photos memories essay

Childhood Memories Essay for Students and Children

500+ words essay on childhood memories.

Memories are a vital component of our bodies. They shape our personality as all our knowledge and past experiences are stored there. All of us have memories, both good and bad. You have memories from long ago and also from recent times. Furthermore, some memories help us get by tough days and make us cheerful on good days.

Memories are the little things which help in running our lives smoothly. In other words, memories are irreplaceable and they are very dear to us. They help us learn from our mistakes and make us better. In my opinion, one’s childhood memories are the dearest to anyone. They help in keeping the child in you alive. Moreover, it also is a reason for our smiles in between adult life.

Importance of Childhood Memories

Childhood memories are very important in our lives. It makes us remember the best times of our lives. They shape our thinking and future. When one has good childhood memories, they grow up to be happy individuals. However, if one has traumatic childhood memories, it affects their adult life gravely.

Thus, we see how childhood memories shape our future. They do not necessarily define us but they surely play a great role. It is not important that someone with traumatic childhood memories may turn out to be not well. People get past their traumatic experiences and grow as human beings. But, these memories play a great role in this process as well.

Most importantly, childhood memories keep the inner child alive. No matter how old we get, there is always a child within each one of us. He/She comes out at different times.

For instance, some may act like a child on seeing swings; the other may get excited like a child when they see ice cream. All this happens so because we have our childhood memories reminding us of the times associated with the things we get excited about. Therefore, childhood memories play a great role in our lives.

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My Childhood Memories

Growing up, I had a very loving family. I had three siblings with whom I used to play a lot. I remember very fondly the games we use to play. Especially, in the evenings, we used to go out in the park with our sports equipment. Each day we played different games, for example, football on one day and cricket on the other. These memories of playing in the park are very dear to me.

Furthermore, I remember clearly the aroma of my grandmother’s pickles. I used to help her whenever she made pickles. We used to watch her do the magic of combining the oils and spices to make delicious pickles. Even today, I can sometimes smell her pickles whenever I look back at this memory.

Most importantly, I remember this instance very clearly when we went out for a picnic with my family. We paid a visit to the zoo and had an incredible day. My mother packed delectable dishes which we ate in the zoo. My father clicked so many pictures that day. When I look at these pictures, the memory is so clear, it seems like it happened just yesterday. Thus, my childhood memories are very dear to me and make me smile when I feel low.

Q.1 Why is Childhood Memories important?

A.1 Childhood memories shape our personality and future. They remind us of the good times and help us get by on tough days. Moreover, they remind us of past experiences and mistakes which help us improve ourselves.

Q.2 What can be a common childhood memory for all?

A.2 In my opinion, a childhood memory most of us have in common is the first day of school. Most of us remember what we felt like on the first day. In addition, our birthdays are also very common childhood memory that reminds us of gifts and celebrations on that day.

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Home — Essay Samples — Life — Life Experiences — Childhood Memories

Childhood Memories Essay Examples

1. childhood memories essay prompt samples.

Before we embark on this journey down memory lane, let's first understand what a childhood memories essay entails. An essay prompt typically serves as your guiding star in crafting your piece. Here are a few samples to give you an idea of what to expect:

... Read More 1. Childhood Memories Essay Prompt Samples Before we embark on this journey down memory lane, let's first understand what a childhood memories essay entails. An essay prompt typically serves as your guiding star in crafting your piece. Here are a few samples to give you an idea of what to expect: "Write an essay about a significant childhood memory that shaped your character." "Describe a vivid childhood experience that left a lasting impact on your life." "Reflect on a cherished memory from your early years and discuss its significance."

These prompts serve as the foundation for your essay. They help you identify the core theme and purpose of your narrative.

2. Brainstorming the Perfect Childhood Memories Essay Topic

Now that you have a grasp of the prompts, it's time to brainstorm and select the most fitting topic for your childhood memories essay. Consider the following points:

• Emotional Impact: Think about memories that evoke strong emotions. These are often the most compelling stories.
• Life Lessons: Reflect on memories that taught you valuable life lessons or shaped your perspective.
• Vividness: Choose memories with vivid details and sensory experiences; they make your essay come alive.
• Uniqueness: Opt for memories that stand out or have a unique twist, avoiding overly common topics.

By considering these points, you can pinpoint a memory that not only resonates with you but also captivates your readers.

3. Examples of Unique Essay Topics

Now, let's explore some unique and captivating essay topics that revolve around childhood memories. These topics are sure to stand out from the crowd:

• "The Day I Discovered a Hidden Treasure in Grandma's Attic."
• "A Magical Encounter with a Friendly Stray Cat: My Childhood Confidant."
• "The Great Lemonade Stand Adventure: Lessons in Entrepreneurship."
• "An Unexpected Journey: Getting Lost and Finding My Way Home."
• "The Night Our Backyard Turned into an Enchanted Forest."

These topics offer a fresh perspective on childhood memories, ensuring your essay engages your audience from start to finish.

4. Crafting Inspiring Paragraphs and Phrases

To bring your childhood memories essay to life, you need to infuse it with captivating paragraphs and phrases. Here are some samples to inspire your writing:

"As I climbed up the creaky attic stairs, the dust danced in the sunlight streaming through the cracks. There, amidst forgotten relics of the past, I stumbled upon a weathered, leather-bound journal that held secrets from generations long gone." "The stray cat, with its fur as soft as memories themselves, became my confidant. We'd spend endless afternoons together, sharing secrets only a child and a feline friend could understand." "With a cardboard sign in hand and a heart full of dreams, I set up my first lemonade stand on that scorching summer day. The taste of success was as sweet as the lemonade itself." "As twilight descended, the stars emerged in our enchanted backyard. Fireflies danced, and the trees whispered secrets to my young ears, painting a canvas of wonder and magic."

Feel free to use these samples as a starting point for your own narrative. Remember, the key is to paint a vivid and emotional picture with your words.

With these insights, you're well on your way to crafting an outstanding childhood memories essay that will leave a lasting impression. Embrace the nostalgia, choose a unique topic, and let your words transport your readers back to your cherished moments of the past.

Childhood Memoir: My Adventures

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My Life's Journey: Childhood Memories to Career Accomplishments

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A Reflection of My Childhood Memories of Going Outside, Being Happy, and Enjoying Life

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Best Childhood Memories Essay Ideas: 94 Narrative Topics [2024]

Many people believe that childhood is the happiest period in a person’s life. It’s not hard to see why. Kids have nothing to care or worry about, have almost no duties or problems, and can hang out with their friends all day long.

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An essay about childhood gives an opportunity to plunge into your memories. All you need to do is recollect those happy days and write a brilliant essay! In this article by Custom-Writing.org , you’ll find great tips and topic ideas to kickstart the process.

• 🔝 Top 10 Topics
• 💡 Coming Up with Ideas
• 🧸 Childhood Memories Essay Topics
• ✍️ Writing Examples & Guide
• 🔍 References

🔝 Top 10 Childhood Topics to Write About

• Your favorite holiday memory.
• Your brightest memories of winter.
• Your earliest school memory.
• Your first visit to a farm.
• What was your favorite toy?
• Do you remember your granny’s kitchen?
• Your childhood memories of your parents.
• Your best childhood friend.
• Things that you initially disliked at school.
• Experiments with physics in childhood.

💡 Coming Up with Childhood Memories Essay Ideas

Perhaps you got lost in your memories and cannot choose the best one to describe in your essay. Or maybe you have a bad memory and cannot recollect something specific to write about. If that’s the case, here are some recommendations for you.

Childhood Memories List: How to Write

Don’t know where to start? Try creating a list of your memories to decide which ones you need for your paper.

There are our top tips on making a childhood memories list:

• Write down everything that comes to your mind. What are some significant memories from your childhood? Every little experience starting with your earliest memory matters. Of course, you don’t need all of this information for your essay. Still, it will help your brain to start working in the right direction.
• Try to focus on specific things such as holidays, trips, or food. Everybody’s favorite childhood memories are often connected with them. Remarkable events also might include school, neighborhood, hometown, presents you received, and your achievements. Nostalgia is your best friend in this case.
• Divide your memories into categories. Good childhood experiences such as receiving a dream present or adopting a pet belong to one category. Life-changing events, key achievements, and unfortunate accidents can go into other categories.
• Try not to avoid bad childhood memories. It’s not the most pleasant thing in this task. But sometimes, writing about bad situations or challenges is a good strategic decision for your paper. It can also help your personal growth.

How to Remember Childhood Memories

What is your earliest memory? A frightening fall down the stairs? Or perhaps blowing candles on your second birthday? Whatever the content, it is probably short and vague.

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When we grow older, our recollections of early childhood become fragmentary . In fact, a profound memory loss occurs, which psychologists call infantile amnesia (you can learn more about it from the article “ New perspectives on childhood memory ”). Memories formed during early childhood are more fragile than those formed later in life.

That’s why it’s a great idea to write down our childhood recollections. This way, they’ll stay with us even after they lose their rich vividness and start to fade altogether.

Naturally, you can’t keep everything in your head. Some childhood memories will stay with you forever, while others vanish during your teenage years. Remembering something you have forgotten is not an easy task.

Here’s a way out: use this checklist to recall your childhood experiences:

Feeling completely out of ideas? Or maybe you can’t think of a specific topic? Keep reading to learn how to generate new ideas and write a great childhood memories essay.

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🧸 Childhood Memory Essays Topics List

Favorite childhood memory ideas.

• Meeting Santa at a mall
• A gift you’ve created yourself
• First time you stayed up all night
• Your first visit to an amusement park
• Your favorite children’s book or comic
• Your best childhood camping memory
• The craziest fact you’ve learned as a child
• Memory about winning a school competition
• What was the most fun school assignment?
• Your favorite food at the elementary school cafeteria

Early Childhood Memories Essay Topics

Kindergarten is often the place where kids start socializing for the first time. Think about your experiences with friends and teachers, as well as with your family. These topic ideas will help you get on the right track:

• The first day in kindergarten . Kindergarten is a new world for a child. It has an unfamiliar environment, new people, and rules. This essay can aim at discussing feelings and expectations that accompany a child on their first day.
• Describe the first pet you had in early childhood. Almost all families have a pet that they love. Often pets are given to children as presents. This essay can relate the best moments spent with a pet when you were little.
• A relative who was closest to you in early childhood. Every child has a family member with whom they enjoy spending time. It could easily be a parent, a grandparent, a sibling , or perhaps an uncle. Write about exciting moments related to your beloved relatives.
• Your first childhood hobby . Most people had hobbies when they were kids. This initial interest sometimes determines one’s future occupation. Here, you can describe the activities you used to do as a little child. Focus on the events associated with your first hobby .
• Festive events in kindergarten . During the whole year, people celebrate many holidays. Naturally, kindergartens hold festive events to amuse children. This essay can portray the unforgettable celebrations in kindergarten .
• Describe family gatherings from your childhood.
• A typical day in your kindergarten.
• What’s the first birthday celebration you remember?
• Activities or games in kindergarten .
• Your first Halloween costume.
• Things that you didn’t like in kindergarten.
• Write about your relationship with nature in early childhood.
• Describe a performance you took part in when you were little.
• What was the best teacher in your kindergarten like?
• Discuss the book or story you loved the most in early childhood.

Elementary School Memories Essay Topics

Would you like to look back at your elementary school days? This section is just what you need. Check out these ideas and get inspired:

• How you met your first teacher. Teachers lead children through a complicated yet exciting path. That’s why we all remember our teachers, especially the first day of meeting them. This essay can recount the brightest moments associated with this event. Additionally, you might describe the teacher’s appearance and personality .
• The most challenging lesson in elementary school . You can probably recall numerous lessons from your school years. This essay can aim at describing positive and negatives aspects of studies, as well as your favorite classes.
• Memories about extracurricular activities in school. It could be sports, artistic pursuits, or activities related to specific subjects. Describe your personal preferences and say who inspired you to start doing them.
• Celebration events at school. Celebrations create the brightest and most joyful memories. In this essay, you can share personal experiences about such events, be it school performances, shows, or games.
• Who was your best school teacher ? Describe the personalities of your favorite teachers and explain why you liked them.
• Write about a person who helped with school lessons .
• What did your first school building look like?
• Describe what you daydreamed about in school.
• Wonderful hikes or trips organized by the school.
• What were your plans for the future growing up?
• Write about going to a museum with your class.
• Memories of participation in school sports activities.
• Recall your participation in writing for a school newspaper .
• Did you take part in any important school activities or events?

Happy Childhood Memories Essay Topics

When writing about your childhood, you’d probably prefer recalling happy events rather than sad ones. But what if you don’t know which pleasant memory to choose? This list will help you make up your mind!

• The best birthday party ever. Recall the most exciting details associated with it. For example, describe some beautiful presents and a celebratory atmosphere.
• The day you’ve met your first love . Write about the impressions, feelings, and the most treasured memories associated with that day.
• Recall the best day spent with your childhood friend. Recount the activities and events that made you happy.
• The most significant achievement in childhood. Recall your achievements connected with the studies, sports, or arts. You can start by describing the task you’ve had, explain its importance, and thank the people who helped you.
• The day you made somebody happy . This essay can describe the instances where you helped others. What were your motivations, and why did it make you happy?
• Describe the best school gathering you can remember. Schools often organize parties where students can have fun. This essay can recount the circumstances and special moments related to such a party.
• Recall a fictional character you liked the most in childhood.
• Write about the best present you gave to someone when you were little.
• Describe the best surprise made by friends or relatives in childhood.
• The most wonderful journey or trip in childhood.
• A sad event that changed things for the better.
• What were the happiest summer holidays in your childhood like?
• Chronicle the day when your childhood dream came true.
• Write about your childhood fear and how you overcame it.
• Tell about getting a good grade for an important assignment.
• Describe the first home where your family lived.

Funny Childhood Memories Essay Ideas

Writing about a funny event is perhaps the best option you can choose. You’ll enjoy describing it, and your readers will appreciate you for making them laugh! Here are some prompts to kickstart the creative process.

• Recollect your childhood actions that make your relatives laugh. Children often behave in interesting, comical, and amusing ways. This essay can detail some fun moments that your parents remember.
• Amusing and funny moments in your favorite cartoons . You probably remember many great cartoons from your childhood. What made them funny? Do you still find them entertaining?
• The funniest pranks you did at school. If you were a mischievous child, this topic is for you. Recall various funny, elaborate, or even failed pranks you did at school.
• Describe the first time you rode a bicycle . Learning to ride a bike is a staple of many childhoods. It’s challenging, but once you master it, you will never forget how to ride it!
• What tricks used to help you pass difficult exams ? Usually, students make cribs or copy someone else’s answers. You can describe more creative ways of passing exams.
• Poking fun at younger siblings . If you have brothers and sisters, you probably tease each other. How do you feel about such activities? Do you both have a good laugh, or did somebody get upset?
• Playing superheroes in childhood. Many children have favorite superheroes such as Batman , Spiderman, Ironman, and others. What were your personal favorites? Did you try to imagine you have superpowers?
• Describe the most ridiculous haircut you’ve had when you were little.
• Funny moments with your school teachers.
• Did you have an imaginary friend? What were they like?
• Trying to cook in childhood.
• What tricks did you use to hide bad marks from your parents?
• Attempts to renovate your childhood room.

Childhood Christmas Memories Topics

Christmas is the favorite holiday of many children. Were you one of them? Choose your essay title from this list on Christmas memories:

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• What is the best Christmas present from your childhood? Describe the present, the wrapping, and your emotions related to it. Why did you want it so much? You can also try to remember where this present is now.
• Describe a family Christmas trip that you enjoyed the most as a child. Answer the following questions. What were the new places you have seen? What were the new people you met? How much time did you spend there? Did you feel homesick? What did you feel when you returned home?
• What was your favorite pastime during the Christmas holidays in childhood? For example, you can write about watching cartoons or playing with your siblings. Or maybe you enjoyed winter sports and walking with your friends.
• Was Christmas your favorite holiday in childhood? Explain why or why not. Create a list of the things that you did and didn’t enjoy. You can also compare Christmas with other holidays. Find several arguments to defend your opinion.
• Describe the best Christmas present you gave somebody in childhood . It can be something you made yourself or bought. Explain why you chose this gift and what was the recipient’s reaction. What did you want to show with this present? Was it your idea to give it? How did you choose it? Answer these questions in your essay.
• What are your favorite Christmas memories ? You have a wide choice here. You can describe family get-togethers, receiving or giving presents, eating sweets, or having fun while resting from school.
• Describe your favorite childhood Christmas photo . Explain why it is so valuable to you. Define the people or objects in the picture. Try to remember who took it and what camera was they used. Also, provide some information about the time and place.
• Write about your family’s Christmas traditions .
• Describe your favorite Christmas decorations in childhood.
• When was the time you stopped believing in Santa Claus?
• What was your favorite Christmas movie in childhood?
• Write about the Christmas dishes did you enjoy the most as a child.
• What was your favorite Christmas TV special ?
• What were your favorite Christmas songs when you were little?
• Describe the perfect Christmas Eve of your childhood.
• Tell about the friends you liked to invite to your Christmas parties.

These recollections can form a great foundation for your essay. Because childhood is often the best time in a person’s life, writing essays on your childhood experiences can be a real pleasure. If you try to be creative and choose a unique topic, you are sure to succeed in writing an impressive essay.

✍️ “My Childhood Memories” Essay Writing Guide

Writing about your childhood is an exciting assignment that has some peculiarities. Let’s explore some of them.

Childhood Memories Essay: Dos and Don’ts

Your main task is to make the reader feel like they’ve experienced the memory you described. There are certain elements that you can include in your essay to make it stand out. Similarly, some things are better to avoid.

Keep these things in mind, and you will surely write a perfect composition.

Childhood Memories Essay: Step by Step

Follow these steps of the essay writing process, and you will see that writing a good essay on your childhood memories is not as challenging as it may seem.

Narrative Essay on Childhood Memories: Outline

Every essay must have a proper structure. That’s why it’s useful to make a short outline before you start writing. It will keep you from losing your way as you write your essay. It also saves you time! If you have a plan, you won’t miss any important points in your essay.

Your paper should include:

After you’ve finished writing, revise and edit your essay . Make sure your paragraphs are written in a logical order. Read your essay aloud so that you can see how it flows and determine where you need to improve it.

Try our memory-activating prompts and follow these writing tips to compose your perfect childhood memories essay! If you’re not sure that you can write a good paper on your own, you can always ask our experts to help you out.

Further reading:

• School Days Essay: How to Describe a Memorable Event
• Growing Up Essay: Great Ideas for Your College Assignment
• Writing Essay about Someone Who has Made an Impact on Your Life
• Excellent Remembering a Person Essay: Free Writing Guidelines
• Life Experience Essay: How to Write a Brilliant Paper

🔗 References

• The Fate of Childhood Memories: Children Postdated Their Earliest Memories as They Grew Older
• Can You Trust Your Earliest Childhood Memories?: BBC
• How to Start Writing Your Own Childhood Memories for Posterity: HobbyLark
• 650 Prompts for Narrative and Personal Writing: The New York Times
• Bright Side Readers Shared 14 Childhood Stories and We Plunged Into Their Memories Together: Brightside
• Great Questions: StoryCorps
• Introductions and Conclusions: University of Toronto
• Make a List: Childhood Memories: Practical Parenting
• Tips to Retrieve Old Memories: Harvard University
• Make the Most of Your Memory: 10 Tips for Writing About Your Life: Writer’s Digest
• Childhood Christmas Memories: DNA Explained
• What Do Your Earliest Childhood Memories Say about You?: The Conversation
• Can’t Remember Your Childhood? What Might Be Going On: Healthline
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Essays About Photography: Top 5 Examples Plus Prompts

Discover the joy of photography by reading our guide on how to write essays about photography, including top essay examples and writing prompts. 

It is truly remarkable what pictures can tell you about the time they were taken and their subjects. For example, a well-taken photograph can expose the horrors of conflict in a war-torn country or the pain endured by victims of racial persecution. At the same time, it can also evoke a mother’s joy after seeing her newborn baby for the first time. Photography is crucial to preserving precious moments that deserve to be remembered.

Photography can be considered a form of art. So much intent is put into a picture’s composition, subject, angle, and lighting. There is a lot of talent, thought, and hard work that goes into photography to produce such thought-provoking images, 

If you are writing essays about photography, you can start by reading some examples. 

5 Essay Examples To Inspire You

1. why photography is a great hobby by lillie lane, 2. the importance of photography by emily holty, 3. why i love photography by bob locher.

• 4.  The Shocking History Of Death Photography by Yewande Ade
• 5. ​​Fashion photography by Sara Page

5 Helpful Prompts On Essays About Photography

1. what is your favorite thing to photograph, 2. why is photography so important, 3. should photography be considered an art form, 4. different types of photography, 5. interpretations of photographs.

“Be imaginative when writing your shots. Photography is about the impact of your chances. The odds are good that nobody will care to check over your picture When it is an item in a background. Discover how to produce a fantastic photograph, and take these skills and use them.”

Lane gives readers tips on taking better photos in this essay. These include keeping balance, choosing a subject widely, investing in certain pieces of equipment, and using the appropriate settings for taking pictures. She stresses that photos must appear as natural as possible, and following her advice may help people to get good pictures. 

“No matter where you go photography plays into your life somehow. We don’t realize how big of an impact photography truly has on us until we see the details of our life hidden in a photograph. When you flip through your photo album and start looking for those details you suddenly realize you are truly blessed. A photograph keeps a moment frozen in time so we have it forever. Something like joy becomes clearer as we look deeper into the photograph.”

