Mobile Photography Weekly

- [Instructor] In earlier episodes of this series, we focused on the basics of using Instagram Stories. Now, the way that most people use this feature is to add new installments at different times throughout the day. And this can be a fun way to create a short serialized story of what you're experiencing in your day. You might also use it to promote an event or a product or a service that you're offering. This week on Mobile Photography Weekly, we're going to take a look at a different way to use Instagram Stories and explore the idea of taking advantage of the sequential nature of them and using the format to present a more structured and preconceived story. Although the scenes from my day type of narratives are what we see most often on Instagram Stories, I've always been intrigued by using the format of Instagram Stories to present narratives that are planned out ahead of time, whether they are documentary stories, short pieces of fiction, or even poetry illustrated with images. So I set out to create a short fictional story. And I wanted to share part of that process as well as the finished result. First, I came up with a fairly simple idea that could be easily told with not many images and very little text. My story was all about the slightly surreal feeling of waking up from a dream and then suspecting that maybe you're actually still dreaming. I felt that this was something where I could easily use photos that I already had or create new ones. In my case, nearly all of the photos and the videos were made specifically for this story over the course of one afternoon. Once I had decided on the basic storyline, I made a list of shots that I would need. I also tried to visualize what the transitions would be from one shot to the next. The use of text was kept to a minimum and it essentially helps to set the stage at the opening of the story and then move the narrative along and also neatly tie everything up at the end with nearly the same words that were present at the beginning of the story. Of course, along the way, I also used some different apps to apply some special effects and video blending to some of the clips. The simple sequential format of Instagram Stories, as well as the ability to post still photos and video clips, makes it very adaptable to presenting different types of stories in a variety of ways. I hope that this episode has given you some ideas for new and creative ways that you can use this feature to share new stories with your followers.