The Importance of Image Sequencing — 540 Mt. Tobias Road
For: Alexander James
Location: Mount Tremper, New York
Price: $1.4M
Telling a story with a set of images
I recently watched a great video, “Sequencing you Architectural Photographs” from Steven Brooke about how crucial it is to tell a story with the flow of your images. I watched another great video on the same subject for laying out photo books, “The Power of Sequencing” from Marc Sibler, and they both got me thinking about how I set up my images both for client delivery (usually via dropbox), and here in the gallery post as I have it below. In Marc’s video, he even gives an example about how putting the most impactful photo first backfired in a big way. He notes that he hadn’t built the proper introduction for the image to be understood and interpreted, and as a result it was misinterpreted by the viewer in an upsetting way.
Now, I don’t expect that my photos of nice homes are going to be upsetting anyone, but it does make the case that a sequence of images has the power to tell a visual story, beyond what a single image can deliver. If an image is worth a thousand words, then what is the sequence worth? More than the sum of its parts, certainly. Having the images tell an unfolding story also gives room for quieter shots that might not stand to strong on their own, but still have some magic to them.
I’ve also been studying a lot of film making, video production, video editing, and story telling content, and those have also got me thinking more in terms of structure, layout, and flow, in a way that I think has always kind of been lacking in my presentation.
I always had a tendency to front load the ‘bangers’ to make sure those got seen before viewers got fatigued and lost interest in continuing to view the images. But, if they’re loosing interest, it may not be that those later images aren’t as interesting, just that there’s no compelling story to keep the viewer engaged and flowing. Looking at photos can be overwhelming, and even I am frequently plagued by burnout while editing images, and I get to a point where I just can’t even tell what looks good anymore.
I always thought that to keep someone engaged, each photo had to be “better” than the last, or at least as good. They needed to all be absolutely amazing to keep someone’s wrapt attention. And maybe that could be the case with a portfolio, but even a portfolio should have a sort of sequence to it. Deep down, we are emotional, story driven creatures, and if I have the opportunity to work more of an intentional story in my work, it would be a shame to waste that.
I often shoot a house in a disjointed way, jumping around to chase the light, capturing what’s beautiful on one side of the house just because it looks great in that moment. In the rush of things, especially with tight turnaround real estate shoots like this, I export and deliver the images in the sequence I shot them, knowing my client, the agent, will pick out the images they want and place them in the order that best suits their needs for where they’re presenting the images.
But, when it came time to put together the gallery you see below, I wanted to have a little more intention with it. I at least wanted the images to flow from room to room in a logical progression, like a video sequence would in a home tour, another subject I’ve been studying.
Detailing this sequence.
So in this case, we’ve got the establishing shot at the top of the post, telling you what we’re here to see: a modern home in the mountains. The next shot is what caught my eye was I pulled up to the home and glimpsed it through the trees down the driveway. This was actually one of the last photos I took, as I was leaving the house after the shoot. The next shot is of the entrance to the home, and then one looking in through the door at the beautiful chair and the mountains beyond framed by the home’s windows. The next shoot is a pack back, through the door we just entered. Then, we turn back around to the shot that showcases the beautiful curve of the chair.
The images flow in a logical progression from room to room, showing the flow of rooms upstairs, and out onto the deck, then returning inside to show the staircase leading down to the lower floor, and the rooms down there before stepping out to the pool deck. The last photo on the ground is standing at the corner of the pool facing back at the house, then I switch to a drone shoot a bit further back, and progressively more and more zoomed out drone shots.
Describing the sequence like that felt a little silly, since the images are right here for you to see - but it does help me look at it more critically, and it’s got me considering making some improvements. I also want to finish stronger, and as I’m writing this the last image is an overhead site plan style shot, which I enjoy, but I’d prefer a stronger shot you can linger on to the be the last image of the set.
Another consideration is how viewers spend their time in an image. I always assume folks are going to quickly swipe through and breeze through photos as fast as possible, but I’ve witnessed viewers taking their time to take in certain photos, and that’s a nice feeling. By the time I’m presenting an image, I’ve already spend an enormous amount of time looking at it, so I know what the image is a quick glance - but do you spend more time taking them in as you look at them for the first time?
And yet, the little voice creeps in.
Granted, there’s another part of me - the doubter, the disbeliever, the critic, that lives inside every artist… and it’s telling me that my images don’t need a story, they just need to be better, and that having a good sequence or story is just a crutch for not being good enough.
To that, I’ll simply quote Simon Devitt:
“I’ve yet to make my best work.”