Holty does an excellent job of describing what makes photography so appealing to many people. You can take a picture of anything you want if you want to remember it, and photos help us look at the intricacies and details of what we see around us every day. Photography also helps us keep memories in our heads and hearts as time passes by, and most of all, it allows us to document the greatness of our world. It is ever-present in our lives, and we will keep taking photos the more adventures we have. 

“Every day in normal circumstances people take thousands of pictures of the Grand Canyon. It takes very little thought to realize that few if any of these pictures will be in any way noteworthy above pictures already taken. But that said, they are OUR pictures, our personal affirmation of the wonderful scene stretched out below us, and that gives them a special validity for us.”

Locher reflects on the role photography played in his life and why he enjoys it so much, partly due to his spirituality. He previously worked in the photographic equipment business and rekindled his love for photography in his 60s. Photography, to him, is a way of affirming and acknowledging God’s creations around him and appreciating the natural world. He also briefly discusses the importance of equipment and post-editing; however, no photo is perfect. 

4.   The Shocking History Of Death Photography by Yewande Ade

“In fact, it was easier for the photographer if the dead person was in a sleeping position because there would be no need to put him or her in an appropriate position or prop the eyes open. The restful pose gave some families comfort because it made them believe that their loved one(s) had passed on happily and to a more peaceful realm. It gave the semblance of death as a painless act like sleep.”

An interesting phenomenon in the history of the camera is post-mortem photography, in which deceased people, usually children, were posed and made to look “alive,” to an extent, so their loved ones could remember them. This was done as a way of mourning; the subjects were made to look as if they were merely asleep to give their loved ones comfort that they had passed on peacefully and happily. Eventually, a reduction in the death rate led to the end of this practice. 

5. ​​ Fashion photography by Sara Page

“Modern fashion photography differs because photographers aim to be extraordinary with their work, they know that extra ordinary will interest the audience much more It is extremely evident that fashion photography has changed and developed throughout the years, however there is not just reason. It is clear that fashion photography has changed and developed because of advancements in technology, change in attitudes and the introduction of celebrities.”

Page’s essay focuses on the history of fashion photography and some techniques used in practice. It dated back to 1911 and astonished the public with glamorous photos of people wearing perfectly-styled outfits. As the years have gone on, photographers have taken the lighting of the photos more into account, as well as their settings. In addition, editing software such as Photoshop has allowed even better photos to be produced. Fashion photography has only become more extravagant with the current social culture. 

In your essay, write about your favorite subject when you take pictures- is it people, landscapes, objects, or something else? Explain why, give examples, and perhaps elaborate on your camera settings or the lighting you look for when taking photos.  

Photography is an important invention that has helped us immensely throughout the years- how exactly? Explain why photography rivals painting and why it is essential. Then, write about its importance to you, the entire world, and humanity. 

Some say photography pales compared to the intricacies of music, painting, sculpture, and even cinema and should not be considered a form of art. For an interesting argumentative essay, determine whether photography is genuine art or not and defend your position. Explore both sides of the topic and give a strong rebuttal against the opposing viewpoint. 

From street photography to food photography to portraiture, many different types of photography are classified according to the subject being captured. Write about at least three types of photography that interest you and what they entail. You may also discuss some similarities between them if any. Check out our list of the top CreativeLive photography courses .

Like other works of art, a photograph can be interpreted differently. Choose a photo you find exciting and describe how you feel about it. What is being portrayed? What emotions are being evoked? What did the photographer want to show here? Reflect on your chosen work and perhaps connect it with your personal life. 

For help with your essays, check out our round-up of the best essay checkers . If you are interested in learning more, check out our essay writing tips !

Martin is an avid writer specializing in editing and proofreading. He also enjoys literary analysis and writing about food and travel.

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• Childhood Memories Essay

Essay on Childhood Memories

Memories are one of the most crucial things we can cherish throughout our lives. They build up our personality as all our knowledge and previous experiences are stored there. Memories can be both good and bad. There are memories either from long ago or from the recent past. In our critical times, we may get some refreshment by recalling our memories. We can run our lives smoothly with the help of these memories. Memories help us in many ways. We can rectify ourselves from past mistakes. Childhood memories are treasured by all of us. They make us smile even in our old age. 

Importance of Childhood Memory:

Childhood memories are very significant in our lives. We can recall the best times of our lives. Childhood memories build up our future and way of thinking. People with good childhood memories are happy people. On the other hand some bad childhood memories also affect the future of an individual. 

The things a person learns during childhood remain as important lessons and memories for life. It applies to things like family and society values, morals, learning the importance of friendships and being respectful to adults. Without learning proper manners, people can become reckless and take unnecessary risks in life. 

Childhood memories are also strongly related to good habits such as proper discipline and cultivating the proper attitude in life. These values, which are very important for success in adult life, cannot be learnt overnight at a later stage. 

A childhood memory definitely does not define anyone but they play a pivotal role in one’s life. It is not necessary that a person with good memories always lives a prosperous life while a person with bad memories always lives a hazardous life. Sometimes, ghastly childhood memories make a man stronger. 

Nevertheless, it can be said that the inner child is kept alive by childhood memories. There is always a child inside every person. It may come out all of a sudden at any stage in life. It may also be expressed every day in the little things that we enjoy doing. 

Our inner child is especially seen when we meet our  childhood friends. Regardless of how grown up we think we are, we go back to kids the moment we are with old friends. Memories also take up the bulk of our conversation when we meet old friends after many years. The trip down memory lane is bittersweet as we long for a time we will not get back but also cherish its joy. 

Some may be excited about seeing swings, some may act like a child when they see panipuri. The reason behind the facts is we are reminded by our childhood memories every time. The same happens when we enter the children’s play park and are reminded of our favourite rides. It is even more so when we ate ice cream or our favourite ice candy when we were 5 years old.  Hence, childhood memories play a very vital role in our lives. 

My Childhood Memories:

I was born and brought up in a very adorable family. I have grown up with my elder brother with whom I used to play a lot. I remember each and every game we used to play together. Every moment is very precious to me. In the afternoon, we used to play cricket in our nearby ground. The memories of playing in the ground together are mesmerising. 

Another beautiful thing I can remember is flying kites. It used to be one of the most exciting things of my childhood. Even the older members of the family participated with us. We used to fly kites on our terrace. The kite-flying programme would last for the entire day.

Another beautiful thing I can remember is my visit to the zoo with my family. We made one zoo visit every year. They used to be those very simple yet fun-filled family picnic moments. We would carry packed food from home that my mother used to cook. My elder brother would click several photographs of us. When I look at those pictures now, the memories come alive. Today, so many things have changed but my childhood memories are still fresh in my heart. It feels so refreshing to relive them again and again. My childhood memories are very close to my heart and make me smile on my difficult days.

Perhaps the time I remember very fondly was going to swimming classes. I have always loved playing in the water, and swimming in clear pools was always an exciting activity. Even though I loved the water, at first I could not swim as I was not aware of the basics of the sport. Slowly, as I learnt to kick and paddle, it became easier to swim in shallow water. The big test was swimming in deep water as it was a terrifying thought and simultaneously exciting. I still remember the day I decided to let go of my fears and dived into the deep end of the pool. The instant I jumped into the water, the fear was gone, and I swam like a fish to the other end of the pool. That day also taught me a valuable lesson about taking the first step in any daunting task. 

Conclusion: 

We should all cherish our childhood memories as they can always be our companion, our “bliss of solitude.” Simple things hold grave meaning when they are from their childhood days. The days were free of complexities and full of innocence. Hence, they are so close to heart.

FAQs on Childhood Memories Essay

1. How to write a childhood memory essay?

The most important thing you will need to write this essay is about great childhood memories! You will have to look back in time and remember all the good and bad things that happened to you. As you get older, your memories will also change in their context as you change as a person. Like all essays, this should also have a steady narrative of the events from your childhood. You can choose to write only about the best memories you have or choose to write them as they occur. Some of the best things to write are topics such as your friends, your favourite games, and all the vacations you have been on and all the experiences you had in school.

2. How would you describe your childhood memories?

The older you get, the more the bits and pieces of your memory begin to fade or change. The best way to write about your childhood memories is to close your eyes and remember them. Then you have to start writing the events as they occurred without giving them context. Once the essay is written, the stories and events can be arranged as per the requirements of the essay. You can choose to describe your memories in any light you feel.

3. Why are childhood memories important?

Our childhood memories have a significant influence on who we are. People with mostly happy memories tend to be more relaxed with a positive outlook on life. People who have had traumatic memories tend to be more cautious and cynical in life. People can still change with positive or negative experiences in life. However, our childhood influences stay with us for the rest of our lives and can sometimes even come into conflict with the better choices we want to make. Therefore having childhood memories is a good reference to understanding ourselves and why we behave in certain ways.

4. What could be a common childhood memory for everyone?

Everybody remembers their “first-time” experiences in life. It could be things like the first day of school, the first time visiting a zoo, the first time taking a flight in an aeroplane, having a bad experience, etc.

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The power of photography: time, mortality and memory

• Blake Morrison , Mary McCartney, Steve Pyke, Grayson Perry , Katie Mitchell, Sean O'Hagan , Jemima Kiss , Louise Wilson and Adrian Searle
• The Guardian , Sunday 19 May 2013 19.30 BST

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Blake Morrison

I tell myself I’ve never owned a camera, but that doesn’t square with a memory of being given one as a birthday present in my teens, and of a losing struggle with light, shade, aperture, distance, angle, focus. Cameras were more demanding then, and I hadn’t the patience. Other people did it better.


Not least, to begin with, my father. A stranger looking through my childhood photos might deduce a) that we were perpetually on holiday in north Wales, and b) that my father never accompanied us. But he wasn’t absent, merely hiding behind the lens of his Nikon. Most of his snaps were taken without us noticing. But a few were trick photos, such as the one with my mother, sister and me arranged above each other on a steep hill, to look like acrobats standing on each other’s shoulders.


Despite their playfulness, my chief feeling when I look at those photos is sadness: that most of the people in them are now dead; that the times they commemorate can’t be retrieved. It’s sentimental, I know: time passes; the moment goes even as the shutter clicks. But those photographic images are a source of sorrow, whereas the images in my head are not. Larkin has a poem about how memories “link us to our losses” by showing us “what we have as it once was,/Blindingly undiminished, just as though/By acting differently we could have kept it so.” That’s the effect old photos have on me. 
Worse, though, would be to have none at all. My favourite photo is one of my mother in pigtails as a child, an image unknown to me until a few years ago, after her death, when a cousin sent it. The earliest image I had of her till then was a graduation photo, taken in Dublin. There were none of her large family, either. I felt shut out from her past, and the lack of pictures was part of the reason.


My father’s childhood was heavily documented by comparison, and he was scrupulous about documenting his children’s, first in tiny black-and-white prints, then with colour transparencies, which were looked at through a viewfinder or (at the annual Christmas slide show put on for my long-suffering cousins) on a white screen. He also had a cine camera, and I sometimes feel guilty that my own children, unlike me, have no moving images of themselves to look back on. Why my wife and I never bought a video camera, I don’t know (laziness? expense?). But she at least has been diligent down the years, with box cameras, Polaroids, disposables and (most recently) a digital Canon. The results have been pasted in albums and dated, and every so often I get them out to see what we got up to. These, too, make me tearful.


I now have a photo folder on my computer, for emailed pictures sent by friends and family. More to the point, I own an iPhone and have begun to take snaps. My shots from the Shard at night were disappointing. And it’s too late for me to compete with the poet Hugo Williams, who has been taking his camera to parties and book launches for decades and who must by now have one of the great literary photo-archives of our time. But tentatively, decades too late, I have made a start.

Mary McCartney

Photographer.

I have a vivid early memory of going to a darkroom with my mum. I would see her taking photos a lot, though she didn’t do much printing. But she took me there one day and I remember seeing a blank page put into a chemical bath and becoming a photograph.
We didn’t really have any of her pictures around the house, but there was a Jacques-Henri Lartigue , and an Edward S Curtis portait of some native Americans. Mum grew up in New York and she got into photography after seeing the famous Family of Man exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, curated by Edward Steichen . She mentioned it often; my mum and dad discussed photography a lot.


Because I grew up around it, I assumed everyone could take pictures. Now, I realise that not everyone has the eye. It’s true that every kid can take pictures that you could use or publish, and there are a lot more being documented. But it’s still hard to do a proper shoot, or go into depth; it takes a lot of time and attention.
I still think in film: I always have. If I take an image that I really like, it feels more real if it’s caught on film; if I’ve shot it digitally, I feel it could just disappear. The confusing thing for me is how many different ways there are of taking photos. I take a fair amount on my iPhone, quite a few on my 35mm Leica, plus on my digital camera, and I have a Polaroid, too. When I’m going on an assignment, I never know which cameras to take. 
I’m embarrassed to say that my main camera is my iPhone. I’m on Instagram so I can follow friends; I like how immediate it is. I upload with filters sometimes; I’m not that purist about it. In the past, you’d pick a certain type of film for a certain look, and today’s filters are a similar concept: the modern version of choosing the right mood. But if there’s absolutely stunning light, and a picture hasn’t needed a filter, I always do  #nofilter .


Family pictures are the most precious. I have a set of prints I carry around in my wallet of my kids, my husband and my parents. I look at those rather than writing a diary: they’re very evocative and textural and emotional, and take you back to specific moments. I change them every so often, after they get worn out. 
The picture I carry of my parents is a little old colour print of them hugging in the 70s, which is sweet. The one of my husband and me was taken in a photobooth a friend rented for a birthday party. I love the old-fashioned booths where you get four different shots; they feel unique because you’ve got the only version that will ever exist. I also have a great photobooth strip of my son when he was really young. He’s crying at the beginning – then in the next photo my hand’s in there, giving him an ice-cream.



I grew up in Leicester in the 60s. The first time I became enthralled by photography was when my mum got a subscription to Life magazine: the Apollo 8 cover from December 1968 was particularly dear to me. I never wanted to be a train driver, always an astronaut. I went on to work for Life, and my astronauts series ended up in its pages in 1999/2000, so I came full circle. 


I’ve been photographing my children since they were born. I don’t photograph them every day now, but every few months: Jack’s now 26 and Duncan’s 21. It came about in the 1980s: I was making Super 8 films and working on a film with Peter Greenaway that photographed things over time. David Attenborough did it first, with a dead mouse that eventually had maggots in it. I thought: what an amazing thing to do with a human being, film someone on Super 8 from birth to death. When Jack was 20 minutes old, I made my first image of him, with the idea that the death at the end of the cycle would be mine, not his. I also photograph my daughter Lola Rae, who is six. She plays to the camera and is more aware of herself. Now I’ve started to scan in the photos to make stop-motion animations.

I store all my images in print form, but also as digital scans on hard drives. I borrow my girlfriend’s digital camera and iPhone sometimes, but I haven’t ever bought one because I shoot with my Rolleiflex. It’s difficult to do it any other way now. 
I’ve also been collecting photography prints since 1980, and have an eclectic collection: a Brassai, an Enrique Mezenides, a Diane Arbus, an Eggleston, and a couple of Nan Goldins, because I was a part of that time and place here in New York. I have a wall of photographs in my studio, for inspiration and influence, that I change sporadically (pictured at the top of the article) . The rest of the walls are covered with my own portraits of people like Joe Strummer, John Waters, Robert Johnson.


I’ve shot millions of images so it’s hard to pull something out that’s symbolic. But there is a photo that means a lot to me hanging in my studio. I photographed it on the first roll I ever took at Billy Smart’s Circus in Battersea in the early 1980s. Days before, a friend had taken me to a pub on Tottenham Court Road. He had a Pentax and he showed me how to use it, then gave me two rolls of film. I photographed circuses, fairgrounds, bars. The image is a woman lying down, balancing a table on her feet. It’s her job, but there’s a whole sexuality aspect to it, too. Photography and surrealism are so linked. It’s a crazy way to earn a living, on your back like that. 


Grayson Perry

When I was about five, my mother made a bonfire in the back garden and burned a suitcase full of family photos taken by my father. He had been a keen photographer with his own dark room. I don’t know why she burned them, but it coincided with them getting divorced and my stepfather moving in.


For the rest of my childhood, no one in the family possessed a camera, so I have very few photographs of myself before art college. Family snaps are somehow celebratory of the good times so there was little motivation to record our lives. As soon as I could afford it, I bought a clunky Russian Zenith SLR. It was bulky and manual and I had little spare cash for film, so I took few snaps at first. Some of my most precious and most naff are the earliest images of myself in women’s clothes, staring into the lens, nervously waiting for the self-timer to go off. Transvestites have a very symbiotic relationship with the camera. We used to joke at tranny events that we should seek Kodak sponsorship.


I was never very good at the technical side, and have few good photographs of my early work, an omission I came to regret when researching my first retrospective show. I had put on whole exhibitions in the 1980s without taking a single photograph. Nowadays, my dealer will commission high-quality photographs as a matter of course.


Soon after compact automatic cameras became available I started taking a lot of snaps. This was a habit I kept up until fairly recently, particularly when my daughter was young. I used to put them in albums religiously, until I saw a TV programme where a curator from the Museum of Film and Photography said those sticky, clingfilm-style albums are terrible for the prints and you should keep them in a shoebox. Which I did, unedited, for years until I realised we never looked at them. Then my daughter and I spent a week going through thousands and sorted the best into a series of albums. 


Since the advent of digital photography, I have taken fewer and fewer photos for fun, but hugely more for research, or to record my work, or outfits. I take a few to record our ageing. I will go on holiday and return with just a dozen snaps. I don’t know whether this is because of age, laziness or the feeling that photography has become a torrent of cliches. The cameraphone has made the forest of glowing screens ubiquitous in museums, galleries and at events. Maybe I’m a snob, but it’s put me off photography.

Katie Mitchell

Theatre director.

My father always took photographs of our summer holidays and printed the film into slides. He used a Japanese camera, a 35mm Canon. We had family slide shows every winter. There was a white plastic screen that had to be pulled up out of its cylindrical container, and we had to be careful not to get sticky fingers on the negatives. There were framed photographs of us around the house and my favourite was a plain wooden frame around a colour picture of me, with the sun hitting the lens so it created a halo around my smiling head. My dad also taught my brother and me how to make pinhole cameras when I was about 10.


My uncle Richard took photographs for the Leicester Mercury, specialising in sports photography and pop concerts like the Beatles, so the house was also littered with his shots. My brother started taking black-and-white images when he was at prep school and later went into photography professionally. My first experience of a dark room was with him in my early 20s. The magic of the image emerging on to the white photographic paper in the thick red gloom was bewitching, and I loved the way the images were hung up on a washing line.


When I went to university, my father gave me his old Canon and I remember the complexity of all the settings, how hard it was to load and the importance of caring for it. Later, as I became more interested in film, my dad bought me a Super 8 camera and I remember the delight when you started filming and the camera whirred until you pressed stop.
Now I use either the new digital camera my mum bought me when I had my daughter, or my iPhone. I store my photographs on my computer and rarely print them. In the first two years of my daughter’s life, I printed all the photographs of her and put them into albums, and had some framed. But they looked different from my childhood photographs. It’s the texture: I miss the grain of the original print.


It’s the old family photographs from the 1920s onwards that I love the most. When I am with either of my parents, I am always rummaging around in their old collections. Before my granny died, I got her to tell me who all the people were in the photographs in her house, and I carefully wrote on the back of each one. I’m now doing the same with my mum’s old photographs. I am particularly fond of a picture of my mother standing with her mother and holding out her hand to feed a pigeon whose wings are blurred. It must be the 1930s. And there is a tiny, tiny photograph of my granny’s family on my dad’s side, taken on the Kennington Road in London in the 1920s. My great grandad is seated cradling Arthur, one of his sons, who looks as if he has polio, and the rest of the family and friends are crowded around, about 30 people.


These tiny images, sometimes only 3in x 1in, with their curled edges, are the only way of touching people in my past. Like many people, my family was broken up by time, events, place and so on, and looking at these is a way of putting the pieces of my past together, like a jigsaw. When I am doing this, I often think of TS Eliot’s East Coker:


‘There is a time for the evening 
under starlight,

A time for the evening under lamplight

(The evening with the photograph album).’

Sean O'Hagan

Photography critic.

I remember a Kodak Instamatic that appeared every time we went on holiday or had a family gathering. The rest of the time it resided in the “everything drawer” in the kitchen, alongside lightbulbs, batteries, pieces of string, marker pens, clothes pegs and all the other detritus of family life. The idea that it could be taken out, loaded up with cheap film and used to record my everyday life never occurred to me. This is now a source of deep regret.


I lived through the onset of the Troubles in Armagh, and it strikes me now that I could have been a kind of anti- Ed Ruscha . He photographed every building on Sunset Strip. I could have photographed every bombed building on Scotch Street. What a series that would have been.


I moved to London just in time for punk, but I didn’t own a camera then, either, nor did I ever think of buying one. For a time, I shared a flat with an Australian girl who had a Pentax (or maybe a Nikon), which, as I recall, she used a lot. When she departed for home after one too many long London winters, she took all her snapshots with her. Somewhere down under, there is a treasure trove of photographs of me and my friends in various states of chemical disrepair in our battered leather jackets, torn Levi’s and Ramones T-shirts.


Once, while working for the NME in the late 80s, I took some photographs to accompany a feature on Everything But the Girl in Moscow . I used colour slide film, unwittingly. That’s how accomplished I was. The pictures ran, though. One filled a whole page: Ben and Tracy beneath a giant statue of Lenin. It remains a source of some pride: my one brush with practical photography.
Though I write about photography for a living, I did not own a camera until recently. My first was a Pentax Omnio digital compact – a present from my wife. It’s a great little camera, and already an ancient relic of another time. I now own a Fuji X10, which I use as a visual diary. I try not to shoot as much as I used to because so many great photographers have told me that the real editing takes place as you are shooting. I have never printed a digital photograph. They are stored on my hard disk in their hundreds, maybe thousands. This fills me with a vague anxiety.


