In this episode of the podcast, I got to dig a little into how much we hear about the importance of telling a story through photography. As I was thinking about it recently, I remembered sitting in an English class years ago, learning about Freytag’s Pyramid—that classic story arc with an introduction, rising action, climax, falling action, and resolution. Stories have a rhythm and flow, a sense of movement from beginning to end. As story tellers in our photography, it got me to think about can one frame carry the weight of an entire arc, or does a single image usually focus on one essential moment within that larger framework? A photograph might be the climax, the quiet introduction, or even the resolution. Thinking about where your work falls in that kind of structure can shift the way you approach making images.

Once I went down that rabbit hole, I started looking at other story frameworks. The Hero’s Journey—with its call to adventure and return home. Pixar’s famous six-sentence storytelling method. The Seven-Point structure. Simon Sinek’s Golden Circle. Each offers a different way of shaping meaning and connection. Understanding those frameworks can help us understand the why we make our work, how to interpret or work or, better yet, how to frame up a composition before we even click the shutter.

The point isn’t that every photograph needs to map perfectly onto one of these frameworks. It’s that story structures give us a language to think about our work differently. They can spark new questions: What role is this photograph playing? What part of the story is it trying to tell? How might a series of images fill in the missing pieces?

When you start to see your images through the lens of story, you may discover new opportunities for connection to your work.