“Show,” Don’t “Tell” – A One Shot Story

“Show, Don’t Tell” is common advice given to creative writing students in high schools, universities, and to writing students around the world. The adage is simple. Instead of writing “The girl was afraid when the stranger approached,” write “The girl’s hands trembled when she heard the stranger’s footsteps.” Showing, instead of simply telling, makes the story much more engaging.

That simple advice can also be applied to photography. The technology packed into smart phones, DSLRs, and mirrorless cameras makes it very easy to take properly exposed photos, and to document (and share) every aspect of our life.

The website Phototutorial and research from Instagram shows that, thanks to smartphones, 5 billion to 5.5 billion photos are taken EACH DAY, around the world, and in 2025 2.1 trillion photos were taken, 95 percent of them from smartphones.

How do we differentiate our photos from the billions taken each day? How many of our photos really “tell a story?”

I have taken many thousands of photos of my dogs over the years. Many are “fun” photos of them playing, or running, or posing at scenic locations. But one photo, taken with a Nikon FM2 camera manufactured in 1992 and a Nikkor manual focus lens that is even older, is in many ways more special than many of the photos I’ve taken with my modern cameras, primarily because it tells a story.

This black and white photo, taken in November 2022, features our two golden retrievers, Meadow (left), who was 3 years old when this photo was taken and Sutter, who is about 1½ years younger.

Sutter is showing his full personality here; always active, always with something in his mouth (he is a golden retriever, after all; here he has one of his chew toys) and most importantly, leaning in and making contact with Meadow.

Meadow is just the opposite. Much more mature, she scans her surroundings in this photo and gives Sutter plenty of latitude. Since Sutter arrived on the scene as a puppy, Meadow’s personal space has been pretty much non-existent, and, because of her easy-going personality, she doesn’t seem to mind most of his antics. This photo only represents a fraction of a second in the lives of these two dogs, but it says everything about who they are and how they relate to each other. For me, this is a photo that “tells a story.”

As Sutter and Meadow get older and, eventually leave us, this photo will become even more special, and will likely remain one of my favorites.

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