I can see now that I shoot certain things over and over: landscapes whizzing by from moving trains; people dozing on the tube; things scrawled on walls (though not graffiti or graffiti tags); the tops of trees against the sky. I basically shoot the kind of photography I like. I think photographs should be intimate. And everyday. And luminous. That’s a tall order, but the best photographers pull it off all the time.
When my father was very ill a few years ago, and again just after he died, I photographed the interior of his garden shed on my phone and digital camera. The images, together and separately, feel like a portrait of him somehow – a portrait of the inside of his head and all the stuff he had collected there. For me, they possess a meaning that many of my other photographs do not. Something to do with time and mortality and memory, all the things Roland Barthes wrote about in Camera Lucida, and which photography seems to evoke like no other art form because of its very nature – the split second already gone. At some point, I will put some words to them, because that is what I do. I’m a writer, not a photographer. But every time I see a photograph that surprises me, I wish – for a split second – it was the other way around.

Jemima Kiss

Technology writer.

Somewhere upstairs in my partner Will’s cold, dingy office next to the airing cupboard, there’s a collection of dusty, battered hard drives. They are not well-loved, and occasionally get used as doorstops. Yet hidden inside is an invaluable part of our family history – our collection of photos.
Will is a photographer, and though there have been occasions where we have sifted through photos and even printed a couple out, the sheer, overwhelming volume of pictures he has taken over the years has made it impossible even to begin to manage or access this collection. It’s a source of constant frustration for my mother-in-law, who regularly bemoans the fact that her professional photographer son is unable to provide her with printed images of her grandchildren. He takes up to 80Gb of photos per shoot and estimates he has half a million photos. It’s insurmountable.


We recently pulled out some photographs for our wedding invitation, discovering swaths of images we hadn’t seen for years, or ever. I wondered if there is a point – similar to Dunbar’s Law – beyond which we are unable to process volumes of information.


Combined with human incompetence and the chaos of child-rearing, the inaccessibility of our visual memory bank has become a real bone of contention. Last spring I spent three evenings editing and sorting (with no small amount of obsessive satisfaction, I should add) a few thousand photos of us all, organising by event and pulling the best into a shortlist folder. We moved house, and the hard drive disappeared. Maybe lost, maybe wiped. In the digital world, easy come, easy go.


If we had had only 10 pictures in the world, would we have been more careful with them? They would each be meticulously stored, labelled, backed up and printed out in beautiful frames – and probably in my mother-in-law’s house, too.

It wasn’t always this way. I still have a shoe box of prints from my childhood, and crates of my dad’s slides that I’ve been gradually scanning to eventually share online. Family cameras – my grandmother’s Brownie Vecta, my dad’s SLR – were precious, hallowed objects, not for our grubby hands. The relatively small number of photos in the family collection from when I was a child meant that many of them came to represent powerful, emotional links to our past: to favourite holidays, to my childhood home (now demolished). Later, with the death of my father, they took on a rather cruel disconnect to the present world; he seems so vital and alive in a casual moment caught and printed on a random piece of photographic paper, yet he is no longer here. 
What’s next, then, for this photographic, digital overload? We are still early into our adaptation to the digital world, and unsophisticated when it comes to managing all this material. We need to be more selective in what we choose to photograph and what we choose to keep. If it’s a bad photo, or only one of the 10 you shot is any good, only keep the best one. Delete is your friend.


But the problem also needs technological recognition. Photo storage needs to be more automated, and photo-viewing software should also help us more. It can learn which photos we view most often, and let the poor photos recede automatically. Software could summarise the 10 best photos we’ve taken that month, and put them somewhere special. It could identify duplicate photos and suggest the one to keep. Don’t back up all 3,000, just the 30 you really treasure. All we need is some bright spark to fix the problem.


Louise Wilson

I got into photography at art college. I borrowed a 35mm camera, and would go in the dark room for hours, practising how to load the neg on to the spools. 


But I only bought my first camera later: a Mamiya C330 with a twin lens. My sister Jane and I would make our own large-scale prints, about five metres wide, with an enlarger that we had to tilt on its side to make the projections big enough. We would bring garden troughs into the dark room, roll these massive sheets in water, then in developer, then fix them, before running each sheet under water for hours. We got weekend access and I would stay in there till all hours. 


I use a digital camera, and an iPhone: you can do little effects, and I love apps where you can shoot grainy, black-and-white movies. We did a big number for the ICA in London, in 2011, where we shot a recreation of the Odessa step scene from Battleship Potemkin on my iPhone. The idea was that it looked really lo-fi, that we just captured it on the fly with loads of volunteers, which we did. The curator Norman Rosenthal was there that day, which was serendipitous: he played the wailing woman that gets shot, and drag queen Jonny Woo was the mother pushing the pram down the steps.


It’s interesting to see how playful my nephew is at six, shooting his own movies. The next generation have a complete familiarity with documenting themselves and their surroundings in a way we just didn’t. Photography has entered such a democratic sphere now, with the digital realm open to all. Younger people edit their own movies, set up their own events, and there’s a real confidence – it’s totally entered their language. I often take him to exhibitions and he loves sitting cross-legged on the floor and watching video art; his generation have such an empathy with that kind of work. 


My father had a dark room before Jane and I were born. A few years ago, we found a really interesting image he’d taken and turned it into a sculpture (pictured above) . It’s a picture of my mother and a friend of hers bending down to pick up shells on the beach, looking very 60s. Their posture mirrors each other, and there’s a man in the middle holding a camera, and these beautiful long shadows from a low, late afternoon sun. Jane and I put his photo behind a set of old-fashioned weighing scales. The scales reflect the balance, the way the women seem on the same plain. Today, it’s in my house with a lampshade on top of it. I’ve never talked to my dad about his photography, but this curious construction always reminds me of him, and where my love of the dark room came from.

Adrian Searle

When I look at myself as a child, it always looks like someone else’s memory rather than a childhood I remember for myself. When I see a photograph of my mother, I barely recognise her. This saddens me, and says less about the photograph than it does about memory and my childhood experience. I also have a number of family albums and boxes stuffed with pictures, some well over a century old. I keep them cool and in the dark, and rarely look at them.

I was given a camera in my early teens, and promptly broke it. At art college I managed to work out the mysteries of the SLR and light-meter, but apart from documenting art, I have usually been without a camera. There are years and years of my life, places I have been, friends and lovers, my daughter growing up, fish I have caught, rooms I have lived in, for which I have few visual records. A shot of my daughter, aged four, by the artist and picture editor Bruce Bernard , who taught me a great deal about how to look at photographs, is a small talisman, and sits by my bed. Our relationships to particular photographs – rather than photography in general – can be very complex. Affect is complicated, memory is complicated.


Digital photography, a cameraphone and a slightly less rackety life has made things easier, if not more organised. I used to draw and scribble my way round exhibitions. Now I take photographs all the time, mostly of shows and artworks, which I use for quick reference – though the drawings in my notebooks mean more to me. I also take the same sort of snaps anyone else might take: there’s you on the bed, here’s me in the sunshine. What city was it? The photographs pile up in iPhoto, which always wants me to catalogue them, but I resist.


Another favourite is also my desktop screensaver (pictured above) . Shot with my phone while trapped in a car during a blizzard in Iceland, with the artist Roni Horn , it’s the view through the windshield: a view of emptiness filled with grey green weather. I keep thinking it’s Roni’s picture, even though I shot it. 
I dream my way in and out of images in photography books. One day it might be John Davies’s England , another it could be Michael Schmidt’s Berlin , William Eggleston’s Memphis or Anders Petersen’s Café Lehmitz in Hamburg .

On my wall are a number of images by Juergen Teller . There’s also a photo by Jemima Stehli of me wearing a suit, watching her undress . Holding the shutter-release, I am photographing myself watching her. One of Teller’s portraits of me, looking mad , was pasted to the wall in his recent ICA exhibition. It was right down at floor level; you could give it a quick kick as you passed. With the years, the camera has encouraged me to become an exhibitionist.

Photographs: Steve Pyke; Blake Morrison; Mary McCartney; Grayson Perry; Katie Mitchell; Sean O'Hagan; Will Whipple; Jane and Louise Wilson; Adrian Searle

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Countering the mainstream

Picture the Book: A Photo Essay of a Memoir

by Sorayya Khan | Feb 22, 2023 | Commentary , Featured

The first time I drove on Route 13 in Ithaca, New York, after my mother died, I crept along at the 40 mph minimum speed limit. On the gentle descent into town on that summer’s day in 2016, Cayuga Lake lay in the west as it should. But in front of me, the road’s white lane markings jiggled, threatening to peel away. Frustrated drivers sped past at alarming speeds, but my confidence in the road was broken.

In the days following my mother’s death, words, too, jiggled on the page. They bounced up and down, keeping sentences out of reach. Had it been otherwise, I might have turned to the years of correspondence between my parents that I’d inherited. Instead, I opened my mother’s childhood photo album. The old black and white images didn’t bounce. They lay still on the page, neatly affixed with yellowing adhesive corners, waiting. They invited me into an unfamiliar time and place, a different world. The longer I studied the photographs, the more certain I became that I would one day write about them.

Inspiration for my novels had always come in different forms. A childhood memory of a red banner hanging across Mall Road in Lahore. Faded newsprint stumbled upon in the University of Denver’s library stacks. A long ago dream in Islamabad that haunts me still. But my steadiest source of writing inspiration is the trove of images imprinted in my mind’s eye. In preparation for “ We Take Our Cities with Us: A Memoir ,” I returned to that method and covered a wall with such imagery, as if the act of seeing was a requisite for writing.

In memoir, time can be difficult to apprehend. In mine, I strive for time to be fluid, to inhabit the page the way memories inhabit us. The flickering flashlight of the present illuminates the past that was once the future. Several of the images that guided me have a then and now . Juxtapositions like those depicted below propel the story.

In Maastricht’s famous cathedral-cum-bookstore, a book falls open to a photograph. A man leans against my great grandparents’ home on the Oeverwal where just outside the frame, in a war several decades into the future, the St. Servatius Bridge will be destroyed. The date in the caption coincides with my great grandparents’ residency, and although I will never know if this is true, I pretend that my great grandfather is posing on a winter Sunday when, for once, he attends church with his wife.

A view of my great grandparents’ house on the Oeverwal in Maastricht, May 1930. The photograph is included in Wil Lem’s “Wyck: Entree van Maastricht” (Maastricht: Uitgeverij Aprilis, 2008). The caption (translated from Dutch) reads: Row of houses along the Oeverwal, located on the west, to the left and right of the “western” entrance of W. Heidenstraat, May 1930.

The view of my great grandparents’ house on the Oeverwal from the St. Servatius Bridge in Maastricht, October 2018.

Shortly after my father dies, my mother prepares to leave Pakistan. One day, she sets fire to an effluvia of papers in our Islamabad garden, but a map of squiggles is spared. I find it in a folder after my mother’s death and do not think of it again until years later, when I rifle through documents in anticipation of a research trip to the Netherlands. The map directs me in Amsterdam’s Buitenveldert cemetery; it leads me to my great grandmother’s gravesite where now another woman’s bones are interred.

A map of Amsterdam’s Buitenveldert Cemetery (listing gravesite #461) found in my mother’s papers.

Gravesite #461 in Buitenveldert Cemetery, Amsterdam, in which my great grandmother was once buried, October 2018.

In the last months of her life, my mother annotates a few pages in an old photo album, as if to help me navigate the past. She includes an Amsterdam street sign, which I will discover is her estranged father’s office address. When I visit the location, the receptionist at the now hotel explains that the building was once a brothel.

Street signs on a building at the intersection of Pieter Jacobzstraat and Nes, Amsterdam, as depicted in a photograph in my mother’s photo album, 1980s.

The building that once housed my grandfather’s office on Nes, a narrow street in central Amsterdam, a few steps from the intersection with Pieter Jacobzstraat, October 2018.

I’ve never seen this photograph when I come upon it in an old family album. My mother and her mother stand aboard a ship on a fall day in 1952 that marks my eighteen-year-old mother’s departure from the Netherlands. Years later, the port building still sports the name of the shipping line, Holland Amerika Lun, and I eat a bowl of potato soup on the premises, which is now Hotel New York.

My mother and her mother before they say goodbye on board the ship that will take my mother to the United States, Port of Rotterdam, October 1952.

The old Holland America Line building dwarfed by recent construction, October 2018. My mother boarded her ship to the United States from this building in the Port of Rotterdam.

Early on in the pandemic, a Dutch cousin I’ve recently come to know sends me photographs of the home our grandfather made with his mistress. The villa is outfitted like a museum and grand paintings decorate the walls. One painting in particular catches my attention, and months of online research leads to Hofstede de Groot Cornelis’ “Catalogue Raisonee of the Works of the Most Eminent Dutch painters of the Seventeenth Century,” where the painting by Aelbert Cuyp (1620-1691) is described as “A view of the open flat Country in Holland, exhibited under an aspect of a fine summer’s morning.”

An Aelbert Cuyp painting (middle) on my grandfather’s living room wall in Laren, the Netherlands, mid-1950s.

An image of Aelbert Cuyp’s painting, titled “Herder met een kudde schapen op een weide,” that I discover in the online archives of the Städel Museum, Frankfurt, Germany.

When I am a young writer, already certain that the house is my subject matter, I ask my aunt to draw 5 Queen’s Road, Lahore. The ballpoint sketch of my grandparents’ home sits on my desk while I struggle with a manuscript. When I begin “We Take Our Cities with Us,” I recover my aunt’s work from a long forgotten box and return it to my desk. I imagine my mother’s arrival in Lahore and that January day in the early 1960s when my father takes a photograph on the back lawn.

The ballpoint sketch of 5 Queen’s Road, Lahore, by my aunt, Nasreen Chaudhri, 1993. My novel “Five Queen’s Road” shares its title with the address of my grandparents’ home.

Photograph of my mother and me on the back lawn of 5 Queen’s Road, Lahore, taken by my father in January 1963.

My mother buys a painting by Pakistani artist Ismail Gulgee in 1972. I grow up believing, like all my family, that the  لا إله إلا ٱللَّٰهُ محمد رسول ٱللَّٰهِ sweeping downwards from right to left is a calligraphic rendering of one of Islam’s primary tenets, the shahada. When I research the painting, Gulgee’s son, also an artist, explains that it is but a gestural abstract.

Painting by Ismael Gulgee, 1972, that now hangs on a wall in my home.

Sorayya Khan’s “ We Take Our Cities with Us: A Memoir ” is available from Ohio State University Press/Mad Creek.

Sorayya Khan is the author of “ We Take Our Cities with Us: A Memoir ” and three novels: “ Noor ,” “ Five Queen’s Road ,” and “ City of Spies ,” which won the Best International Fiction Book Award at the Sharjah International Book Fair. Her work appears in Lit Hub , Guernica , Longreads , Electric Lit , The Rumpus , Oldster , Journal of Narrative Politics , The Kenyon Review, and more, and her fiction is included in several anthologies. She is the winner of a Malahat Review Novella Prize and a Fulbright Scholar Award. She is the daughter of a Pakistani father and a Dutch mother, was born in Europe, grew up in Pakistan, and now lives in Ithaca, New York, with her family. Follow her on Instagram at @SorayyaKhan, or find her at www.sorayyakhan.com .

Header photos of Maastricht’s bookstore, Boekhandel Dominicanen/Maastricht’s archive, Historisch Centrum Limburg.

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How to Create an Engaging Photo Essay (with Examples)

Photo essays tell a story in pictures. They're a great way to improve at photography and story-telling skills at once. Learn how to do create a great one.

Learn | Photography Guides | By Ana Mireles

Photography is a medium used to tell stories – sometimes they are told in one picture, sometimes you need a whole series. Those series can be photo essays.

If you’ve never done a photo essay before, or you’re simply struggling to find your next project, this article will be of help. I’ll be showing you what a photo essay is and how to go about doing one.

You’ll also find plenty of photo essay ideas and some famous photo essay examples from recent times that will serve you as inspiration.

If you’re ready to get started, let’s jump right in!

Table of Contents

What is a Photo Essay?

A photo essay is a series of images that share an overarching theme as well as a visual and technical coherence to tell a story. Some people refer to a photo essay as a photo series or a photo story – this often happens in photography competitions.

Photographic history is full of famous photo essays. Think about The Great Depression by Dorothea Lange, Like Brother Like Sister by Wolfgang Tillmans, Gandhi’s funeral by Henri Cartier Bresson, amongst others.

What are the types of photo essay?

Despite popular belief, the type of photo essay doesn’t depend on the type of photography that you do – in other words, journalism, documentary, fine art, or any other photographic genre is not a type of photo essay.

Instead, there are two main types of photo essays: narrative and thematic .

As you have probably already guessed, the thematic one presents images pulled together by a topic – for example, global warming. The images can be about animals and nature as well as natural disasters devastating cities. They can happen all over the world or in the same location, and they can be captured in different moments in time – there’s a lot of flexibility.

A narrative photo essa y, on the other hand, tells the story of a character (human or not), portraying a place or an event. For example, a narrative photo essay on coffee would document the process from the planting and harvesting – to the roasting and grinding until it reaches your morning cup.

What are some of the key elements of a photo essay?

• Tell a unique story – A unique story doesn’t mean that you have to photograph something that nobody has done before – that would be almost impossible! It means that you should consider what you’re bringing to the table on a particular topic.
• Put yourself into the work – One of the best ways to make a compelling photo essay is by adding your point of view, which can only be done with your life experiences and the way you see the world.
• Add depth to the concept – The best photo essays are the ones that go past the obvious and dig deeper in the story, going behind the scenes, or examining a day in the life of the subject matter – that’s what pulls in the spectator.
• Nail the technique – Even if the concept and the story are the most important part of a photo essay, it won’t have the same success if it’s poorly executed.
• Build a structure – A photo essay is about telling a thought-provoking story – so, think about it in a narrative way. Which images are going to introduce the topic? Which ones represent a climax? How is it going to end – how do you want the viewer to feel after seeing your photo series?
• Make strong choices – If you really want to convey an emotion and a unique point of view, you’re going to need to make some hard decisions. Which light are you using? Which lens? How many images will there be in the series? etc., and most importantly for a great photo essay is the why behind those choices.

9 Tips for Creating a Photo Essay

Credit: Laura James

1. Choose something you know

To make a good photo essay, you don’t need to travel to an exotic location or document a civil war – I mean, it’s great if you can, but you can start close to home.

Depending on the type of photography you do and the topic you’re looking for in your photographic essay, you can photograph a local event or visit an abandoned building outside your town.

It will be much easier for you to find a unique perspective and tell a better story if you’re already familiar with the subject. Also, consider that you might have to return a few times to the same location to get all the photos you need.

2. Follow your passion

Most photo essays take dedication and passion. If you choose a subject that might be easy, but you’re not really into it – the results won’t be as exciting. Taking photos will always be easier and more fun if you’re covering something you’re passionate about.

3. Take your time

A great photo essay is not done in a few hours. You need to put in the time to research it, conceptualizing it, editing, etc. That’s why I previously recommended following your passion because it takes a lot of dedication, and if you’re not passionate about it – it’s difficult to push through.

4. Write a summary or statement

Photo essays are always accompanied by some text. You can do this in the form of an introduction, write captions for each photo or write it as a conclusion. That’s up to you and how you want to present the work.

5. Learn from the masters

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Making a photographic essay takes a lot of practice and knowledge. A great way to become a better photographer and improve your storytelling skills is by studying the work of others. You can go to art shows, review books and magazines and look at the winners in photo contests – most of the time, there’s a category for photo series.

6. Get a wide variety of photos

Think about a story – a literary one. It usually tells you where the story is happening, who is the main character, and it gives you a few details to make you engage with it, right?

The same thing happens with a visual story in a photo essay – you can do some wide-angle shots to establish the scenes and some close-ups to show the details. Make a shot list to ensure you cover all the different angles.

Some of your pictures should guide the viewer in, while others are more climatic and regard the experience they are taking out of your photos.

7. Follow a consistent look

Both in style and aesthetics, all the images in your series need to be coherent. You can achieve this in different ways, from the choice of lighting, the mood, the post-processing, etc.

8. Be self-critical

Once you have all the photos, make sure you edit them with a good dose of self-criticism. Not all the pictures that you took belong in the photo essay. Choose only the best ones and make sure they tell the full story.

9. Ask for constructive feedback

Often, when we’re working on a photo essay project for a long time, everything makes perfect sense in our heads. However, someone outside the project might not be getting the idea. It’s important that you get honest and constructive criticism to improve your photography.

How to Create a Photo Essay in 5 Steps

Credit: Quang Nguyen Vinh

1. Choose your topic

This is the first step that you need to take to decide if your photo essay is going to be narrative or thematic. Then, choose what is it going to be about?

Ideally, it should be something that you’re interested in, that you have something to say about it, and it can connect with other people.

2. Research your topic

To tell a good story about something, you need to be familiar with that something. This is especially true when you want to go deeper and make a compelling photo essay. Day in the life photo essays are a popular choice, since often, these can be performed with friends and family, whom you already should know well.

3. Plan your photoshoot

Depending on what you’re photographing, this step can be very different from one project to the next. For a fine art project, you might need to find a location, props, models, a shot list, etc., while a documentary photo essay is about planning the best time to do the photos, what gear to bring with you, finding a local guide, etc.

Every photo essay will need different planning, so before taking pictures, put in the required time to get things right.

4. Experiment

It’s one thing to plan your photo shoot and having a shot list that you have to get, or else the photo essay won’t be complete. It’s another thing to miss out on some amazing photo opportunities that you couldn’t foresee.

