"Every picture needs a story; a photo plus audio creates a compelling
story," comments former Corbis CEO and current ZoomAlbum CEO Doug Rowan.
"Photographs by themselves don't really tell the stories. You need people
to tell the stories."
My brother Doug was talking about the product of an audio company called Yodio. You really could say the same thing about any snapshot, PowerPoint presentation at work, or your kid's yearbook.
The old proverb, "every picture tells a story," does not capture the essence of what Doug is saying: pictures need stories to be complete and memorable. Pictures without stories are unfortunate orphans... shadows of their potential selves.
Video cameras can record a narration of many images strung together, but not capture the unique story of one image in one moment. I love used postcards because they record a short, personal story that will always stay with the picture. (Like the card I posted on here.)
Most photographers have some sort of story in mind when they snap a picture. (I had one in mind when I took this picture yesterday of road signs, but you probably cannot guess what it was.) Any reliable and lasting connection between the picture and the story is severed the moment the shutter clicks. To keep them together we must rely on memory or notes, two things we are really bad at. ZoomAlbum and other scrapbooking tools can really help us.
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Photo story company, ZoomAlbum; Yodio press release; ZoomAlbumEllen's blog post about scrapbooking and photo albums.
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