Tell a story with a stylish triptych photoshoot

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Working to a theme is a great way of focusing your attention and exploring the visual possibilities of a subject. But spring itself is such a wide and all encompassing theme that it’s difficult to create a series of images that work cohesively. But narrow the idea further to aspects of spring, and much more obvious stories will become apparent.
A single image can suggest a story, but a set of three can tell it. A triptych is simply a way of displaying three images side by side, and for our spring triptych the theme we worked with was gardening and new life. The result was a set of three images that show different elements of the growing process, with the hands holding a flower in soil suggesting the nurturing aspect of gardening.
The best thing about storytelling with photography is that there are two approaches you can take. You could choose to show what was in front of the lens using focusing and composition to make the images interesting. Alternatively, try something more creative like our shot of the soil-coated hands holding a tiny flower. With this image there’s a suggested idea behind what’s being shown that works with the main theme.

Use consistent processing

To ensure that the three images work together as a set, it’s also important that they are processed in exactly the same way. For our images we made sure the colours of the subjects complimented each other so they would work together in colour, although they would also work well in black & white. Converting to mono is always a good option for a triptych series if the colours in the three shots contrast too much.

How to shoot for square crop

  1. Compose images in the right format When shooting photos that will be cropped to square, there’s a simple way of composing that means you’ll never have to crop important parts of the subject out. This is a common problem if you snap away as usual and compose for a rectangular format. So, for horizontal subjects shoot with the camera in portrait format. This is simply because the whole subject will be in the frame and it will set the height and width of the image. Conversely, if you’re shooting an upright subject, compose the image in landscape format. 
  2. Shoot in aperture-priority For these types of shots it’s best to shoot in aperture-priority so you can control aperture while the camera takes care of shutter speed. Set the desired aperture with ISO between 100-400. To achieve a shallow depth-of-fi eld, our detail images were taken at f/2.8. The hands and flower image was taken at f/5.6 for a slightly larger depth-of-field. 
  3. Use exposure compensation If there are tones in the scene that are lighter or darker than midtone grey, the camera will over or underexpose. If the shot looks too dark add overexposure, which is denoted by a + symbol. If it’s too light set the camera to underexpose. A - symbol will be seen next to the amount of underexposure. 0.5 to 1 stop is usually enough to correct exposure issues. 

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