So, be prepared but also stay open-minded and experiment with different settings, different perspectives, etc.

5. Make a final selection

Editing your work can be one of the hardest parts of doing a photo essay. Sometimes we can be overly critical, and others, we get attached to bad photos because we put a lot of effort into them or we had a great time doing them.

Try to be as objective as possible, don’t be afraid to ask for opinions and make various revisions before settling down on a final cut.

7 Photo Essay Topics, Ideas & Examples

Credit: Michelle Leman

• Architectural photo essay

Using architecture as your main subject, there are tons of photo essay ideas that you can do. For some inspiration, you can check out the work of Francisco Marin – who was trained as an architect and then turned to photography to “explore a different way to perceive things”.

You can also lookup Luisa Lambri. Amongst her series, you’ll find many photo essay examples in which architecture is the subject she uses to explore the relationship between photography and space.

• Process and transformation photo essay

This is one of the best photo essay topics for beginners because the story tells itself. Pick something that has a beginning and an end, for example, pregnancy, the metamorphosis of a butterfly, the life-cycle of a plant, etc.

Keep in mind that these topics are linear and give you an easy way into the narrative flow – however, it might be difficult to find an interesting perspective and a unique point of view.

• A day in the life of ‘X’ photo essay

There are tons of interesting photo essay ideas in this category – you can follow around a celebrity, a worker, your child, etc. You don’t even have to do it about a human subject – think about doing a photo essay about a day in the life of a racing horse, for example – find something that’s interesting for you.

• Time passing by photo essay

It can be a natural site or a landmark photo essay – whatever is close to you will work best as you’ll need to come back multiple times to capture time passing by. For example, how this place changes throughout the seasons or maybe even over the years.

A fun option if you live with family is to document a birthday party each year, seeing how the subject changes over time. This can be combined with a transformation essay or sorts, documenting the changes in interpersonal relationships over time.

• Travel photo essay

Do you want to make the jump from tourist snapshots into a travel photo essay? Research the place you’re going to be travelling to. Then, choose a topic.

If you’re having trouble with how to do this, check out any travel magazine – National Geographic, for example. They won’t do a generic article about Texas – they do an article about the beach life on the Texas Gulf Coast and another one about the diverse flavors of Texas.

The more specific you get, the deeper you can go with the story.

• Socio-political issues photo essay

This is one of the most popular photo essay examples – it falls under the category of photojournalism or documental photography. They are usually thematic, although it’s also possible to do a narrative one.

Depending on your topic of interest, you can choose topics that involve nature – for example, document the effects of global warming. Another idea is to photograph protests or make an education photo essay.

It doesn’t have to be a big global issue; you can choose something specific to your community – are there too many stray dogs? Make a photo essay about a local animal shelter. The topics are endless.

• Behind the scenes photo essay

A behind-the-scenes always make for a good photo story – people are curious to know what happens and how everything comes together before a show.

Depending on your own interests, this can be a photo essay about a fashion show, a theatre play, a concert, and so on. You’ll probably need to get some permissions, though, not only to shoot but also to showcase or publish those images.

4 Best Photo Essays in Recent times

Now that you know all the techniques about it, it might be helpful to look at some photo essay examples to see how you can put the concept into practice. Here are some famous photo essays from recent times to give you some inspiration.

Habibi by Antonio Faccilongo

This photo essay wan the World Press Photo Story of the Year in 2021. Faccilongo explores a very big conflict from a very specific and intimate point of view – how the Israeli-Palestinian war affects the families.

He chose to use a square format because it allows him to give order to things and eliminate unnecessary elements in his pictures.

With this long-term photo essay, he wanted to highlight the sense of absence and melancholy women and families feel towards their husbands away at war.

The project then became a book edited by Sarah Leen and the graphics of Ramon Pez.

Picture This: New Orleans by Mary Ellen Mark

The last assignment before her passing, Mary Ellen Mark travelled to New Orleans to register the city after a decade after Hurricane Katrina.

The images of the project “bring to life the rebirth and resilience of the people at the heart of this tale”, – says CNNMoney, commissioner of the work.

Each survivor of the hurricane has a story, and Mary Ellen Mark was there to record it. Some of them have heartbreaking stories about everything they had to leave behind.

Others have a story of hope – like Sam and Ben, two eight-year-olds born from frozen embryos kept in a hospital that lost power supply during the hurricane, yet they managed to survive.

Selfie by Cindy Sherman

Cindy Sherman is an American photographer whose work is mainly done through self-portraits. With them, she explores the concept of identity, gender stereotypes, as well as visual and cultural codes.

One of her latest photo essays was a collaboration with W Magazine entitled Selfie. In it, the author explores the concept of planned candid photos (‘plandid’).

The work was made for Instagram, as the platform is well known for the conflict between the ‘real self’ and the one people present online. Sherman started using Facetune, Perfect365 and YouCam to alter her appearance on selfies – in Photoshop, you can modify everything, but these apps were designed specifically to “make things prettier”- she says, and that’s what she wants to explore in this photo essay.

Tokyo Compression by Michael Wolf

Michael Wolf has an interest in the broad-gauge topic Life in Cities. From there, many photo essays have been derived – amongst them – Tokyo Compression .

He was horrified by the way people in Tokyo are forced to move to the suburbs because of the high prices of the city. Therefore, they are required to make long commutes facing 1,5 hours of train to start their 8+ hour workday followed by another 1,5 hours to get back home.

To portray this way of life, he photographed the people inside the train pressed against the windows looking exhausted, angry or simply absent due to this way of life.

You can visit his website to see other photo essays that revolve around the topic of life in megacities.

Final Words

It’s not easy to make photo essays, so don’t expect to be great at it right from your first project.

Start off small by choosing a specific subject that’s interesting to you –  that will come from an honest place, and it will be a great practice for some bigger projects along the line.

Whether you like to shoot still life or you’re a travel photographer, I hope these photo essay tips and photo essay examples can help you get started and grow in your photography.

Let us know which topics you are working on right now – we’ll love to hear from you!

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Ana Mireles is a Mexican researcher that specializes in photography and communications for the arts and culture sector.

Penelope G. To Ana Mireles Such a well written and helpful article for an writer who wants to inclue photo essay in her memoir. Thank you. I will get to work on this new skill. Penelope G.

Herman Krieger Photo essays in black and white

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Pictures That Tell Stories: Photo Essay Examples

Like any other type of artist, a photographer’s job is to tell a story through their pictures. While some of the most creative among us can invoke emotion or convey a thought with one single photo, the rest of us will rely on a photo essay.

In the following article, we’ll go into detail about what a photo essay is and how to craft one while providing some detailed photo essay examples.

What is a Photo Essay? 

A photo essay is a series of photographs that, when assembled in a particular order, tell a unique and compelling story. While some photographers choose only to use pictures in their presentations, others will incorporate captions, comments, or even full paragraphs of text to provide more exposition for the scene they are unfolding.

A photo essay is a well-established part of photojournalism and have been used for decades to present a variety of information to the reader. Some of the most famous photo essayists include Ansel Adams , W. Eugene Smith, and James Nachtwey. Of course, there are thousands of photo essay examples out there from which you can draw inspiration.

Why Consider Creating a Photo Essay?

As the old saying goes, “a picture is worth 1000 words.” This adage is, for many photographers, reason enough to hold a photo essay in particularly high regard.

For others, a photo essay allow them to take pictures that are already interesting and construct intricate, emotionally-charged tales out of them. For all photographers, it is yet another skill they can master to become better at their craft.

As you might expect, the photo essay have had a long history of being associated with photojournalism. From the Great Depression to Civil Rights Marches and beyond, many compelling stories have been told through a combination of images and text, or photos alone. A photo essay often evokes an intense reaction, whether artistic in nature or designed to prove a socio-political point.

Below, we’ll list some famous photo essay samples to further illustrate the subject.

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Famous Photo Essays

“The Great Depression” by Dorothea Lange – Shot and arranged in the 1930s, this famous photo essay still serves as a stark reminder of The Great Depression and Dust Bowl America . Beautifully photographed, the black and white images offer a bleak insight to one of the country’s most difficult times.

“The Vietnam War” by Philip Jones Griffiths – Many artists consider the Griffiths’ photo essay works to be some of the most important records of the war in Vietnam. His photographs and great photo essays are particularly well-remembered for going against public opinion and showing the suffering of the “other side,” a novel concept when it came to war photography.

Various American Natural Sites by Ansel Adams – Adams bought the beauty of nature home to millions, photographing the American Southwest and places like Yosemite National Park in a way that made the photos seem huge, imposing, and beautiful.

“Everyday” by Noah Kalina – Is a series of photographs arranged into a video. This photo essay features daily photographs of the artist himself, who began taking capturing the images when he was 19 and continued to do so for six years.

“Signed, X” by Kate Ryan – This is a powerful photo essay put together to show the long-term effects of sexual violence and assault. This photo essay is special in that it remains ongoing, with more subjects being added every year.

Common Types of Photo Essays

While a photo essay do not have to conform to any specific format or design, there are two “umbrella terms” under which almost all genres of photo essays tend to fall. A photo essay is thematic and narrative. In the following section, we’ll give some details about the differences between the two types, and then cover some common genres used by many artists.

⬥ Thematic 

A thematic photo essay speak on a specific subject. For instance, numerous photo essays were put together in the 1930s to capture the ruin of The Great Depression. Though some of these presentations followed specific people or families, they mostly told the “story” of the entire event. There is much more freedom with a thematic photo essay, and you can utilize numerous locations and subjects. Text is less common with these types of presentations.

⬥ Narrative 

A narrative photo essay is much more specific than thematic essays, and they tend to tell a much more direct story. For instance, rather than show a number of scenes from a Great Depression Era town, the photographer might show the daily life of a person living in Dust Bowl America. There are few rules about how broad or narrow the scope needs to be, so photographers have endless creative freedom. These types of works frequently utilize text.

Common Photo Essay Genres

Walk a City – This photo essay is when you schedule a time to walk around a city, neighborhood, or natural site with the sole goal of taking photos. Usually thematic in nature, this type of photo essay allows you to capture a specific place, it’s energy, and its moods and then pass them along to others.

The Relationship Photo Essay – The interaction between families and loved ones if often a fascinating topic for a photo essay. This photo essay genre, in particular, gives photographers an excellent opportunity to capture complex emotions like love and abstract concepts like friendship. When paired with introspective text, the results can be quite stunning. 

The Timelapse Transformation Photo Essay – The goal of a transformation photo essay is to capture the way a subject changes over time. Some people take years or even decades putting together a transformation photo essay, with subjects ranging from people to buildings to trees to particular areas of a city.

Going Behind The Scenes Photo Essay – Many people are fascinated by what goes on behind the scenes of big events. Providing the photographer can get access; to an education photo essay can tell a very unique and compelling story to their viewers with this photo essay.

Photo Essay of a Special Event – There are always events and occasions going on that would make an interesting subject for a photo essay. Ideas for this photo essay include concerts, block parties, graduations, marches, and protests. Images from some of the latter were integral to the popularity of great photo essays.

The Daily Life Photo Essay – This type of photo essay often focus on a single subject and attempt to show “a day in the life” of that person or object through the photographs. This type of photo essay can be quite powerful depending on the subject matter and invoke many feelings in the people who view them.

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Photo Essay Ideas and Examples

One of the best ways to gain a better understanding of photo essays is to view some photo essay samples. If you take the time to study these executions in detail, you’ll see just how photo essays can make you a better photographer and offer you a better “voice” with which to speak to your audience.

Some of these photo essay ideas we’ve already touched on briefly, while others will be completely new to you. 

Cover a Protest or March  

Some of the best photo essay examples come from marches, protests, and other events associated with movements or socio-political statements. Such events allow you to take pictures of angry, happy, or otherwise empowered individuals in high-energy settings. The photo essay narrative can also be further enhanced by arriving early or staying long after the protest has ended to catch contrasting images. 

Photograph a Local Event  

Whether you know it or not, countless unique and interesting events are happening in and around your town this year. Such events provide photographers new opportunities to put together a compelling photo essay. From ethnic festivals to historical events to food and beverage celebrations, there are many different ways to capture and celebrate local life.

Visit an Abandoned Site or Building  

Old homes and historical sites are rich with detail and can sometimes appear dilapidated, overgrown by weeds, or broken down by time. These qualities make them a dynamic and exciting subject. Many great photo essay works of abandoned homes use a mix of far-away shots, close-ups, weird angles, and unique lighting. Such techniques help set a mood that the audience can feel through the photographic essay.

Chronicle a Pregnancy

Few photo essay topics could be more personal than telling the story of a pregnancy. Though this photo essay example can require some preparation and will take a lot of time, the results of a photographic essay like this are usually extremely emotionally-charged and touching. In some cases, photographers will continue the photo essay project as the child grows as well.

Photograph Unique Lifestyles  

People all over the world are embracing society’s changes in different ways. People live in vans or in “tiny houses,” living in the woods miles away from everyone else, and others are growing food on self-sustaining farms. Some of the best photo essay works have been born out of these new, inspiring movements.

Photograph Animals or Pets  

If you have a favorite animal (or one that you know very little about), you might want to arrange a way to see it up close and tell its story through images. You can take photos like this in a zoo or the animal’s natural habitat, depending on the type of animal you choose. Pets are another great topic for a photo essay and are among the most popular subjects for many photographers.

Show Body Positive Themes  

So much of modern photography is about showing the best looking, prettiest, or sexiest people at all times. Choosing a photo essay theme like body positivity, however, allows you to film a wide range of interesting-looking people from all walks of life.

Such a photo essay theme doesn’t just apply to women, as beauty can be found everywhere. As a photo essay photographer, it’s your job to find it!

Bring Social Issues to Life  

Some of the most impactful social photo essay examples are those where the photographer focuses on social issues. From discrimination to domestic violence to the injustices of the prison system, there are many ways that a creative photographer can highlight what’s wrong with the world. This type of photo essay can be incredibly powerful when paired with compelling subjects and some basic text.

Photograph Style and Fashion

If you live in or know of a particularly stylish locale or area, you can put together an excellent thematic photo essay by capturing impromptu shots of well-dressed people as they pass by. As with culture, style is easily identifiable and is as unifying as it is divisive. Great photo essay examples include people who’ve covered fashion sub-genres from all over the world, like urban hip hop or Japanese Visual Kei. 

Photograph Native Cultures and Traditions  

If you’ve ever opened up a copy of National Geographic, you’ve probably seen photo essay photos that fit this category. To many, the traditions, dress, religious ceremonies, and celebrations of native peoples and foreign cultures can be utterly captivating. For travel photographers, this photo essay is considered one of the best ways to tell a story with or without text.

Capture Seasonal Or Time Changes In A Landmark Photo Essay

Time-lapse photography is very compelling to most viewers. What they do in a few hours, however, others are doing over months, years, and even decades. If you know of an exciting landscape or scene, you can try to capture the same image in Winter, Spring, Summer, and Fall, and put that all together into one landmark photo essay.

Alternatively, you can photograph something being lost or ravaged by time or weather. The subject of your landmark photo essay can be as simple as the wall of an old building or as complex as an old house in the woods being taken over by nature. As always, there are countless transformation-based landmark photo essay works from which you can draw inspiration.

Photograph Humanitarian Efforts or Charity  

Humanitarian efforts by groups like Habitat for Humanity, the Red Cross, and Doctors Without Borders can invoke a powerful response through even the simplest of photos. While it can be hard to put yourself in a position to get the images, there are countless photo essay examples to serve as inspiration for your photo essay project.

How to Create a Photo Essay

There is no singular way to create a photo essay. As it is, ultimately, and artistic expression of the photographer, there is no right, wrong, good, or bad. However, like all stories, some tell them well and those who do not. Luckily, as with all things, practice does make perfect. Below, we’ve listed some basic steps outlining how to create a photo essay

Steps To Create A Photo Essay

Choose Your Topic – While some photo essayists will be able to “happen upon” a photo story and turn it into something compelling, most will want to choose their photo essay topics ahead of time. While the genres listed above should provide a great starting place, it’s essential to understand that photo essay topics can cover any event or occasion and any span of time

Do Some Research – The next step to creating a photo essay is to do some basic research. Examples could include learning the history of the area you’re shooting or the background of the person you photograph. If you’re photographing a new event, consider learning the story behind it. Doing so will give you ideas on what to look for when you’re shooting.  

Make a Storyboard – Storyboards are incredibly useful tools when you’re still in the process of deciding what photo story you want to tell. By laying out your ideas shot by shot, or even doing rough illustrations of what you’re trying to capture, you can prepare your photo story before you head out to take your photos.

This process is especially important if you have little to no control over your chosen subject. People who are participating in a march or protest, for instance, aren’t going to wait for you to get in position before offering up the perfect shot. You need to know what you’re looking for and be prepared to get it.

Get the Right Images – If you have a shot list or storyboard, you’ll be well-prepared to take on your photo essay. Make sure you give yourself enough time (where applicable) and take plenty of photos, so you have a lot from which to choose. It would also be a good idea to explore the area, show up early, and stay late. You never know when an idea might strike you.

Assemble Your Story – Once you develop or organize your photos on your computer, you need to choose the pictures that tell the most compelling photo story or stories. You might also find some great images that don’t fit your photo story These can still find a place in your portfolio, however, or perhaps a completely different photo essay you create later.

Depending on the type of photographer you are, you might choose to crop or digitally edit some of your photos to enhance the emotions they invoke. Doing so is completely at your discretion, but worth considering if you feel you can improve upon the naked image.

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Best Photo Essays Tips And Tricks

Before you approach the art of photo essaying for the first time, you might want to consider with these photo essay examples some techniques, tips, and tricks that can make your session more fun and your final results more interesting. Below, we’ve compiled a list of some of the best advice we could find on the subject of photo essays. 

⬥ Experiment All You Want 

You can, and should, plan your topic and your theme with as much attention to detail as possible. That said, some of the best photo essay examples come to us from photographers that got caught up in the moment and decided to experiment in different ways. Ideas for experimentation include the following: 

Angles – Citizen Kane is still revered today for the unique, dramatic angles used in the film. Though that was a motion picture and not photography, the same basic principles still apply. Don’t be afraid to photograph some different angles to see how they bring your subject to life in different ways.

Color – Some images have more gravitas in black in white or sepia tone. You can say the same for images that use color in an engaging, dynamic way. You always have room to experiment with color, both before and after the shoot.

Contrast – Dark and light, happy and sad, rich and poor – contrast is an instantly recognizable form of tension that you can easily include in your photo essay. In some cases, you can plan for dramatic contrasts. In other cases, you simply need to keep your eyes open.

Exposure Settings – You can play with light in terms of exposure as well, setting a number of different moods in the resulting photos. Some photographers even do random double exposures to create a photo essay that’s original.

Filters – There are endless post-production options available to photographers, particularly if they use digital cameras. Using different programs and apps, you can completely alter the look and feel of your image, changing it from warm to cool or altering dozens of different settings.

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If you’re using traditional film instead of a digital camera, you’re going to want to stock up. Getting the right shots for a photo essay usually involves taking hundreds of images that will end up in the rubbish bin. Taking extra pictures you won’t use is just the nature of the photography process. Luckily, there’s nothing better than coming home to realize that you managed to capture that one, perfect photograph. 

⬥ Set the Scene 

You’re not just telling a story to your audience – you’re writing it as well. If the scene you want to capture doesn’t have the look you want, don’t be afraid to move things around until it does. While this doesn’t often apply to photographing events that you have no control over, you shouldn’t be afraid to take a second to make an OK shot a great shot. 

⬥ Capture Now, Edit Later 

Editing, cropping, and digital effects can add a lot of drama and artistic flair to your photos. That said, you shouldn’t waste time on a shoot, thinking about how you can edit it later. Instead, make sure you’re capturing everything that you want and not missing out on any unique pictures. If you need to make changes later, you’ll have plenty of time! 

⬥ Make It Fun 

As photographers, we know that taking pictures is part art, part skill, and part performance. If you want to take the best photo essays, you need to loosen up and have fun. Again, you’ll want to plan for your topic as best as you can, but don’t be afraid to lose yourself in the experience. Once you let yourself relax, both the ideas and the opportunities will manifest.

⬥ It’s All in The Details 

When someone puts out a photographic essay for an audience, that work usually gets analyzed with great attention to detail. You need to apply this same level of scrutiny to the shots you choose to include in your photo essay. If something is out of place or (in the case of historical work) out of time, you can bet the audience will notice.

⬥ Consider Adding Text

While it isn’t necessary, a photographic essay can be more powerful by the addition of text. This is especially true of images with an interesting background story that can’t be conveyed through the image alone. If you don’t feel up to the task of writing content, consider partnering with another artist and allowing them tor bring your work to life.

Final Thoughts 

The world is waiting to tell us story after story. Through the best photo essays, we can capture the elements of those stories and create a photo essay that can invoke a variety of emotions in our audience.

No matter the type of cameras we choose, the techniques we embrace, or the topics we select, what really matters is that the photos say something about the people, objects, and events that make our world wonderful.

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How to Create a Photo Essay in 9 Steps (with Examples)

Photo Editing , Tutorials

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What is a photo essay?

• Photo essays vs photo stories
• How photo essays help you
• 9 Steps to create photo essays

How to share your photo essays

Read Time: 11 minutes

Gather up a handful of images that seem to go together, and voila! It’s a photo essay, right? Well… no. Though, this is a common misconception.

In reality, a photo essay is much more thoughtful and structured than that. When you take the time to craft one, you’re using skills from all facets of our craft – from composition to curation.

In this guide, you’ll learn what makes a photo essay an amazing project that stretches your skills. You'll also learn exactly how to make one step by step.

