For our third annual photo essay contest, you can take pictures of nearly anything in your local area that interests you — whether that is people, places, buildings, nature, art or even trash. All you have to do is decide on a theme, explore it in six to eight images, then pull the collection together with a short written introduction and some captions.
How do you do that? We have a bunch of examples below, plus guidance for how to use them to inspire your own work.
Remember to submit by Jan. 14., and have fun!
1. Take a look at some excellent photo essays that explore local places.
Use the free links below to scroll through any of the photo essays that catch your eye. You might ask yourself:
- What do I notice?
- What do I admire?
- What ideas do these photo essays give me for my own work?
I. Start with the collection of teen work from our 2023 and 2024 photo essay contests, which focused on the theme of local, offline communities — a subject you can also use for this contest:
- The two winning photo essays: The L.A. Derby Dolls Take Up Space (2023) and ‘I Am Free’: Hip-Hop and the Power of Resistance in Dharavi (2024)
- The runners-up from 2023 and 2024: See how teens have depicted local dog parks, hospitals, sports teams, restaurants, markets, barbershops, Boy Scouts and underground music gatherings.
II. Then scroll The New York Times series Album, which ran in the Metro section from 2016 to 2019 and illustrated life, scenes and the abstract in New York City.
Each photo essay features the work of a different photographer and celebrates distinct facets of the same city. Below we’ve categorized the pieces from that column so that it’s easy to find something of interest.
Please note that some of the older photo essays link out to slide shows rather than embedding the photos with the text.
- Photo essays about young people: Bringing Up Robot Baby, a Teenage Rite of Passage; For Autistic Boys, the Subway Is Actually Soothing; New Jersey Baseball Prospects Take the Game Indoors; All Things Must Pass. But the Prom, Somehow, Goes On
- Photo essays documenting local events: Taking the A Train to the Middle Ages; ‘Like Seeing Noah’s Ark on a Sunday Morning’: The Annual Blessing of the Animals; Capturing the ‘American Fantasy’ of Dyker Lights; Drag Racing for Any Car: 12 Seconds of Pure Adrenaline; At This July 4 Parade, It’s Survival of the Wettest; What Cats Think of the Dog Show
- Photo essays about specific New York places and times: Capturing New York City, as It Awakens; Coney Island, Ever Changing; Far Rockaway: City, Sea and Wilderness; Images of Old-School Harlem, Rapidly Vanishing; Fulton Mall, Amid Change; Touring the Rust Belt of New York City; Looking for America at the Riverhead Raceway; Brooklyn’s Visual Reboot; New York’s Forgotten Waterways; Is This the Least-Loved Highway in America?; Staten Island, for Locals; The Most Romantic 25 Minutes in New York; Mourning and Tourism Come Together at Ground Zero
- Photo essays showing people at work and pursuing hobbies: ‘Baywatch’ Gets Its Game Face On: The Lifeguards at Jones Beach; The ‘Quiet Moments’ of Waitresses at Work; The Ballad of a Neighborhood Deli; A Fresh Coat for Condo City; Photographing a Mixed Martial Arts Champion; On Long Island, Veterans Fly Vintage Aircraft, and Reminisce; His Camera Has Ears; The Hindu Bagpipers of Secaucus
- Photo essays about spirituality: Purim Is a Sacred Jewish Holiday — and a Wild Two-Day Party; Worshiping Santa Muerte, ‘Holy Death,’ in Queens
- Photo essays that focus on culture, nationality or ethnicity: In New York, Every Day Is Hispanic Heritage Day; Yemenis in New York in the Shadow of a Travel Ban; Sherpas of Elmhurst; Of the Bronx and of Nigeria
- Photo essays about incarceration: ‘Our Crimes Are Not Who We Are’; A Communal Struggle on the Bus to Rikers
- Photo essays focused on making visual art out of the ordinary: What Is That? Seeing the City as Abstract Art; Man Against Nature; A Mitten, a Key, a Unicorn: Did You Drop Something?; New York’s Street Ballet, Full of Repetition and Chaos; I Can Help Who’s Next; The Red Bags of Chinatown: For Good Luck and Cheap Produce; The City’s Most Arresting Signs Over the Decades
- And finally, a photo essay that didn’t fit into any of the categories above: When Squirrels on the Fire Escape Become Family
Which of these photo essays gives you ideas for subjects you might like to explore? Why?
2. Figure out what you want to capture, then spend time observing.
What gets your attention? What, to you, is unique or special about where you live? What do you notice that others might not see? What might you like to investigate and learn more about?
Our forthcoming Student Opinion forum will ask these questions and more to help you brainstorm ideas, but, as long as you keep in mind that The New York Times has a global audience, including many families, almost nothing is off limits.
A photo essay about recent changes in your neighborhood? About the people who use the nearby park or community center? A study of local advertising or graffiti? An investigation of pollution — or efforts to fight pollution — at a community waterway? An exploration of a weird bit of local history? The amazing holiday decorations on a neighborhood block or at a favorite store? Your grandfather’s weekly breakfast with old friends at the diner that has been around for 50 years?
Any and all of these subjects can work, but whatever you choose, the topic should deeply engage you. Remember that for this contest, unlike our earlier ones, your photo essay does not have to include people.
Once you settle on your idea, spend time observing, perhaps taking notes or preliminary photos. Begin to plan your piece, keeping in mind that, via six to eight photos and related captions, plus a short introduction, you’ll need to answer questions like the following:
- What is my focus?
