) You have the makings of a book already assembled, one chapter at a time, each one a place you went, a person you were with, a small story that actually happened.
You might, at this stage, be thinking: won’t this take away from simply being in the moment? Won’t this make me miss important time with the people I love?
I’d say quite the opposite. You’ll be paying far more attention to the things that actually matter. You’ll remember the silly little details, the wide shot, the whole shape of the day, far more clearly than you would have otherwise.
Thinking about your day, your week, your year, as a book you’re going to create, I think, will help you make even bigger, better memories with the people you choose to spend your time with.
The question to carry with you
So here’s what I’d ask, calibrated to be genuinely useful rather than rhetorical: what’s one outing you already have planned in the next month, however small, that you could shoot as a chapter in your book? What would the opening shot be? What detail would you be watching for that you’d normally walk straight past?
You don’t need London. You need one afternoon, a shot list in your head, and the decision, made before you leave the house, that this is going in the book.