• Photo essay vs photo story

A photo essay is a collection of images based around a theme, a topic, a creative approach, or an exploration of an idea. Photo essays balance visual variety with a cohesive style and concept.

What's the difference between a photo essay and a photo story?

The terms photo essay and photo story are often used interchangeably. Even the dictionary definition of “photo essay” includes using images to convey either a theme or a story.

But in my experience, a photo essay and a photo story are two different things. As you delve into the field of visual storytelling, distinguishing between the two helps you to take a purposeful approach to what you’re making .

The differences ultimately lie in the distinctions between theme, topic and story.

Themes are big-picture concepts. Example: Wildness

Topics are more specific than themes, but still overarching. Example : Wild bears of Yellowstone National Park

Stories are specific instances or experiences that happen within, or provide an example for, a topic or theme. Example: A certain wild bear became habituated to tourists and was relocated to maintain its wildness

Unlike a theme or topic, a story has particular elements that make it a story. They include leading characters, a setting, a narrative arc, conflict, and (usually) resolution.

With that in mind, we can distingush between a photo essay and a photo story.

Themes and Topics vs Stories

A photo essay revolves around a topic, theme, idea, or concept. It visually explores a big-picture something .

This allows a good deal of artistic leeway where a photographer can express their vision, philosophies, opinions, or artistic expression as they create their images.

A photo story  is a portfolio of images that illustrate – you guessed it – a story.

Because of this, there are distinct types of images that a photo story uses that add to the understanding, insight, clarity and meaning to the story for viewers. While they can certainly be artistically crafted and visually stunning, photo stories document something happening, and rely on visual variety for capturing the full experience.

A photo essay doesn’t need to have the same level of structured variety that a photo story requires. It can have images that overlap or are similar, as they each explore various aspects of a theme.

Photo essays can be about any topic. If you live in a city, consider using your nature photography to make an essay about the wildlife that lives in your neighborhood . 

The role of text with photos

A photo story typically runs alongside text that narrates the story. We're a visual species, and the images help us feel like we are there, experiencing what's happening. So, the images add significant power to the text, but they're often a partner to it.

This isn’t always the case, of course. Sometimes photo stories don’t need or use text. It’s like reading a graphic novel that doesn’t use text. Moving through the different images that build on each other ultimately unveils the narrative.

Photo essays don’t need to rely on text to illuminate the images' theme or topic. The photographer may use captions (or even a text essay), or they may let the images speak for themselves.

Definitions are helpful guidelines (not strict rules)

Some people categorize photo essays as either narrative or thematic. That's essentially just calling photo stories “narrative photo essays” and photo essays “thematic photo essays.”

But, a story is a defined thing, and any writer/editor will tell you themes and topics are not the same as stories. And we use the word “story” in our daily lives as it’s defined. So, it makes far more sense to name the difference between a photo essay and a photo story, and bask in the same clarity writers enjoy .

Photo stories illustrate a particular experience, event, narrative, something that happened or is happening.

Photo essays explore an idea, concept, topic, theme, creative approach, big-picture something .

Both photo essays and photo stories are immensely powerful visual tools. And yes, the differences between them can certainly be blurred, as is always the case with art.

Simply use this distinction as a general guideline, providing extra clarity around what you’re making and why you're making it.

To dig into specific types of images used to create powerful photo stories, check out this training: 6 Must-Have Shots for a Photo Story. 

Meanwhile, let’s dig deeper into photo essays.

Photo essays are a chance to try new styles or techniques that stretch your skills and creativity. This image was part of an essay exploring simplicity and shape, and helped me learn new skills in black and white post-processing.

How photo essays improve your photography

Creating photo essays is an amazing antidote if you’ve ever felt a lack of direction or purpose in your photography. Photo essays help build your photographic skills in at least 3 important ways.

1. You become more strategic in creating a body of work

It's easy to get stuck in a rut of photographing whatever pops up in front of you. And when you do, you end up with a collection of stand-alone shots.

These singles may work fine as a print, a quick Instagram post, or an addition to your gallery of shots on your website. But amassing a bunch of one-off shots limits your opportunities as a photographer for everything from exhibits to getting your work published.

Building photo essays pushes you to think strategically about what you photograph, why, and how. You're working toward a particular deliverable – a cohesive visual essay – with the images you create.

This elevates your skills in crafting your photo essay, and in how you curate the rest of your work, from galleries on your website to selecting images to sell as prints .

2. You become more purposeful in your composition skills

Composition is so much more than just following the rule of thirds, golden spirals, or thinking about the angle of light in a shot.

Composition is also about thinking ahead in what you’re trying to accomplish with a photograph – from what you’re saying through it to its emotional impact on a viewer – and where it fits within a larger body of work.

Photo essays push you to think critically about each shot – from coming up with fresh compositions for familiar subjects, to devising surprising compositions to fit within a collection, to creating compositions that expand on what’s already in a photo essay.

You’re pushed beyond creating a single pleasing frame, which leads you to shoot more thoughtfully and proactively than ever.

(Here’s a podcast episode on switching from reactive shooting to proactive shooting.)

3. You develop strong editing and curation skills

Selecting which images stay, and which get left behind is one of the hardest jobs on a photographer’s to-do list. Mostly, it’s because of emotional attachment.

You might think it’s an amazing shot because you know the effort that went into capturing it. Or perhaps when you look at it, you get a twinge of the joy or exhilaration you felt the moment you captured it. There’s also the second-guessing that goes into which of two similar images is the best – which will people like more? So you’re tempted to just show both.

Ultimately, great photographers appear all the more skilled because they only show their best work. That in and of itself is a skill they’ve developed through years of ruthlessly editing their own work.

Because the most powerful photo essays only show a handful of extraordinary images, you’re bound to develop the very same critical skill (and look all the more talented because of it).

Photo essays are also a great stepping stone to creating photo stories. If you’re interested in moving beyond stand-alone shots and building stories, shooting photo essays will get your creative brain limbered up and ready for the adventure of photo stories.

A photo essay exploring the natural history of a favorite species is an exciting opportunity for an in-depth study. For me, that was a photo essay on emotive images of the American dipper (Cinclus mexicanus) as it hunts in streams. 

9 Simple steps to create your photo essays

1. clarify your theme.

Choose a theme, topic, or concept you want to explore. Spend some time getting crystal clear on what you want to focus on. It helps to write out a few sentences, or even a few paragraphs noting:

• What you want the essay to be about
• What kinds of images you want to create as part of it
• How you’ll photograph the images
• The style, techniques, or gear you might use to create your images
• What “success” looks like when you’re done with your photo essay

You don’t have to stick to what you write down, of course. It can change during the image creation process. But fleshing your idea out on paper goes a long way in clarifying your photo essay theme and how you’ll go about creating it.

2. Create your images

Grab your camera and head outside!

As you’re photographing your essay, allow yourself some freedom to experiment. Try unusual compositions or techniques that are new to you.

Stretch your style a little, or “try on” the style of other photographers you admire who have photographed similar subjects.

Photo essays are wonderful opportunities to push yourself outside of your comfort zone and grow as a photographer.

Remember that a photo essay is a visually cohesive collection of images that make sense together. So, while you might stretch yourself into new terrain as you shoot, try to keep that approach, style, or strategy consistent.

Don’t be afraid to create lots of images. It’s great to have lots to choose from in the editing process, which comes up next.

3. Pull together your wide edit

Once you’ve created your images, pull together all the images that might make the cut. This could be as many as 40-60 images. Include anything you want to consider for the final essay in the wide edit.

From here, start weeding out images that:

• are weaker in composition or subject matter
• stand out like a sore thumb from the rest of the collection
• Are similar to other stronger images in the collection

It's helpful to review the images at thumbnail size. You make more instinctive decisions and can more easily see the body of work as a whole. If an image is strong even at thumbnail size to stand out from similar frames while also partnering well with other images in the collection, that's a good sign it's strong enough for the essay.

4. Post-process your images for a cohesive look

Now it’s time to post-process the images. Use whatever editing software you’re comfortable with to polish your images.

Again, a photo essay has a cohesive visual look. If you use presets, filters, or other tools, use them across all the images.

5. Finalize your selection

It’s time to make the tough decisions. Select only the strongest for your photo essay from your group of images.

Each image should be strong enough to stand on its own and make sense as part of the whole group.

Many photo essays range from 8-12 images. But of course, it varies based on the essay. The number of images you have in your final photo essay is up to you.

Remember, less is more. A photo essay is most powerful when each image deserves to be included.

6. Put your images in a purposeful order

Create a visual flow with your images. Decide which image is first, and build from there. Use compositions, colors, and subject matter to decide which image goes next, then next, then next in the order.

Think of it like music: notes are arranged in a way that builds energy, or slows it down, surprise listeners with a new refrain, or drop into a familiar chorus. How the notes are ordered creates emotional arcs for listeners.

How you order your images is similar.

Think of the experience a viewer will have as they look at one image, then the next, and the next. Order your images so they create the experience you want your audience to have.

7. Get feedback

The best photographers make space for feedback, even when it’s tough to hear. Your work benefits from not just hearing feedback, but listening to it and applying what you learn from it.

Show your photo essay to people who have different sensibilities or tastes. Friends, family members, fellow photographers – anyone you trust to give you honest feedback.

Watch their reactions and hear what they say about what they’re seeing. Use their feedback to guide you in the next step.

8. Refine, revise, and finalize

Let your photo essay marinate for a little while. Take a day or two away from it. Then use your freshened eyes and the feedback you received from the previous step to refine your essay.

Swap out any selects you might want to change and reorder the images if needed.

9. Add captions

Even if you don’t plan on displaying captions with your images, captioning your images is a great practice to get into. It gives context, story, and important information to each image. And, more than likely, you will want to use these captions at some point when you share your photo essay, which we dive into later in this article.

Add captions to the image files using Lightroom, Bridge, or other software programs.

Create a document, such as a Google or Word doc, with captions for each image.

In your captions, share a bit about the story behind the image, or the creation process. Add whatever makes sense to share that provides a greater understanding of the image and its purpose.

Photo essays allow you to explore deliberate style choices, such as a focus on shapes, patterns, textures, and lines. Since each photo is part of a larger essay, it encourages you to be bold with choices you might not otherwise make. 

5 Examples of amazing nature photo essays

1. “how the water shapes us” from the nature conservancy.

This gorgeous essay, crafted with the work of multiple photographers, explores the people and places within the Mississippi River basin. Through the images, we gain a sense of how the water influences life from the headwater all the way to the Gulf of Mexico. Notice how each photographer is tasked with the same theme, yet approaches it with their own distinct style and vision. It is a wonderful example of the sheer level of visual variety you can have while maintaining a consistent style or theme.

View it here

2. “A Cyclist on the English Landscape” from New York Times’ The World Through A Lens series

This photo essay is a series of self-portraits by travel photographer Roff Smith while “stuck” at home during the pandemic. As he peddled the roads making portraits, the project evolved into a “celebration of traveling at home”. It’s a great example of how visually consistent you can be inside a theme while making each image completely unique.

3. “Vermont, Dressed In Snow” from New York Times’ The World Through A Lens series

This essay by aerial photographer Caleb Kenna uses a very common photo essay theme: snow. Because all images are aerial photographs, there’s a consistency to them. Yet, the compositions are utterly unique from one another. It’s a great example of keeping viewers surprised as they move from one image to the next while still maintaining a clear focus on the theme.

4. “Starling-Studded Skies” from bioGraphic Magazine

This beautiful essay is by Kathryn Cooper, a physicist trained in bioinformatics, and a talented photographer. She used a 19th century photographic technique, chronophotography, to create images that give us a look at the art and science of starling murmurations. She states: “I’m interested in the transient moments when chaos briefly changes to order, and thousands of individual bodies appear to move as one.” This essay is a great example of deep exploration of a concept using a specific photographic technique.

View it here   (Note: must be viewed on desktop)

5. “These Scrappy Photos Capture the Action-Packed World Beneath a Bird Feeder” from Audubon Magazine

This photo essay from conservation photographer Carla Rhodes explores the wildlife that takes advantage of the bounty of food waiting under bird feeders . Using remote camera photography , Rhodes gives viewers a unique ground-level perspective and captures moments that make us feel like we’re in conversation with friends in the Hundred Acre Woods. This essay is a great example of how perspective, personality, and chance can all come into play as you explore both an idea and a technique.

25 Ideas for creative photo essays you can make

The possibilities for photo essays are truly endless – from the concepts you explore to the techniques you use and styles you apply.

Choose an idea, hone your unique perspective on it, then start applying the 9 simple steps from above. 

• The life of a plant or animal (your favorite species, a species living in your yard, etc)
• The many shapes of a single species (a tree species, a bird species, etc)
• How a place changes over time
• The various moods of a place
• A conservation issue you care about
• Math in nature
• Urban nature
• Seasonal changes
• Your yard as a space for nature
• Shifting climate and its impacts
• Human impacts on environments
• Elements: Water, wind, fire, earth
• Day in the life (of a person, a place, a stream, a tree…)
• Outdoor recreation (birding, kayaking, hiking, naturalist journaling…)
• Wildlife rehabilitation
• Lunar cycles
• Sunlight and shadows
• Your local watershed
• Coexistence

As you zero in on a photo essay theme, consider two things: what most excites you about an idea, and what about it pushes you out of your comfort zone. The heady mix of joy and challenge will ensure you stick with it. 

Your photo essay is ready for the world! Decide how you’d like to make an impact with your work. You might use one or several of the options below.

1. Share it on your website

Create a gallery or a scrollytelling page on your website. This is a great way to drive traffic to your website where people can peruse your photo essay and the rest of the photography you have.

Putting it on your website and optimizing your images for SEO helps you build organic traffic and potentially be discovered by a broader audience, including photo editors.

2. Create a scrollytelling web page

If you enjoy the experience of immersive visual experiences, consider making one using your essay. And no, you don’t have to be a whiz at code to make it happen.

Shorthand helps you build web pages with scrollytelling techniques that make a big impression on viewers. Their free plan allows you to publish 3 essays or stories.

3. Create a Medium post

If you don’t have a website and want to keep things simple, a post on Medium is a great option.

Though it’s known for being a platform for bloggers, it’s also possible to add images to a post for a simple scroll.

And, because readers can discover and share posts, it’s a good place for your photos to get the attention of people who might not otherwise come across it.

4. Share it on Instagram

Instagram has changed a lot over the last couple of years, but it’s still a place for photographers to share their work thoughtfully.

There are at least 3 great ways to share your photo essay on the platform.

– Create a single post for each image. Add a caption. Publish one post per day until the full essay is on your feed. Share each post via Instagram Stories to bring more attention and interaction to your photo essay.

– Create a carousel post. You can add up 10 photos to a carousel post, so you may need to create two of them for your full photo essay. Or you might create a series of carousel posts using 3-4 images in each.

– Create a Reel featuring your images as a video.  The algorithm heavily favors reels, so turning your photo essay into a video experience can get it out to a larger audience.

I ran a “create a reel” challenge in my membership community. One member created a reel with her still images around a serious conservation issue. It gathered a ton of attention and landed her opportunities to share her message through YouTube and podcast interviews and publishing opportunities. Watch it here.

5. Exhibit it locally

Reach out to local galleries, cafes, pubs, or even the public library to see if they’re interested in hanging your photo essay for display. Many local businesses and organizations happily support the work of local artists.

6. Pitch your photo essay to publications

One of the best ways to reach an audience with your work is to get it published. Find publications that are a great fit for the theme and style of your photo essay, then pitch your essay for consideration. You gain a fantastic opportunity to share your work widely and can earn a paycheck at the same time.

Remember that if you want to get your photo essay published, you may want to hold back from sharing it publicly before you pitch it to publications.

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58 Photography Quotes About Memories: A Timeless Journey

Michael • October 29, 2023 • 6 min read

In the realm of captured moments and preserved emotions, there’s a unique magic that unfolds. Photography quotes about memories serve as gateways to this enchanting world, where each snapshot tells a story, each image a verse in the poetry of the past.

These quotes, rich with insight and emotion, offer a window into the soul of photography, revealing its power to hold time in its grasp, to keep memories alive in the heart of a fleeting world.

Join me on a journey through the lens of nostalgia, where words and pictures dance in the delicate balance of remembering and dreaming. captions, offering insights and inspiration to elevate your Instagram game.

1. The Power of Photography in Capturing Memories

Let’s waltz back in time to where it all began, to the cradle of that famous adage, “ A picture is worth a thousand words. ” This phrase, as timeless as photography itself, finds its roots in a myriad of cultures and epochs. It’s a universal truth, transcending boundaries and eras, capturing the essence of photography’s power.

Imagine a world where memories are not just fleeting thoughts but tangible echoes you can hold. That’s the world of photography. Let’s delve into the heart of this world through the words of those who have mastered the art:

• “ Photography is the story I fail to put into words. ” – Destin Sparks . Here lies the magic of a photograph – it tells a story beyond the grasp of words, a narrative captured in a single frame.
• “ We take photos as a return ticket to a moment otherwise gone. ” – Katie Thurmes . This quote encapsulates the essence of photography – a bridge back to moments that time has swept away.

2. Philosophical and Emotional Aspects of Photography

Photography, my dear friends, is not just about capturing a smile, a sunset, or a scene; it’s about capturing a feeling, an unspoken emotion, a whispered thought.

The Depth Behind the Lens

Let’s dive into the ocean of emotions that photography encapsulates:

• “ The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera. ” – Dorothea Lange . This profound statement reminds us that photography is not just about the image we capture but about the perspective we gain.
• “ Taking pictures is savoring life intensely, every hundredth of a second. ” – Marc Riboud . Here, photography is portrayed as a means to intensely experience and savor the fleeting moments of life.

Emotions Captured in Time

Photography has the unique power to not only capture a moment but also the emotions intertwined with it. It’s a language that speaks directly to the heart, transcending the barriers of time and space.

• “ A photograph is a secret about a secret. The more it tells you, the less you know. ” – Diane Arbus . This quote beautifully captures the enigmatic nature of photographs – they reveal and conceal, they tell a story and yet leave so much to the imagination.

In the following sections, we’ll continue to explore the multifaceted world of photography, diving deeper into its artistic, emotional, and timeless nature.

Stay tuned, for each photograph has a story to tell, and we are just getting started on this enchanting journey through the lens of memories.

Readers are also interested in: Photography Quotes for Wedding Real Estate Quotes Portrait Photography Quotes Car Quotes and Captions Nature Photography Quotes

3. Photography as an Art Form

In the grand gallery of art forms, photography holds a special place. It’s where reality meets imagination, where the mundane becomes extraordinary. Let’s hear it from the maestros themselves:

• Annie Leibovitz muses, “ One doesn’t stop seeing. One doesn’t stop framing. It’s on all the time. ” This quote reflects the perpetual artistic vision of a photographer, where every moment holds the potential to become a masterpiece.
• Ansel Adams , a poet with a camera, once said, “ You don’t take a photograph, you make it. ” This simple yet profound statement encapsulates the essence of photography as an art form – it’s not just about capturing what’s there, but about creating something more, something that transcends the ordinary.

Artistic Alchemy in Photography

Photography, in its purest form, is alchemy. It transforms the fleeting into the eternal, the ordinary into the extraordinary. It’s an art that requires not just a keen eye, but a soul that can see the beauty in the mundane.

4. The Technical and Artistic Eye in Photography

Photography is a symphony where technical skill and artistic vision play a harmonious duet. It’s not just about knowing your camera, but about knowing your world and how to capture its essence.

Quotes That Illuminate the Photographer’s Vision

• “ The best thing about a picture is that it never changes, even when the people in it do. ” – Andy Warhol . This quote highlights the photographer’s ability to freeze a moment, to capture a slice of time that remains untouched by the relentless march of the present.
• “ Photography is the only language that can be understood anywhere in the world. ” – Bruno Barbey . Here, the universal nature of photography is celebrated, transcending linguistic and cultural barriers, speaking a language understood by all.

The Art of Seeing

Photography is as much about what you see as it is about how you see it. It’s about looking at the world through a lens that captures not just images, but stories, emotions, and dreams.

5. The Timeless Nature of Photographs

In a world that’s constantly changing, photographs stand as timeless sentinels of memory. They are the keepers of our past, the storytellers of our journey.

Quotes That Capture Timelessness

• “ Photographs open doors into the past, but they also allow a look into the future. ” – Sally Mann . This quote beautifully captures the dual nature of photographs as gateways to both the past and the future.
• “ A good snapshot keeps a moment from running away. ” – Eudora Welty . Here, the photograph is seen as a guardian of moments, a keeper of memories that might otherwise fade into oblivion.

Nostalgia Captured in Frames

There’s a certain nostalgia that photographs evoke, a longing for moments gone but not forgotten. They are like time machines, taking us back to moments we thought we had lost, allowing us to relive, to feel, to be there once again.

In the next sections, we’ll delve deeper into the emotional resonance of photographs and their role in our personal and collective memories.

6. Photography’s Role in Personal and Collective Memory

Photography serves as a bridge between personal anecdotes and the grand narrative of history. It’s a medium that captures not just faces and places, but the very essence of an era, the spirit of a moment.

Personal Mementos and Historical Chronicles

• Photographs are like personal diaries made visible, tangible. They hold our joys, sorrows, triumphs, and tribulations, preserving them for future generations.
• On a grander scale, photography documents our collective journey. From monumental events to everyday life, it provides a visual history, a testament to our shared experiences and evolution.

Preserving Histories, Personal and Societal

The role of photography in preserving history is unparalleled. It’s a custodian of our collective memory, a witness to times both turbulent and tranquil. It tells stories that words alone cannot, capturing the unspoken, the unseen, the overlooked.

7. The Emotional Impact of Photographs

Photographs have a unique power to evoke emotions, to transport us back to moments long passed. They are not just images; they are echoes of laughter, whispers of tears, and shadows of feelings.