- Whom, if anyone, do I need to photograph? (You don’t have to have people in your photo essay, but many of you will!)
- Where is this? How can my images give others a sense of this place?
- When is the best time to take these images?
- How did this thing I am depicting come to be? How is it important to me and to my community?
- Why might this topic matter to a general audience?
3. Take photos that offer variety.
If there’s one thing to notice about the work of the teen winners of our previous photo essay contests, it is that the images zoom out to provide a big picture and zoom in to focus on meaningful details. In each essay, there are photos that show the physical space; images that spotlight the people who gather there; and close-up images that focus on meaningful objects or details, like food, clothing, tattoos, jewelry, hair or hands.
How can you do this, too? How can you show the big picture as well as the telling details that make your subject special?
Then, once you’ve taken a range of photos, look through them and ask yourself, “How does composition convey meaning?” Our detailed photo guide, developed for an earlier contest, encourages you to think about how to experiment with basic techniques, like the rule of thirds, angle, depth of field, leading lines, framing and distance. It also helps you think about lighting, color and cropping, as well as making the best use of the tools on most smartphones. Though that guide was focused on taking shots of people, the same ideas can apply to your subject, too.
Ask yourself, do I have enough variety? How can I experiment?
4. Craft an introduction and some photo captions that fill in key details, background and context.
Now that you know what you’re trying to say with your images, what gaps do you need to fill in with your writing? What would a viewer need to know to understand what they were looking at and to grasp why it is important?
We’re going to focus on just one photo essay to show you how to do this: “The L.A. Derby Dolls Take Up Space.” The piece, by Chloe Moon Flaherty, 18, of Los Angeles, was the winner of The Learning Network’s first “Where We Are” Photo Essay Contest, which invited teenagers to document a community that interested them. It features eight images, and the writing is roughly 470 words, including the photo captions.
We’re allowing you more leeway in this contest. Not only do you have a wider range of options for subject (you can take images that focus on nearly anything you like, with or without people), we’ve also tweaked the word count to give you more room. Your introduction can be up to 300 words, and each caption can be up to 75 words. If you submit eight images, that offers you up to 900 words to work with.
Now let’s look closely. First, here is Ms. Moon’s introduction, which is just over 200 words:
In Vernon, Calif., past the meatpacking plants and product distribution centers, a lone warehouse door opens, and the noise of roller skates echoes into the surrounding streets.
The warehouse, seemingly vacant, is home to the L.A. Derby Dolls, Los Angeles’s original women-led roller derby league — one of only 13 banked track leagues in the United States. Founded in 2003, its initial goal was to both legitimize roller derby as a sport and to create a space for girls to skate. Today, girls and nonbinary kids, ages ranging from eight to 17, race across the track in a storm of jerseys with skulls, blood-red mouth guards and ripped fishnets.
Many of the skaters are hitting a pivotal point in adolescence when they begin to fear being perceived as too loud or as taking up too much space. Derby culture, however, embraces the unconventional: the track is a place where their individuality is not a source of tension, but celebration.
With names like Luna Shove Good and Thugs Bunny, the message is clear: Derby Dolls are tough, powerful and unapologetic. To them, roller derby is not just a workout, but a community where they are accepted unconditionally.
What do you notice? For instance …
- In her opening paragraph — just a sentence long — how does she help you understand the setting so that you have a sense of place?
- How does she give you some important background in Paragraph 2 about the women-led roller derby league?
- In Paragraphs 3 and 4, how does she offer a reason for why the story of one roller derby team might be interesting to a general audience?
- Throughout the introduction, how does she help you to visualize this place and people? What descriptions stand out for you? Why?
Next, have a look at the caption writing that comes after. Please note that unlike traditional photo captions, these sentences don’t appear in smaller letters just under the photo, like these, but instead look like part of the essay. We’ll be producing this year’s winners the same way.
Some captions describe the action in the photo so that you understand what is happening and why it is important:
The caption: Onlookers are shocked as the skaters slam one another into the railings, screaming directions to the jammer (the skater with a star helmet) as they try to maneuver past the blockers.
Some use the caption as to give more background information about the culture and traditions of the group:
The caption: Mazzy Scar, 17, peels her tights off her freshly skinned knee. When a skater falls off the track, whether dealing with a broken arm or a scraped leg, everyone freezes and kneels with their head down until the moment passes.
The final photo and caption are especially important since they will bring the whole piece to a close.
Here, Ms. Moon captures what’s perhaps most important about this team via a poignant image and a final quote about the tightness of the bonds in this community.
The caption: Mazzy Scar, right, and Betty Rumble, 16, who have been skating together for two years, embrace after realizing how little time they have left before Mazzy leaves for college.
Many skaters who move away search for another league but “nothing is the same as Derby Dolls,” said 17-year-old Ginger Snapped.
Need more? We’ve got it. We created a guide for our 2023 and 2024 “Where We Are” contest with many more examples, and with detailed directions for things like interviewing people and editing your work before you submit. Nearly everything in that guide applies to this contest as well.
Good luck, and have fun!
Katherine Schulten has been an editor at The Times’s Learning Network since 2006. She spent 19 years as a high school English teacher and a literacy consultant in New York City public schools.
The post Photo Essay Inspiration: How to Take Engaging Pictures of Your Hometown appeared first on New York Times.
