Photographs are an exceptionally useful tool for writers as both research and inspiration. Using different techniques best suited to your projects will give them a precise, sensory level, engaging readers.
As Research
When you write about a real setting -- either in fiction or non-fiction -- if at all possible, visit it. Bring your camera. Take lots of photos. Photograph anything that catches your attention from several angles. Think in terms of your story.
I wrote a piece set at a small, local, art deco amusement park. I walked around the park over a series of weeks, taking several hundred photographs, figuring out where my characters would walk, how they would get from point A to point B, and used specific rides and other landmarks as inspiration for plot points. I've spent quite a bit of time in Ayrshire (Scotland) and Northumbria (England), and have taken hundreds of photos over the years. I use both those settings frequently in my work. I pin the relevant photographs to a corkboard above or near my desk and can stare at them/reference them as I write. The photographs bring back the other sensations: The smells, the way the ground felt under my feet, the spirit of the place, and it adds texture to my writing, without sounding like a travel guide.
Readers, especially readers initially drawn to your work, will catch errors. When you use real settings, precision is important, even if you juxtapose fictional buildings, landmarks, etc., within the context of known landmarks. Readers will catch mistakes. Make sure discrepancies are intentional fictionalizations, not simple carelessness.
Sometimes I use real settings as the basis for my fictional settings. For instance, in planning a recent ghost story, I took my camera to a local nature center that contains the ruins of a burned-out house. Even on the sunniest days, an eerie atmosphere surrounds it. I've photographed it during the height of summer; now, I photographed it during autumn. The house in my story was an abandoned farmhouse, not a burned-out shell of a stone house. But I wanted to replicate the atmosphere: the closed-in trees and the bed of leaves all the way around the abandoned structure. Looking at the photographs and juxtaposing them from the warmth of summer to the chill of autumn, helped me create the spooky quality I sought in the story.
I also carry my camera with me when I take short business trips or day-long errand/interview jaunts to new locations. Even if I don't enter a new setting with a story in mind, I document whatever catches my attention. I've sorted back through old
photographs many times when looking for just the right environment for a story.
As inspiration
Writers burn out, get tired or the creative well runs dry. If this is your business rather than your hobby, you don't have the luxury of writer's block. You have to get the creativity flowing again. I find that photographs help. Sometimes I look through my own photographs. I page through the photo albums or scroll through my disks -- not with any pre-conceived intent, just looking. Often, I'll catch something off to the side of a frame, or the composition of one of the photographs will cause me to stop and think. And an idea begins to percolate.
I keep books of other people's photographs handy. On days when I feel tired and stuck, I sit quietly and roam through the books. I look through someone else's eyes, and usually, a character's voice begins to percolate. I'm not only looking through the photographer's eyes, I look through the character's eyes. And a new story begins. I start writing the character's experience in the context of the photograph. I ask the "what if?" questions. And the block is broken.
All of the senses compliment each other. When the brain tires, use the eyes to stimulate the other senses, which will, in turn, boil the contents in your creative kettle and send your fingers flying over the keyboard.
Devon Ellington publishes under a half a dozen names in both fiction and non-fiction. Visit her blog on the writing life (Ink in My Coffee) and her website, www.devonellingtonwork.com.