Quotes That Speak to the Heart

• “ What I like about photographs is that they capture a moment that’s gone forever, impossible to reproduce. ” – Karl Lagerfeld . This quote encapsulates the poignant beauty of photographs – their ability to seize the unrepeatable, the irreplaceable.
• “ The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera. ” – Dorothea Lange. Here, the emotional impact of photography is highlighted, showing how it changes our perception, teaching us to see the world and its myriad emotions with a more empathetic eye.

Personal Connections Through the Lens

Each photograph is a personal story, a fragment of someone’s life. It’s a connection not just between the subject and the photographer, but also between the photograph and the viewer. It’s a silent conversation across time and space.

8. The Universality of Photographic Language

Photography transcends linguistic boundaries, speaking a language understood by all. It’s a universal form of expression, accessible and relatable to people from all walks of life.

Quotes That Celebrate Universality

• “ Photography is the only language that can be understood anywhere in the world. ” – Bruno Barbey. This quote celebrates the universal nature of photography, its ability to communicate across cultural and linguistic divides.
• “ In photography, there is a reality so subtle that it becomes more real than reality. ” – Alfred Stieglitz . Here, the universal appeal of photography is attributed to its ability to capture and convey subtleties and nuances that might be lost in translation in other forms of communication.

A Language Without Borders

Photography, in its essence, is a form of communication more profound than words. It conveys emotions, tells stories, and captures moments in a way that everyone, regardless of their background, can understand and relate to.

In the following sections, we will explore the inspirational power of photography and its future in our ever-evolving world. Stay with me as we delve deeper into the captivating realm of photography, where every snapshot is a universal story, waiting to be told.

9. The Inspirational Power of Photography

In the world of photography, each snapshot is not just a record of what is, but a canvas for what could be. It’s a realm where inspiration is just a shutter click away, where every image has the power to provoke, to challenge, and to inspire.

Quotes That Ignite the Spark

• “ Photography is the story I fail to put into words .” – Destin Sparks. This quote reminds us that photography is a powerful tool for storytelling, capable of conveying narratives that words alone may fail to express.
• “ The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera. ” – Dorothea Lange. Here, photography is seen as an educational tool, one that changes our perspective and teaches us to see the world in a new light.

The Motivational Lens of Photography

Photography has the unique ability to influence and shape our perceptions. It can challenge our viewpoints, open our eyes to new ideas, and inspire us to see the beauty in the mundane.

• A single photograph can alter our understanding of a subject, shedding light on overlooked details or presenting familiar scenes in a new context.
• Photography encourages us to look beyond the surface, to explore the depth and complexity of our world.

The Ripple Effect of a Single Image

The impact of a powerful photograph can be far-reaching. It can start conversations, spark movements, and inspire change. In this way, photography is not just a reflection of reality, but a catalyst for shaping it.

In the next section, we’ll explore the future of photography in our rapidly changing world. As we continue this journey through the lens, remember that each photograph, each moment captured, is a seed of inspiration, waiting to blossom into something extraordinary.

10. Photography Quotes About Memories

Photography, in its essence, is about capturing memories, about freezing moments in time that speak to our hearts. Here is a curated collection of quotes that beautifully intertwine the concepts of photography and memories, each a gem that reflects the profound relationship between the lens and the past.

• “Photography is the art of frozen time… the ability to store emotion and feelings within a frame.” – Meshack Otieno
• “We take photos as a return ticket to a moment otherwise gone.” – Katie Thurmes
• “The best thing about a picture is that it never changes, even when the people in it do.” – Andy Warhol
• “A good snapshot keeps a moment from running away.” – Eudora Welty
• “Taking pictures is savoring life intensely, every hundredth of a second.” – Marc Riboud
• “Photographs open doors into the past, but they also allow a look into the future.” – Sally Mann
• “What I like about photographs is that they capture a moment that’s gone forever, impossible to reproduce.” – Karl Lagerfeld
• “To me, photography is an art of observation. It’s about finding something interesting in an ordinary place.” – Elliott Erwitt
• “A photograph is a secret about a secret. The more it tells you, the less you know.” – Diane Arbus
• “Photography is the story I fail to put into words.” – Destin Sparks
• “In photography, there is a reality so subtle that it becomes more real than reality.” – Alfred Stieglitz
• “The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera.” – Dorothea Lange
• “Photography is a way of feeling, of touching, of loving. What you have caught on film is captured forever.” – Aaron Siskind
• “The whole point of taking pictures is so that you don’t have to explain things with words.” – Elliott Erwitt
• “A picture is a poem without words.” – Horace
• “Photography is the memory of our society, the collective and individual memory.” – Berenice Abbott
• “Every photo you take is a piece of your life that you will never get back.” – Anonymous
• “A photograph is like a recipe – the memory is the finished dish.” – Carrie Latet
• “Photography, to me, is catching a moment which is passing, and which is true.” – Jacques-Henri Lartigue
• “The camera makes you forget you’re there. It’s not like you are hiding but you forget, you are just looking so much.” – Annie Leibovitz
• “A camera is a save button for the mind’s eye.” – Roger Kingston
• “Every image is a voyage into a sacred harbour.” – Minor White
• “The picture that you took with your camera is the imagination you want to create with reality.” – Scott Lorenzo
• “Photography is an austere and blazing poetry of the real.” – Ansel Adams
• “A photograph never grows old. You and I change, people change all through the months and years, but a photograph always remains the same.” – Albert Einstein
• “Photography is a way of feeling, of touching, of loving. What you have caught on film is captured forever… It remembers little things, long after you have forgotten everything.” – Aaron Siskind
• “The best images are the ones that retain their strength and impact over the years, regardless of the number of times they are viewed.” – Anne Geddes
• “Photography is the beauty of life captured.” – Tara Chisholm
• “In the world of photography, you get to share a captured moment with other people.” – James Wilson
• “Photography is all about secrets. The secrets we all have and will never tell.” – Kim Edwards
• “Photographs are just light and time.” – John Green
• “The photograph itself doesn’t interest me. I want only to capture a minute part of reality.” – Henri Cartier-Bresson
• “Photography is a love affair with life.” – Burk Uzzle
• “The magic of photography is metaphysical. What you see in the photograph isn’t what you saw at the time. The real skill of photography is organized visual lying.” – Terence Donovan
• “To photograph is to hold one’s breath, when all faculties converge to capture fleeting reality.” – Henri Cartier-Bresson
• “Photography is the only language that can be understood anywhere in the world.” – Bruno Barbey
• “For me, the camera is a sketchbook, an instrument of intuition and spontaneity.” – Henri Cartier-Bresson
• “The camera is much more than a recording apparatus, it is a medium via which messages reach us from another world.” – Orson Welles
• “Photography can only represent the present. Once photographed, the subject becomes part of the past.” – Berenice Abbott
• “Photography is truth. And cinema is truth twenty-four times per second.” – Jean-Luc Godard

Each of these quotes offers a unique perspective on the power of photography in capturing and preserving memories. They remind us that behind every photograph is a story, an emotion, a moment in time that is both infinitely precious and perpetually fleeting.

As we move forward in our exploration of photography, let these words resonate, reminding us of the profound impact that a simple photograph can have on our hearts and minds.

The Timeless Tapestry of Photographyn our journey through the world of photography, we’ve seen how it intertwines art, emotion, and history into a single frame. Photography is more than just a technical skill or an artistic endeavor; it’s a way of holding onto moments, of keeping our memories alive.

The Enduring Power of the Photograph

• Photographs are powerful storytellers, silent yet eloquent. They are time capsules, holding within them the essence of moments that once were, and in some ways, will always be.
• The unique blend of art, emotion, and history in photography makes it an enduring medium, one that continues to evolve yet remains constant in its core purpose.

A World Captured in Frames

As we look to the future, we can be sure that photography will continue to inspire, to evoke, and to preserve. It’s a testament to our existence, a mirror to our past, and a window to our future.

Further readings: Certainly! Here are references and URLs to support the content and quotes used in the article:

Henri Cartier-Bresson Quotes :

• “To photograph is to hold one’s breath, when all faculties converge to capture fleeting reality.”
• Source: Henri Cartier-Bresson Foundation

Katie Thurmes Quote :

• “We take photos as a return ticket to a moment otherwise gone.”
• Source: Katie Thurmes on Photography

Andy Warhol Quote :

• “The best thing about a picture is that it never changes, even when the people in it do.”
• Source: Andy Warhol – Artist

Eudora Welty Quote :

• “A good snapshot keeps a moment from running away.”
• Source: Eudora Welty – Writer

Karl Lagerfeld Quote :

• “What I like about photographs is that they capture a moment that’s gone forever, impossible to reproduce.”
• Source: Karl Lagerfeld – Fashion Designer

Sally Mann Quote :

• “Photographs open doors into the past, but they also allow a look into the future.”
• Source: Sally Mann – Photographer

Aaron Siskind Quote :

• “Photography is a way of feeling, of touching, of loving. What you have caught on film is captured forever.”
• Source: Aaron Siskind Foundation

Elliott Erwitt Quotes :

• “To me, photography is an art of observation. It’s about finding something interesting in an ordinary place.”
• Source: Elliott Erwitt – Photographer

Bruno Barbey Quote :

• “Photography is the only language that can be understood anywhere in the world.”
• Source: Bruno Barbey – Photographer

Destin Sparks Quote :

• “Photography is the story I fail to put into words.”
• Source: Destin Sparks – Photographer

Marc Riboud Quote :

• “Taking pictures is savoring life intensely, every hundredth of a second.”
• Source: Marc Riboud – Photographer

Diane Arbus Quote :

• “A photograph is a secret about a secret. The more it tells you, the less you know.”
• Source: Diane Arbus – Photographer

Alfred Stieglitz Quote :

• “In photography, there is a reality so subtle that it becomes more real than reality.”
• Source: Alfred Stieglitz – Photographer

What are your Photography quotes about memories? Let us know in the comments.

By Furoore team member Michael Furoore Team is here to assist you in capturing the most significant moments in your life. To create exciting photographs, discover photography guides, find unique photo ideas, and limitless image inspiration.

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Childhood Memories Essay

Recalling childhood memories lead us to experience the feelings of our old days. These childhood memories are such that they last forever. Some memories help us to recall the pleasant moments of our life. But, some of the memories scare us because we have both good and bad experiences in our childhood. These childhood memories help us to go through the tough days of our lives in a happy and cheerful manner. They give strength to overcome difficult situations and fight against them. This essay on childhood memories will help students to write an effective essay. After going through this article, they can describe their childhood memories in a better way. For more CBSE essays , students must practise essay writing on different topics.

500+ Words Essay on Childhood Memories

We all remember our childhood friends, interesting incidents relating to them, our family members, relatives, and so many other things. Childhood is a lovely time that everyone remembers. It is the period that everyone cherishes as this builds our foundation when we are growing. In our childhood, we were carefree and innocent. We don’t know what jealousy is and have no complexes regarding ourselves and others. It was time for play, studies and vacations. We were gorging on our favourite food without any restrictions, playing pranks on our siblings, and supporting our siblings when we had to face the wrath of our parents. Those days won’t come back, but we can remember those childhood memories.

My Childhood Memories

I have a lot of childhood memories. Here, I will be sharing the one which is the most memorable to me. In my childhood, we used to go to my grandparents’ house at least once a year. We mostly visit my grandparents’ house during my school summer vacation. My grandparents live in a small village which is located near Kanpur city in Uttar Pradesh. I wake up early in the morning and go to the farmhouse. Near the farmhouse, we have farming land, where various crops are grown. By that time in the summer, the crops are ready to harvest. I love to see the harvesting process. In the farmhouse, I get prepared by taking a bath in the running water of the tubewell. I love that moment. The cold water and fresh air refresh my mind, and it starts my day full of positive energy.

My grandmother cooks the food in the traditional style by using the “Chulha”, a U-shaped mud stove made from local clay. I love the taste of cooked food. It’s so delicious and yummy. Also, during summer, my grandmother made papad, pickles of mango and green chilli. I just love eating them. We also have one cow and two buffaloes in the farmhouse. Due to this, there is a lot of milk and curd available in my house. It’s my duty to make Lassi, and we drink it every day after having lunch. At night, we sleep on the terrace to feel cool during summer. All my cousins gather at the terrace, and we enjoy it together. Everyone drinks a glass of milk before going to sleep.

Another naughty incident that I remember from my childhood was when I was studying at LKG. My parents had gone for a walk after having dinner at night. They informed me that they would be coming back soon, so I should not lock the door from the inside. I was watching the TV and said ok. After some time, I went to the kitchen to have a glass of water, and I locked the main door. I didn’t realise when I slept while watching the TV. My parents came, and they kept knocking on the door. I didn’t get up, and they had to be outside the home for the whole night. They went to the neighbours’ house and stayed there. In the morning, when I got up, I opened the door and called my parents.

Childhood is the best part of everyone’s life. Childhood memories give us different kinds of experiences. Whatever we have learned in our childhood lasts for a long time. Some experiences are joyful, while some help us learn lessons. These lessons give us the strength to stay positive in life even when situations are not in our favour.

Students must have found this essay on “Childhood Memories” useful for improving their essay writing skills. They can get the study material and the latest update on CBSE/ICSE/State Board/Competitive Exams at BYJU’S.

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Ten examples of immersive photo essays

By Marissa Sapega — Contributing Writer

Photo essays are one of the most powerful forms of storytelling in the last century. From the great depression photographer W. Eugene Smith to the photojournalism of National Geographic or Life Magazine , the best photo essays entertain, educate, and move readers more than words alone ever could. 

But photo essays have changed. Over the last decade, web publishing technologies — including web browsers and file formats — have improved by leaps and bounds. A good photo essays today is more than a collection of images. It’s a truly interactive, immersive, and multimedia experiences.

In this guide, we introduce 10 stunning examples of visually arresting interactive photo essays to fuel your creative juices.

Now, let's set the scene with a short introduction to immersive, interactive photo essays on the web.

What do the BBC, Tripadvisor, and Penguin have in common? They craft stunning, interactive web content with Shorthand. And so can you! Publish your first story for free — no code or web design skills required. Sign up now.

The rise of immersive, interactive photo essays

What is an immersive, interactive photo essay? Let's take these terms one at a time. 

An immersive photo essay uses rich media and story design to capture and keep the reader's attention. Immersive content is typically free of the most distracting elements of the web, such as pop-ups, skyscrapers, and other intrusions on the reading experience.

As a basic rule of thumb, immersive content respects the reader's attention. 

An interactive photo essay is one that allows the reader to control how the content appears. It may include interactive elements, like maps and embedded applications.

More commonly, modern interactive photo stories use a technique known as scrollytelling . Scrollytelling stories allow the reader to trigger animations and other visual effects as they scroll. Many of the examples in this guide use scrollytelling techniques. Read more scrollytelling examples .

Until relatively recently, immersive, interactive photo essays could only be created with the help of a designer or web developer. But with the rise of digital storytelling platforms , anyone can create compelling, dynamic stories without writing a single line of code.

If you're looking to learn more about how to create a photo essay — or are looking for more photo essay ideas  — check out our introduction to photo essays . 

Photo essay topics

If you’re looking for photo essay examples, chances are you’re looking to create a photo essay for yourself. If you’re just getting started, you might want some guidance on exactly what kinds of topics make for great photo essays.

More experienced photographers — feel free to skip this section. But for those who are just starting out, here’s a quick list of classic photo essay subject matter, for all types of photo essays.

• Local events. A great way to start out is photograph local events in your community, such as a high school fundraiser. A bonus is that you’ll have a ready
• Historic sites. Another classic photo essay topic is an exploration of a historic site. This could be a building, a monument, or even just a specific location that has significance.
• Profile of a person. A great way to get to know someone is to profile them in a photo essay. This could be a family member, friend, or even just someone you’ve met.
• Animals in captivity. Another popular subject matter for photo essays is animals in captivity, whether that’s at a zoo or elsewhere.
• A day in the life. Have you ever wondered what it’s like to live someone else’s life for a day? Why not find out and document it in a photo essay?
• Street photography. Another great way to practice your photography skills is to head out into the streets and photograph the everyday lives of people around you. The world has plenty of photo essays of cities like New York and London. But what about street photography in your own backyard?
• Still life photography. Still life photography is all about capturing inanimate objects on film. This could be anything from flowers to furniture to food. It’s a great way to practice your photography skills and learn about composition
• Landscapes . Landscape photography is one of the most popular genres, and for good reason. There are endless possibilities when it comes to finding interesting subjects to shoot. So get out there and start exploring!
• Abandoned buildings. There’s something fascinating about abandoned buildings. They offer a glimpse into the past, and can be eerily beautiful. If you have any in your area, they make for great photo essay subjects.
• Lifestyles. Document someone who lives a lifestyle that’s different from your own. This could be a portrayal of an everyday person, or it could be someone with an unusual job or hobby.
• Social issues. Take photos depicting significant social issues in your community, remembering to respect your subjects.

Ten inspiring photo essay examples

Pink lagoon and peculiar galaxies — July’s best science images

In Pink lagoon and peculiar galaxies , Nature present a mesmerising series of images from the natural world. Highlights include:

• a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it photo of rare albino orcas performing feats of synchronized swimming;
• an arresting aerial view of the aftermath of the flash floods in Germany; and,
• a scarlet gawping Venus flytrap sea anemone. 

The best part? Nature publishes similarly powerful photo essays every month, showcasing some of the best and most creative photography of the natural world anywhere on the web.

Vanishing Lands

Vanishing lands — an ominously interesting photo essay from media company Stuff — opens with a bucolic visual featuring meandering sheep flanked by breathtaking mountains that blur into obscurity.

Soon, more awe-inspiring photos of breathtaking New Zealand farmland appear, accompanied by expressive prose whose tone matches the visuals’ stark beauty.

In this unflinchingly honest photographic essay, Stuff takes the viewer behind the scenes with a day in the life of a high country sheep farmer facing an uncertain future. One stunning photo fades into the next as you scroll through, broken only by the occasional noteworthy quote and accompanying narrative.

Olympic photos: Emotion runs high

This emotionally wrought sports story from NBC begins with a close-up of an anxious Simone Biles, her expression exemplifying the tension and frustration echoed on so many of her fellow athletes’ faces.

The subtitle puts it perfectly: “The agony—and thrill—of competition at the Olympics is written all over their faces.”

Devastation, disappointment, and defeat take centre stage in this piece — but not all the subjects of the photos in this compelling photography essay depict misery. Some of the images, like that taken of the gold medal-winning Russian artistic gymnasts, manage to project the athletes’ joy almost beyond the edges of the screen.

The NBC editors who created this visual story chose to display the series of photos using the entire screen width and limit the copy to simple captions, letting the visuals speak for themselves. The result is a riveting montage of photographs that manage to capture the overarching sentiment of the 2020 Olympic Games.

James Epp: A Twist of the Hand

In A Twist of the Hand , the Museum of Classical Archaeology at the University of Cambridge have produced a gorgeous photo essay. This online art show showcases artist James Epp’s installation, combining photographs of the exhibit with images of museum prints and authentic artefacts.

As you scroll down, close-up shots of the installation make you feel like you’re physically wandering among the ancient sculptures, able to examine hairline spider cracks and tiny divots marking the surface of every antiquated figure. In between the photos—and often flanked by museum prints—are James Epp's musings about what inspired him to create the pieces. It’s an absorbing virtual gallery that will no doubt inspire real life visits to the exhibition.

The Café Racer Revolution

Though it’s a cleverly built piece of interactive content marketing , Honda’s “ Café Racer Revolution ” is also a great photo essay. Alongside information about the latest and greatest motorcycles Honda has to offer, it details the history of the bikers who sought to employ motorcycles (specifically “café racers”) as a way to forge an identity for themselves and project a “statement of individuality.”

Scroll down, and nostalgic black-and-white photos give way to contemporary action shots featuring fully decked-out motorcyclists on various Honda models.

Dynamic photos of bikes rotate them 360 degrees when you mouse over them, and text superimposed over flashy shots rolls smoothly down the screen as you scroll. This photo essay will stir a longing to hit the open road for anyone who has ever dreamed of owning one of Honda’s zippy bikes.

Built to keep Black from white

In Built to keep Black from white , NBC News and BridgeDetroit have built a stunning narrative photo essay that encapsulates the history of Detroit’s Birwood Wall — a literal dividing line intended to separate neighborhoods inhabited by people of different races. 

The piece begins with a brief history of the concrete barrier. Between paragraphs of text, it weaves in quotes from residents who grew up as the wall was erected and a short video. Animated maps highlighting the affected neighborhoods unspool across the screen as you scroll down, accompanied by brief explanations of what the maps represent.

In the series of photographs that follow, contemporary images transition into decades-old shots of the wall when it was newly constructed. This is followed by images of original real estate documents, resident portraits, and additional animated maps — each considering the issue from different angles.

The piece ends with an interactive display of how Detroit’s racial makeup has changed over the past several decades, from majority white to black, and how the wall has impacted the lives of its residents who lived (and died) within its borders.

The story of Black Lives Matter in sport

The BBC pairs illustrations and bold imagery in this photo essay on how athletes participated in the Black Lives Matter movement . At the start, a narrow column of text leads into an iconic image of American football players kneeling during the pre-game national anthem in a solemn protest against police brutality. 

The first excerpt, a summary of Trayvon Martin’s death in 2012, draws you in with piercing prose capped off with photographs that bleed into one another. Every account in the photo essay follows this layout.

WaterAid Climate Stories

Climate change affects everyone on the planet, but some people are feeling the effects more than others. WaterAid’s scrollytelling photo essay illuminates the plight of individuals living in areas where extreme weather conditions — caused by climate change — have drastically impacted the water supply and environment, endangering their livelihoods and ability to survive.

This climate change story starts with an engrossing video that provides an up-close and personal look at the devastation that climate change-induced droughts have wreaked on people and the environment. As you scroll down, images of massively depleted bodies of water with superimposed text and quotes unfold before your eyes. It’s an efficient way to drive home the critical message WaterAid wants to convey: climate change is real, and it’s harming real people.

Each extreme weather story focuses on an individual to help viewers empathise and understand that climate change has real, drastic consequences for millions of people worldwide. The piece ends with a call to action to learn more about and financially support WaterAid’s fight to assist people living in the desperate situations depicted in the essay.

28 Days in Afghanistan

In this piece, Australian photo-journalist Andrew Quilty tells the story of the four weeks he spent in Afghanistan . He captures daily events ranging from the mundane—like a casual visit to his barber—to jarring. More than one photo documents blood-spattered victims of violence.

Viewers must scroll through the piece to follow Andrew’s daily musings and the striking photos that accompany them. His photo essay is a powerful example of how scrollytelling is transforming the art of long-form journalism .

La carrera lunática de Musk y Bezos (Musk and Bezos' lunatic careers)

Billionaires Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos are angling to conquer the final frontier: space.

El Periódico captures their story via a whimsically illustrated photo essay, filled with neon line drawings and bold photos of the massive spaceships, the hangars that house them, and footprints on the moon. La carrera lunática de Musk y Bezos describes the battle between the two titans’ space companies (Blue Origin and SpaceX) for the honor of partially funding NASA’s next mission to the moon.

As you scroll down, white and fluorescent yellow words on a black background roll smoothly over images. The team at El Periódico slips in stylistic animations to break up the text—such as rocket ships with shimmering “vapour trails”—then ups the ante with a series of moon images that transition into portraits of the 12 U.S. astronauts who visited the celestial body.

The photo essay ends with the question: “Who will be the next to leave their footprints on the dusty lunar soil?” At the time of publishing, NASA had not yet decided between the two companies. (Spoiler alert: SpaceX won .)

Marissa Sapega is a seasoned writer, editor, and digital marketer with a background in web and graphic design.

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23 Photo Essay Ideas and Examples (to Get Your Creative Juices Flowing!)

A Post By: Kevin Landwer-Johan

Looking for inspiration? Our 23 photo essay ideas will take your photography skills to new heights!

A single, strong photograph can convey a lot of information about its subject – but sometimes we have topics that require more than one image to do the job. That’s when it’s time to make a photo essay: a collection of pictures that together tell the bigger story around a chosen theme.

In the following sections, we’ll explore various photo essay ideas and examples that cover a wide range of subjects and purposes. From capturing the growth of your children to documenting local festivals, each idea offers an exciting opportunity to tell a story through your lens, whether you’re a hobbyist or a veteran professional.

So grab your camera, unleash your creativity, and let’s delve into the wonderful world of photo essay examples!

What is a photo essay?

Simply put, a photo essay is a series of carefully selected images woven together to tell a story or convey a message. Think of it as a visual narrative that designed to capture attention and spark emotions.

Now, these images can revolve around a broad theme or focus on a specific storyline. For instance, you might create a photo essay celebrating the joy of companionship by capturing 10 heartwarming pictures of people sharing genuine laughter. On the other hand, you could have a photo essay delving into the everyday lives of fishermen in Wales by following a single fisherman’s journey for a day or even a week.

It’s important to note that photo essays don’t necessarily have to stick to absolute truth. While some documentary photographers prefer to keep it authentic, others may employ techniques like manipulation or staging to create a more artistic impact. So there is room for creativity and interpretation.

Why you should create a photo essay

Photo essays have a way of expressing ideas and stories that words sometimes struggle to capture. They offer a visual narrative that can be incredibly powerful and impactful.

Firstly, photo essays are perfect when you have an idea or a point you want to convey, but you find yourself at a loss for words. Sometimes, emotions and concepts are better conveyed through images rather than paragraphs. So if you’re struggling to articulate a message, you can let your photos do the talking for you.

Second, if you’re interested in subjects that are highly visual, like the mesmerizing forms of architecture within a single city, photo essays are the way to go. Trying to describe the intricate details of a building or the play of light and shadows with words alone can be challenging. But through a series of captivating images, you can immerse your audience in the architecture.

And finally, if you’re aiming to evoke emotions or make a powerful statement, photo essays are outstanding. Images have an incredible ability to shock, inspire, and move people in ways that words often struggle to achieve. So if you want to raise awareness about an environmental issue or ignite a sense of empathy, a compelling series of photographs can have a profound impact.

Photo essay examples and ideas

Looking to create a photo essay but don’t know where to start? Here are some handy essay ideas and examples for inspiration!

1. A day in the life

Your first photo essay idea is simple: Track a life over the course of one day. You might make an essay about someone else’s life. Or the life of a location, such as the sidewalk outside your house. 

The subject matter you choose is up to you. But start in the morning and create a series of images showing your subject over the course of a typical day.

(Alternatively, you can document your subject on a special day, like a birthday, a wedding, or some other celebration.)

2. Capture hands

Portraits focus on a subject’s face – but why not mix it up and make a photo essay that focuses on your subject’s hands?

(You can also focus on a collection of different people’s hands.)

Hands can tell you a lot about a person. And showing them in context is a great way to narrate a story.

3. Follow a sports team for a full season

Sports are all about emotions – both from the passionate players and the dedicated fans. While capturing the intensity of a single game can be exhilarating, imagine the power of telling the complete story of a team throughout an entire season.

For the best results, you’ll need to invest substantial time in sports photography. Choose a team that resonates with you and ensure their games are within a drivable distance. By photographing their highs and lows, celebrations and challenges, you’ll create a compelling photo essay that traces their journey from the first game to the last.

4. A child and their parent

Photographs that catch the interaction between parents and children are special. A parent-child connection is strong and unique, so making powerful images isn’t challenging. You just need to be ready to capture the special moments as they happen. 

You might concentrate on a parent teaching their child. Or the pair playing sports. Or working on a special project.

Use your imagination, and you’ll have a great time with this theme.

5. Tell a local artist’s story 

I’ve always enjoyed photographing artists as they work; studios have a creative vibe, so the energy is already there. Bring your camera into this environment and try to tell the artist’s story!

An artist’s studio offers plenty of opportunities for wonderful photo essays. Think about the most fascinating aspects of the artist’s process. What do they do that makes their art special? Aim to show this in your photos.

Many people appreciate fine art, but they’re often not aware of what happens behind the scenes. So documenting an artist can produce fascinating visual stories.

6. Show a tradesperson’s process

Do you have a plumber coming over to fix your kitchen sink? Is a builder making you a new deck?

Take photos while they work! Tell them what you want to do before you start, and don’t forget to share your photos with them.

They’ll probably appreciate seeing what they do from another perspective. They may even want to use your photos on their company website.

7. Photograph your kids as they grow

There’s something incredibly special about documenting the growth of our little ones. Kids grow up so quickly – before you know it, they’re moving out. Why not capture the beautiful moments along the way by creating a heartwarming photo essay that showcases their growth?

There are various approaches you can take, but one idea is to capture regular photos of your kids standing in front of a distinct point of reference, such as the refrigerator. Over a year or several years, you can gather these images and place them side by side to witness your childrens’ incredible transformations.

8. Cover a local community event

A school fundraiser, a tree-planting day at a park, or a parade; these are are all community events that make for good photo essay ideas.

Think like a photojournalist . What type of images would your editor want? Make sure to capture some wide-angle compositions , some medium shots, and some close-ups.

(Getting in close to show the details can often tell as much of a story as the wider pictures.)

9. Show fresh market life

Markets are great for photography because there’s always plenty of activity and lots of characters. Think of how you can best illustrate the flow of life at the market. What are the vendors doing that’s most interesting? What are the habits of the shoppers?

Look to capture the essence of the place. Try to portray the people who work and shop there.

10. Shoot the same location over time

What location do you visit regularly? Is there a way you can make an interesting photo essay about it?

Consider what you find most attractive and ugly about the place. Look for aspects that change over time. 

Any outdoor location will look different throughout the day. Also think about the changes that occur from season to season. Create an essay that tells the story of the place.

11. Document a local festival

Festivals infuse cities and towns with vibrant energy and unique cultural experiences. Even if your own town doesn’t have notable festivals, chances are a neighboring town does. Explore the magic of these celebrations by documenting a local festival through your lens.

Immerse yourself in the festivities, arriving early and staying late. Capture the colorful displays and the people who make the festival come alive. If the festival spans multiple days, consider focusing on different areas each time you visit to create a diverse and comprehensive photo essay that truly reflects the essence of the event.

12. Photograph a garden through the seasons

It might be your own garden . It could be the neighbor’s. It could even be the garden at your local park.

Think about how the plants change during the course of a year. Capture photos of the most significant visual differences, then present them as a photo essay.

13. Show your local town or city

After spending several years in a particular area, you likely possess an intimate knowledge of your local town or city. Why not utilize that familiarity to create a captivating photo essay that showcases the essence of your community?

Delve into what makes your town special, whether it’s the charming streets, unique landmarks, or the people who shape its character. Dedicate time to capturing the diverse aspects that define your locale. If you’re up for a more extensive project, consider photographing the town over the course of an entire year, capturing the changing seasons and the dynamic spirit of your community.

14. Pick a local cause to highlight

Photo essays can go beyond passive documentation; they can become a part of your activism, too!

So find a cause that matters to you. Tell the story of some aspect of community life that needs improvement. Is there an ongoing issue with litter in your area? How about traffic; is there a problematic intersection?

Document these issues, then make sure to show the photos to people responsible for taking action.

15. Making a meal

Photo essay ideas can be about simple, everyday things – like making a meal or a coffee.

How can you creatively illustrate something that seems so mundane? My guess is that, when you put your mind to it, you can come up with many unique perspectives, all of which will make great stories.

16. Capture the life of a flower

In our fast-paced lives, it’s easy to overlook the beauty that surrounds us. Flowers, with their mesmerizing colors and rapid life cycles, offer a captivating subject for a photo essay. Try to slow down and appreciate the intricate details of a flower’s existence.

With a macro lens in hand, document a single flower or a patch of flowers from their initial shoots to their inevitable wilting and decomposition. Experiment with different angles and perspectives to bring viewers into the enchanting world of the flower. By freezing these fleeting moments, you’ll create a visual narrative that celebrates the cycle of life and the exquisite beauty found in nature’s delicate creations.

17. Religious traditions

Religion is often rich with visual expression in one form or another. So capture it!

Of course, you may need to narrow down your ideas and choose a specific aspect of worship to photograph. Aim to show what people do when they visit a holy place, or how they pray on their own. Illustrate what makes their faith real and what’s special about it.

18. Historic sites

Historic sites are often iconic, and plenty of photographers take a snapshot or two.

But with a photo essay, you can illustrate the site’s history in greater depth.

Look for details of the location that many visitors miss. And use these to build an interesting story.

19. Show the construction of a building

Ever been away from a familiar place for a while only to return and find that things have changed? It happens all the time, especially in areas undergoing constant development. So why not grab your camera and document this transformation?

Here’s the idea: Find a building that’s currently under construction in your area. It could be a towering skyscraper, a modern office complex, or even a small-scale residential project. Whatever catches your eye! Then let the magic of photography unfold.

Make it a habit to take a photo every day or two. Watch as the building gradually takes shape and evolves. Capture the construction workers in action, the cranes reaching for the sky, and the scaffolding supporting the structure.

Once the building is complete, you’ll have a treasure trove of images that chronicle its construction from start to finish!

20. Document the changing skyline of the city

This photo essay example is like the previous one, except it works on a much larger scale. Instead of photographing a single building as it’s built, find a nice vantage point outside your nearest city, then photograph the changing skyline.

To create a remarkable photo essay showcasing the changing skyline, you’ll need to scout out the perfect vantage point. Seek high ground that offers a commanding view of the city, allowing you to frame the skyline against the horizon. Look for spots that give you an unobstructed perspective, whether a rooftop terrace, a hillside park, or even a nearby bridge.

As you set out on your photography expedition, be patient and observant. Cities don’t transform overnight; they change gradually over time. Embrace the passage of days, weeks, and months as you witness the slow evolution unfold.

Pro tip: To capture the essence of this transformation, experiment with various photographic techniques. Play with different angles, framing, and compositions to convey the grandeur and dynamism of the changing skyline. Plus, try shooting during the golden hours of sunrise and sunset , when the soft light bathes the city in a warm glow and accentuates the architectural details.

21. Photograph your pet

If you’re a pet owner, you already have the perfect subject for a photo essay!

All pets , with the possible exception of pet rocks, will provide you with a collection of interesting moments to photograph.

So collect these moments with your camera – then display them as a photo essay showing the nature and character of your pet.

22. Tell the story of a local nature preserve

Ah, the wonders of a local nature preserve! While it may not boast the grandeur of Yosemite National Park, these hidden gems hold their own beauty, just waiting to be discovered and captured through the lens of your camera.

To embark on this type of photo essay adventure, start by exploring all the nooks and crannies of your chosen nature preserve. Wander along its winding trails, keeping an eye out for unique and captivating subjects that convey the essence of the preserve.

As you go along, try to photograph the intricate details of delicate wildflowers, the interplay of light filtering through a dense forest canopy, and the lively activities of birds and other wildlife.

23. Show the same subject from multiple perspectives

It’s possible to create an entire photo essay in a single afternoon – or even in a handful of minutes. If you don’t love the idea of dedicating yourself to days of photographing for a single essay, this is a great option.

Simply find a subject you like, then endeavor to capture 10 unique images that include it. I’d recommend photographing from different angles: up above, down low, from the right and left. You can also try getting experimental with creative techniques, such as intentional camera movement and freelensing. If all goes well, you’ll have a very cool set of images featuring one of your favorite subjects!

By showcasing the same subject from multiple perspectives, you invite viewers on a visual journey. They get to see different facets, textures, and details that they might have overlooked in a single photograph. It adds depth and richness to your photo essay, making it both immersive and dynamic.

Photo essay ideas: final words

Remember: Photo essays are all about communicating a concept or a story through images rather than words. So embrace the process and use images to express yourself!

Whether you choose to follow a sports team through a thrilling season, document the growth of your little ones, or explore the hidden treasures of your local town, each photo essay has its own magic waiting to be unlocked. It’s a chance to explore your creativity and create images in your own style.

So look at the world around you. Grab your gear and venture out into the wild. Embrace the beauty of nature, the energy of a bustling city, or the quiet moments that make life special. Consider what you see every day. What aspects interest you the most? Photograph those things.

You’re bound to end up with some amazing photo essays!

Now over to you:

Do you have any photo essay examples you’re proud of? Do you have any more photo essay ideas? Share your thoughts and images in the comments below!

Read more from our Tips & Tutorials category

Kevin Landwer-Johan is a photographer, photography teacher, and author with over 30 years of experience that he loves to share with others.

Check out his website and his Buy Me a Coffee page .

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What is a Photo Essay? 9 Photo Essay Examples You Can Recreate

A photo essay is a series of photographs that tell a story. Unlike a written essay, a photo essay focuses on visuals instead of words. With a photo essay, you can stretch your creative limits and explore new ways to connect with your audience. Whatever your photography skill level, you can recreate your own fun and creative photo essay.

9 Photo Essay Examples You Can Recreate

• Photowalk Photo Essay
• Transformation Photo Essay
• Day in the Life Photo Essay
• Event Photo Essay
• Building Photo Essay
• Historic Site or Landmark Photo Essay
• Behind the Scenes Photo Essay
• Family Photo Essay
• Education Photo Essay

Stories are important to all of us. While some people gravitate to written stories, others are much more attuned to visual imagery. With a photo essay, you can tell a story without writing a word. Your use of composition, contrast, color, and perspective in photography will convey ideas and evoke emotions.

To explore narrative photography, you can use basic photographic equipment. You can buy a camera or even use your smartphone to get started. While lighting, lenses, and post-processing software can enhance your photos, they aren’t necessary to achieve good results.

Whether you need to complete a photo essay assignment or want to pursue one for fun or professional purposes, you can use these photo essay ideas for your photography inspiration . Once you know the answer to “what is a photo essay?” and find out how fun it is to create one, you’ll likely be motivated to continue your forays into photographic storytelling.

1 . Photowalk Photo Essay

One popular photo essay example is a photowalk. Simply put, a photowalk is time you set aside to walk around a city, town, or a natural site and take photos. Some cities even have photowalk tours led by professional photographers. On these tours, you can learn the basics about how to operate your camera, practice photography composition techniques, and understand how to look for unique shots that help tell your story.

Set aside at least two to three hours for your photowalk. Even if you’re photographing a familiar place—like your own home town—try to look at it through new eyes. Imagine yourself as a first-time visitor or pretend you’re trying to educate a tourist about the area.

Walk around slowly and look for different ways to capture the mood and energy of your location. If you’re in a city, capture wide shots of streets, close-ups of interesting features on buildings, street signs, and candid shots of people. Look for small details that give the city character and life. And try some new concepts—like reflection picture ideas—by looking for opportunities to photographs reflections in mirrored buildings, puddles, fountains, or bodies of water.

2 . Transformation Photo Essay

With a transformation photography essay, you can tell the story about change over time. One of the most popular photostory examples, a transformation essay can document a mom-to-be’s pregnancy or a child’s growth from infancy into the toddler years. But people don’t need to be the focus of a transformation essay. You can take photos of a house that is being built or an urban area undergoing revitalization.

You can also create a photo narrative to document a short-term change. Maybe you want to capture images of your growing garden or your move from one home to another. These examples of photo essays are powerful ways of telling the story of life’s changes—both large and small.

3 . Day in the Life Photo Essay

Want a unique way to tell a person’s story? Or, perhaps you want to introduce people to a career or activity. You may want to consider a day in the life essay.

With this photostory example, your narrative focuses on a specific subject for an entire day. For example, if you are photographing a farmer, you’ll want to arrive early in the morning and shadow the farmer as he or she performs daily tasks. Capture a mix of candid shots of the farmer at work and add landscapes and still life of equipment for added context. And if you are at a farm, don’t forget to get a few shots of the animals for added character, charm, or even a dose of humor. These types of photography essay examples are great practice if you are considering pursuing photojournalism. They also help you learn and improve your candid portrait skills.

4 . Event Photo Essay

Events are happening in your local area all the time, and they can make great photo essays. With a little research, you can quickly find many events that you could photograph. There may be bake sales, fundraisers, concerts, art shows, farm markets, block parties, and other non profit event ideas . You could also focus on a personal event, such as a birthday or graduation.

At most events, your primary emphasis will be on capturing candid photos of people in action. You can also capture backgrounds or objects to set the scene. For example, at a birthday party, you’ll want to take photos of the cake and presents.

For a local or community event, you can share your photos with the event organizer. Or, you may be able to post them on social media and tag the event sponsor. This is a great way to gain recognition and build your reputation as a talented photographer.

5. Building Photo Essay

Many buildings can be a compelling subject for a photographic essay. Always make sure that you have permission to enter and photograph the building. Once you do, look for interesting shots and angles that convey the personality, purpose, and history of the building. You may also be able to photograph the comings and goings of people that visit or work in the building during the day.

Some photographers love to explore and photograph abandoned buildings. With these types of photos, you can provide a window into the past. Definitely make sure you gain permission before entering an abandoned building and take caution since some can have unsafe elements and structures.

6. Historic Site or Landmark Photo Essay

Taking a series of photos of a historic site or landmark can be a great experience. You can learn to capture the same site from different angles to help portray its character and tell its story. And you can also photograph how people visit and engage with the site or landmark. Take photos at different times of day and in varied lighting to capture all its nuances and moods.

You can also use your photographic essay to help your audience understand the history of your chosen location. For example, if you want to provide perspective on the Civil War, a visit to a battleground can be meaningful. You can also visit a site when reenactors are present to share insight on how life used to be in days gone by.

7 . Behind the Scenes Photo Essay

Another fun essay idea is taking photos “behind the scenes” at an event. Maybe you can chronicle all the work that goes into a holiday festival from the early morning set-up to the late-night teardown. Think of the lead event planner as the main character of your story and build the story about him or her.

Or, you can go backstage at a drama production. Capture photos of actors and actresses as they transform their looks with costuming and makeup. Show the lead nervously pacing in the wings before taking center stage. Focus the work of stagehands, lighting designers, and makeup artists who never see the spotlight but bring a vital role in bringing the play to life.

8. Family Photo Essay

If you enjoy photographing people, why not explore photo story ideas about families and relationships? You can focus on interactions between two family members—such as a father and a daughter—or convey a message about a family as a whole.

Sometimes these type of photo essays can be all about the fun and joy of living in a close-knit family. But sometimes they can be powerful portraits of challenging social topics. Images of a family from another country can be a meaningful photo essay on immigration. You could also create a photo essay on depression by capturing families who are coping with one member’s illness.

For these projects on difficult topics, you may want to compose a photo essay with captions. These captions can feature quotes from family members or document your own observations. Although approaching hard topics isn’t easy, these types of photos can have lasting impact and value.

9. Education Photo Essay

Opportunities for education photo essays are everywhere—from small preschools to community colleges and universities. You can seek permission to take photos at public or private schools or even focus on alternative educational paths, like homeschooling.

Your education photo essay can take many forms. For example, you can design a photo essay of an experienced teacher at a high school. Take photos of him or her in action in the classroom, show quiet moments grading papers, and capture a shared laugh between colleagues in the teacher’s lounge.

Alternatively, you can focus on a specific subject—such as science and technology. Or aim to portray a specific grade level, document activities club or sport, or portray the social environment. A photo essay on food choices in the cafeteria can be thought-provoking or even funny. There are many potential directions to pursue and many great essay examples.

While education is an excellent topic for a photo essay for students, education can be a great source of inspiration for any photographer.

Why Should You Create a Photo Essay?

Ultimately, photographers are storytellers. Think of what a photographer does during a typical photo shoot. He or she will take a series of photos that helps convey the essence of the subject—whether that is a person, location, or inanimate object. For example, a family portrait session tells the story of a family—who they are, their personalities, and the closeness of their relationship.

Learning how to make a photo essay can help you become a better storyteller—and a better photographer. You’ll cultivate key photography skills that you can carry with you no matter where your photography journey leads.

If you simply want to document life’s moments on social media, you may find that a single picture doesn’t always tell the full story. Reviewing photo essay examples and experimenting with your own essay ideas can help you choose meaningful collections of photos to share with friends and family online.

Learning how to create photo essays can also help you work towards professional photography ambitions. You’ll often find that bloggers tell photographic stories. For example, think of cooking blogs that show you each step in making a recipe. Photo essays are also a mainstay of journalism. You’ll often find photo essays examples in many media outlets—everywhere from national magazines to local community newspapers. And the best travel photographers on Instagram tell great stories with their photos, too.

With a photo essay, you can explore many moods and emotions. Some of the best photo essays tell serious stories, but some are humorous, and others aim to evoke action.

You can raise awareness with a photo essay on racism or a photo essay on poverty. A photo essay on bullying can help change the social climate for students at a school. Or, you can document a fun day at the beach or an amusement park. You have control of the themes, photographic elements, and the story you want to tell.

5 Steps to Create a Photo Essay

Every photo essay will be different, but you can use a standard process. Following these five steps will guide you through every phase of your photo essay project—from brainstorming creative essay topics to creating a photo essay to share with others.

Step 1: Choose Your Photo Essay Topics

Just about any topic you can imagine can form the foundation for a photo essay. You may choose to focus on a specific event, such as a wedding, performance, or festival. Or you may want to cover a topic over a set span of time, such as documenting a child’s first year. You could also focus on a city or natural area across the seasons to tell a story of changing activities or landscapes.

Since the best photo essays convey meaning and emotion, choose a topic of interest. Your passion for the subject matter will shine through each photograph and touch your viewer’s hearts and minds.

Step 2: Conduct Upfront Research

Much of the work in a good-quality photo essay begins before you take your first photo. It’s always a good idea to do some research on your planned topic.

Imagine you’re going to take photos of a downtown area throughout the year. You should spend some time learning the history of the area. Talk with local residents and business owners and find out about planned events. With these insights, you’ll be able to plan ahead and be prepared to take photos that reflect the area’s unique personality and lifestyles.

For any topic you choose, gather information first. This may involve internet searches, library research, interviews, or spending time observing your subject.

Step 3: Storyboard Your Ideas

After you have done some research and have a good sense of the story you want to tell, you can create a storyboard. With a storyboard, you can write or sketch out the ideal pictures you want to capture to convey your message.

You can turn your storyboard into a “shot list” that you can bring with you on site. A shot list can be especially helpful when you are at a one-time event and want to capture specific shots for your photo essay. If you’ve never created a photo essay before, start with ten shot ideas. Think of each shot as a sentence in your story. And aim to make each shot evoke specific ideas or emotions.

Step 4: Capture Images

Your storyboard and shot list will be important guides to help you make the most of each shoot. Be sure to set aside enough time to capture all the shots you need—especially if you are photographing a one-time event. And allow yourself to explore your ideas using different photography composition, perspective, and color contrast techniques.

You may need to take a hundred images or more to get ten perfect ones for your photographic essay. Or, you may find that you want to add more photos to your story and expand your picture essay concept.

Also, remember to look for special unplanned, moments that help tell your story. Sometimes, spontaneous photos that aren’t on your shot list can be full of meaning. A mix of planning and flexibility almost always yields the best results.

Step 5: Edit and Organize Photos to Tell Your Story

After capturing your images, you can work on compiling your photo story. To create your photo essay, you will need to make decisions about which images portray your themes and messages. At times, this can mean setting aside beautiful images that aren’t a perfect fit. You can use your shot list and storyboard as a guide but be open to including photos that weren’t in your original plans.

You may want to use photo editing software—such as Adobe Lightroom or Photoshop— to enhance and change photographs. With these tools, you can adjust lighting and white balance, perform color corrections, crop, or perform other edits. If you have a signature photo editing style, you may want to use Photoshop Actions or Lightroom Presets to give all your photos a consistent look and feel.

You order a photo book from one of the best photo printing websites to publish your photo story. You can add them to an album on a photo sharing site, such as Flickr or Google Photos. Also, you could focus on building a website dedicated to documenting your concepts through visual photo essays. If so, you may want to use SEO for photographers to improve your website’s ranking in search engine results. You could even publish your photo essay on social media. Another thing to consider is whether you want to include text captures or simply tell your story through photographs.

Choose the medium that feels like the best space to share your photo essay ideas and vision with your audiences. You should think of your photo essay as your own personal form of art and expression when deciding where and how to publish it.

Photo Essays Can Help You Become a Better Photographer

Whatever your photography ambitions may be, learning to take a photo essay can help you grow. Even simple essay topics can help you gain skills and stretch your photographic limits. With a photo essay, you start to think about how a series of photographs work together to tell a complete story. You’ll consider how different shots work together, explore options for perspective and composition, and change the way you look at the world.

Before you start taking photos, you should review photo essay examples. You can find interesting pictures to analyze and photo story examples online, in books, or in classic publications, like Life Magazine . Don’t forget to look at news websites for photojournalism examples to broaden your perspective. This review process will help you in brainstorming simple essay topics for your first photo story and give you ideas for the future as well.

Ideas and inspiration for photo essay topics are everywhere. You can visit a park or go out into your own backyard to pursue a photo essay on nature. Or, you can focus on the day in the life of someone you admire with a photo essay of a teacher, fireman, or community leader. Buildings, events, families, and landmarks are all great subjects for concept essay topics. If you are feeling stuck coming up with ideas for essays, just set aside a few hours to walk around your city or town and take photos. This type of photowalk can be a great source of material.

You’ll soon find that advanced planning is critical to your success. Brainstorming topics, conducting research, creating a storyboard, and outlining a shot list can help ensure you capture the photos you need to tell your story. After you’ve finished shooting, you’ll need to decide where to house your photo essay. You may need to come up with photo album title ideas, write captions, and choose the best medium and layout.

Without question, creating a photo essay can be a valuable experience for any photographer. That’s true whether you’re an amateur completing a high school assignment or a pro looking to hone new skills. You can start small with an essay on a subject you know well and then move into conquering difficult ideas. Maybe you’ll want to create a photo essay on mental illness or a photo essay on climate change. Or maybe there’s another cause that is close to your heart.

Whatever your passion, you can bring it to life with a photo essay.

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Generative AI can turn your most precious memories into photos that never existed

The Synthetic Memories project is helping families around the world reclaim a past that was never caught on camera.

• Will Douglas Heaven archive page

Maria grew up in Barcelona, Spain, in the 1940s. Her first memories of her father are vivid. As a six-year-old, Maria would visit a neighbor’s apartment in her building when she wanted to see him. From there, she could peer through the railings of a balcony into the prison below and try to catch a glimpse of him through the small window of his cell, where he was locked up for opposing the dictatorship of Francisco Franco.

There is no photo of Maria on that balcony. But she can now hold something like it: a fake photo—or memory-based reconstruction, as the Barcelona-based design studio Domestic Data Streamers puts it—of the scene that a real photo might have captured. The fake snapshots are blurred and distorted, but they can still rewind a lifetime in an instant.

“It’s very easy to see when you’ve got the memory right, because there is a very visceral reaction,” says Pau Garcia, founder of Domestic Data Streamers. “It happens every time. It’s like, ‘Oh! Yes! It was like that!’”

Dozens of people have now had their memories turned into images in this way via Synthetic Memories , a project run by Domestic Data Streamers. The studio uses generative image models, such as OpenAI’s DALL-E, to bring people’s memories to life. Since 2022, the studio, which has received funding from the UN and Google, has been working with immigrant and refugee communities around the world to create images of scenes that have never been photographed, or to re-create photos that were lost when families left their previous homes.

Now Domestic Data Streamers is taking over a building next to the Barcelona Design Museum to record people’s memories of the city using synthetic images. Anyone can show up and contribute a memory to the growing archive, says Garcia. 

Synthetic Memories could prove to be more than a social or cultural endeavor. This summer, the studio will start a collaboration with researchers to find out if its technique could be used to treat dementia.

Memorable graffiti

The idea for the project came from an experience Garcia had in 2014, when he was working in Greece with an organization that was relocating refugee families from Syria. A woman told him that she was not afraid of being a refugee herself, but she was afraid of her children and grandchildren staying refugees because they might forget their family history: where they shopped, what they wore, how they dressed.

Garcia got volunteers to draw the woman’s memories as graffiti on the walls of the building where the families were staying. “They were really bad drawings, but the idea for synthetic memories was born,” he says. Several years later, when Garcia saw what generative image models could do, he remembered that graffiti. ”It was one of the first things that came to mind,” he says.

The process that Garcia and his team have developed is simple. An interviewer sits down with a subject and gets the person to recall a specific scene or event. A prompt engineer with a laptop uses that recollection to write a prompt for a model, which generates an image.

His team has built up a kind of glossary of prompting terms that have proved to be good at evoking different periods in history and different locations. But there’s often some back and forth, some tweaks to the prompt, says Garcia: “You show the image generated from that prompt to the subject and they might say, ‘Oh, the chair was on that side’ or ‘It was at night, not in the day.’ You refine it until you get it to a point where it clicks.”

So far Domestic Data Streamers has used the technique to preserve the memories of people in various migrant communities, including Korean, Bolivian, and Argentine families living in São Paolo, Brazil. But it has also worked with a care home in Barcelona to see how memory-based reconstructions might help older people. The team collaborated with researchers in Barcelona on a small pilot with 12 subjects, applying the approach to reminiscence therapy—a treatment for dementia that aims to stimulate cognitive abilities by showing someone images of the past. Developed in the 1960s, reminiscence therapy has many proponents, but researchers disagree on how effective it is and how it should be done.

The pilot allowed the team to refine the process and ensure that participants could give informed consent, says Garcia. The researchers are now planning to run a larger clinical study in the summer with colleagues at the University of Toronto to compare the use of generative image models with other therapeutic approaches.

One thing they did discover in the pilot was that older people connected with the images much better if they were printed out. “When they see them on a screen, they don’t have the same kind of emotional relation to them,” says Garcia. “But when they could see it physically, the memory got much more important.”    

Blurry is best

The researchers have also found that older versions of generative image models work better than newer ones. They started the project using two models that came out in 2022: DALL-E 2 and Stable Diffusion, a free-to-use generative image model released by Stability AI. These can produce images that are glitchy, with warped faces and twisted bodies. But when they switched to the latest version of Midjourney (another generative image model that can create more detailed images), the results did not click with people so well.

“If you make something super-realistic, people focus on details that were not there,” says Garcia. “If it’s blurry, the concept comes across better. Memories are a bit like dreams. They do not behave like photographs, with forensic details. You do not remember if the chair was red or green. You simply remember that there was a chair.” 

The team has since gone back to using the older models. “For us, the glitches are a feature,” says Garcia. “Sometimes things can be there and not there. It’s kind of a quantum state in the images that works really well with memories.”

Sam Lawton, an independent filmmaker who is not involved with the studio, is excited by the project. He’s especially happy that the team will be looking at the cognitive effects of these images in a rigorous clinical study. Lawton has used generative image models to re-create his own memories. In a film he made last year, called Expanded Childhood , he used DALL-E to extend old family photos beyond their borders, blurring real childhood scenes with surreal ones.

“The effect exposure to this kind of generated imagery has on a person's brain was what spurred me to make the film in the first place,” says Lawton. “I was not in a position to launch a full-blown research effort, so I pivoted to the kind of storytelling that's most natural to me.”

Lawton’s work explores a number of questions: What will long-term exposure to AI-generated or altered images have on us? Can such images help reframe traumatic memories? Or do they create a false sense of reality that can lead to confusion and cognitive dissonance?

Lawton showed the images in Expanded Childhood to his father and included his comments in the film: “Something’s wrong. I don’t know what that is. Do I just not remember it?”

Garcia is aware of the dangers of confusing subjective memories with real photographic records. His team’s memory-based reconstructions are not meant to be taken as factual documents, he says. In fact, he notes that this is another reason to stick with the less photorealistic images produced by older versions of generative image models. “It is important to differentiate very clearly what is synthetic memory and what is photography,” says Garcia. “This is a simple way to show that.”

Artificial intelligence

Large language models can do jaw-dropping things. but nobody knows exactly why..

And that's a problem. Figuring it out is one of the biggest scientific puzzles of our time and a crucial step towards controlling more powerful future models.

Google DeepMind’s new generative model makes Super Mario–like games from scratch

Genie learns how to control games by watching hours and hours of video. It could help train next-gen robots too.

What’s next for generative video

OpenAI's Sora has raised the bar for AI moviemaking. Here are four things to bear in mind as we wrap our heads around what's coming.

The AI Act is done. Here’s what will (and won’t) change

The hard work starts now.

• Melissa Heikkilä archive page

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At the Masters, Champions Past, Present and Future

Golf enthusiasts regard a trip to the Masters Tournament as the stuff of dreams. Here are photos from this year’s tournament.

Scottie Scheffler at the 16th hole. Credit...

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Photographs by Doug Mills

Text by Alan Blinder

Reporting from Augusta, Ga.

• April 14, 2024

Seventy-five years ago this past week, Sam Snead won the Masters Tournament and became the first champion to receive one of Augusta National Golf Club’s green jackets.

Until he died in 2002 , the jacket was his to wear every time he returned to Augusta. These days, it is a sartorial symbol of how, beyond a freighted history and marvelous azaleas and golf’s geopolitical machinations and gallery roars that ripple from Amen Corner to the clubhouse, Augusta National is more enchanted by champions than most places.

Since the start of the month, Lottie Woad has captured the Augusta National Women’s Amateur. Eight children were named champions of a junior golf competition after playing at Augusta. More than 30 past Masters winners gathered for dinner to honor Jon Rahm , last year’s champion, and Jack Nicklaus, Gary Player and Tom Watson hit tee shots to start this year’s tournament. Many of their brethren played afterward, because they are allowed to for life. On Sunday, Scottie Scheffler, who was already familiar with the locker room reserved for past champions, won the 88th Masters.

There may be no place in men’s golf where hope, dazzle and ambition are as abundant as Augusta.

But this past week, all of the possibilities seemed to be on greater display than usual. There was the solar eclipse on Monday, when fans peered skyward, just as Ben Crenshaw and Nick Faldo did here, too. Later on, Tiger Woods , 48 years old and two years removed from the last time he finished a major tournament, made his record 24th consecutive Masters cut. But he faded on Saturday.

Higher up the leaderboard during the third round, players like Ludvig Aberg, Nicolai Hojgaard, Max Homa and Xander Schauffele hunted for their debut major title, while Bryson DeChambeau, Collin Morikawa and Cameron Smith looked to build on the magic that had made them champions elsewhere not all that long ago. Scheffler occasionally stumbled, but on Sunday, he dominated and locked down his second Masters victory before the birth of his first child.

Golf enthusiasts often regard a trip to the Masters as the stuff of dreams. It certainly is for players. The Masters represents a shot at becoming one of those champions written into history, with the green jackets and the possibility of forever enchanting Augusta.

Doug Mills has been a photographer in the Washington bureau of The Times since 2002. He previously worked at The Associated Press, where he won two Pulitzer Prizes. His Instagram is @nytmills . More about Doug Mills

Alan Blinder is a national correspondent for The Times, covering education. More about Alan Blinder

Inside the World of Sports

Dive deeper into the people, issues and trends shaping professional, collegiate and amateur athletics..

What We Saw at Augusta: Golf enthusiasts regard a trip to the Masters as the stuff of dreams. Here are photos from this year’s tournament .

A Dizzying 3 Weeks: At times, Shohei Ohtani, baseball’s biggest star, seemed in danger of being tainted by a gambling scandal , before his longtime interpreter was charged with fraud.

A Soccer Team With Free Matches: When Paris F.C. made its tickets free, it began an experiment into the connection between fans and teams , and posed a question about the value of big crowds to televised sports.

Minor League Baseball’s Real Estate: The fight over a new stadium for the Eugene Emeralds  highlights a wider challenge for cheaper alternatives to big-league live sports.

New York’s Favorite Soccer Team: Some people splurge on vacations, fancy shoes and motorcycles. A group of dozens of friends, neighbors and co-workers decided to try something better (or maybe worse): They bought a middling soccer team in Denmark .

Here Comes Padel: The sport is played with a racket on a court with a net, but watch out for those bouncing shots from the back wall. Reporters take a look at the padel scene in New York City .

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New google leak reveals much-needed google photos upgrade.

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Google is testing a powerful new decluttering filter for Google Photos.

Google is preparing a selection of new Google Photos features, including one that will dramatically reduce the clutter in your photo grid.

According to a new report from software sleuth AssembleDebug , the latest version of the Google Photos Android app contains hidden text referring to an unreleased “Hide clutter” function. This much-needed function appears to allow you to automatically filter out saved items such as screenshots, GIFs and memes from your photo grid.

These types of images can accumulate quickly, and while you may still want to keep them, you may not want them to appear alongside your family photos and holiday snaps.

Goodbye, Screenshots!

Google Photos already detects screenshots automatically—they appear as a category of images you may want to delete when cleaning up your storage with the “Manage storage” function. However, the new “Hide clutter” option won’t delete these images from your library. They’ll simply be hidden from view when scrolling through your photo grid. Turning off the filter will presumably reveal the hidden items as required.

Google has previously added several decluttering tools to help users manage their growing photo libraries, including the recent Photo Stacks feature and the ability to have documents sorted automatically into albums such as Screenshots, IDs, receipts etc. A new decluttering filter would complement these features well, helping users to further separate personal memories from other types of saved pictures.

At Least 20 Dead In UAE And Oman After Record Rainfall Causes Severe Flooding

U.s. will impose new sanctions on iran’s drone program after attack on israel, singapore s ura accepts billionaire cousins low bids for housing sites, redesigned memories.

The report also reveals a potential redesign for the Memories tab that replaces the recently introduced collage-style feed of variously-shaped thumbnails in favor of much larger, rectangular images that are all the same size. A toggle switch is also being tested to allow users to turn off Google’s AI-assisted memory title suggestions. This toggle has already been added to Google’s support pages, so it’s likely to be implemented soon. Changes to the overall layout, such as the Memories redesign above, tend to be subject to limited tests before rolling out to everyone.

It’s great to see Google Photos continuing to add genuinely helpful quality-of-life features to the platform. Still, significant changes in interface design tend to be more polarizing, especially among less confident users who don’t adapt well to such changes.

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Android Police

Google photos could soon hide memes and clutter from your main feed.

Plus, the Memories tab could get a big UI revamp

• Google Photos helps organize your media library by categorizing photos and resurfacing old memories.
• A new 'Hide clutter' setting may allow users to hide unwanted memes, GIFs, and screenshots from their library.
• A revamped Memories UI and a dedicated AI features managing menu are also in the works for Google Photos.

Google Photos makes it easy to manage your vast pictures and video library. With some effort on your part, Google's backup tool can neatly organize your library, categorizing photos based on people, events, functions, and more. Plus, it will occasionally resurface old pictures to make you nostalgic. If, like me, you use Google Photos to back up all media you receive on WhatsApp, Telegram, and other apps, your library is likely cluttered with unwanted memes, GIFs, and screenshots. Google now appears to be working on a way to let you hide such unwanted media content from your library.

Google Photos: Everything you need to know

Strings found in the latest Google Photos app for Android (v6.79.0.624777117) contain references to a Hide clutter setting. It will purportedly be located under the 'Personalize your grid' section.

According to the strings, enabling the option will hide "Backed-up photos like screenshots, GIFs, and memes." Do note that you can still access the hidden media from the respective album they are a part of.

Google is also working on a revamp of the Memories UI in the Google Photos app. Currently, the Memories tab shows a random collage of your photos from an event for a memory. As spotted by @AssembleDebug for Piunikaweb , the redesigned interface will use a picture from the album as a thumbnail.

At first glance, I am not a fan of the new interface, as it does not do as good a job as the current UI of surfacing pictures from an event to rekindle your memories about it.

Google Photos might get a dedicated settings menu to manage AI features

Lastly, the Preferences menu in Google Photos could soon get a dedicated 'AI features by Labs' option to manage all AI-related features. The first option would seemingly be "Help me title." This feature is already present for Google Photos users in the US and uses artificial intelligence to suggest titles for your memories, but there's no way to turn it off. However, you can turn off this feature once the new settings roll out.

Google still appears to be testing all the new Photos features mentioned above, so there's clarity on when they will go live. Whenever it does, though, the ability to hide memes and GIFs would be a boon and help you keep your Photos library clutter-free and organized.

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Title: leave no context behind: efficient infinite context transformers with infini-attention.

Abstract: This work introduces an efficient method to scale Transformer-based Large Language Models (LLMs) to infinitely long inputs with bounded memory and computation. A key component in our proposed approach is a new attention technique dubbed Infini-attention. The Infini-attention incorporates a compressive memory into the vanilla attention mechanism and builds in both masked local attention and long-term linear attention mechanisms in a single Transformer block. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach on long-context language modeling benchmarks, 1M sequence length passkey context block retrieval and 500K length book summarization tasks with 1B and 8B LLMs. Our approach introduces minimal bounded memory parameters and enables fast streaming inference for LLMs.

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