Something to Say

For the better part of the last half century, Jim Richardson has molded a career around insightful visual storytelling. An award-winning documentary and travel photographer, his special projects have ranged from Scottish festivals to global agriculture to water issues in the American West, while his images have illustrated more than 50 stories in National Geographic and National Geographic Traveler. Through it all, Richardson has continued to hone a thoughtful approach to image creation, mastering the art of communicating compelling messages through photography. Today, more than ever, this approach holds merit in a world where photography is nearly as prevalent as the words we speak—yet the power of a well-crafted image has never been more salient.

COMMUNICATING VERSUS DECORATING

Whether you’re creating photographs for print or online, the key is to offer a compelling point of view. For Richardson, it boils down to using photography for meaningful communication, not just decoration.

While Richardson stresses that the bottom line hasn’t changed, the approaches to communicating with imagery have evolved. For photo-documentary stories in magazines—fewer and farther between than in the past—every image has a message. When you’re allowed just a dozen images to tell a story, every one of them must advance that narrative. “You’re trying to pack things in while keeping the visual dynamics simple enough to be effective,” explains Richardson. “For those projects, you needed to create images that did a lot but were still elegant.”

Today, people want to be immersed in a gallery, with both photographs and content that offer an experience, he says.  “Today’s most successful photographers are all communicating, not just what they are seeing, but who they are and how their perceptions play into a story. It is not as much about the single photograph anymore. It’s about the gathering of photographs and how those photographs work to convey a message. That message needs to be very focused. If I had to really shorthand it, I would say, ‘Have something to say, and say it well.’”

RECONSIDERING PERCEPTIONS

In Richardson’s view, part of building a sustainable career is creating the projects you want to work on rather than illustrating someone else’s idea. “One of the most powerful things I ever learned to do was to write a story proposal,” he says. “I found it useful to be the architect of the story, because I don’t come by making pictures easily. It’s work for me. So, I always wanted to be in the most advantageous position possible. I could do that best by being the instigator rather than following.”

That approach also helped him develop a more consistent, recognizable body of work. He describes it as “a self-propagating formula,” having a known expertise that is both identifiable and valuable. You become the person who does a certain kind of work. It’s your niche, your differentiator, “because in this complex world, you need to find ways to not only help people find you, but to make them want to find you,” he says.

Early in his career, Richardson made a name for himself by photographing a black-and-white documentary project about the small town of Cuba, Kansas. The project taught him an invaluable lesson about preconceived notions.

“I started the project thinking, What can happen in a little town of less than 200 people?” he remembers. “Well, more than you can possibly imagine. The more you dig, the more knowledge you acquire. I went into the project thinking I was photographing a dying small town. But they didn’t think they were dying, and I had to go back and reformulate what I had conceived. I redeveloped what I was looking for thematically and contemplated more critically what the subjects had to say.”

That reconsidering of the surface appearance has worked well for Richardson, whether he’s photographing small town Americana or a multi-month assignment in a distant corner of the world. “For me, it was always about getting past the superficiality of what you initially see to get to the underlying meaning, the unexpected meaning,” he says. “And by doing that, your ability to make great pictures grows.”

Richardson admits that he failed at this task many times, to the point where he often stood right in front of something important and didn’t realize he was standing in front of it. The subject was there, and he didn’t recognize it. That’s part of the journey of discovery. “It’s hard,” he admits. “You have to know what you’re looking for and where to go find it. At the same time, you can’t be so narrowly focused on one idea that you block off serendipitous discovery.”

For example, Richardson recounts a project when he was photographing whisky country in Scotland. As he was capturing images of some Highland cattle through an 80-200mm lens, a man in a leather jacket, camo pants, and a mohawk (below) suddenly walked into his frame with a loaf of bread and started feeding the bread to the cattle. “I certainly wasn’t looking for that to happen,” says Richardson. “But when it did, I didn’t stop or get frustrated or ask the guy to get out of my picture. I captured it, and it was incredible. You have to keep your eyes open for those opportunities and let the world speak to you.”

When he’s not traveling, Richardson is living that small-town life. In 2002, he and his wife, Kathy, opened Small World Gallery on North Main Street in Lindsborg, Kansas, population less than 4,000 (as of 2023, according to the U.S. Census Bureau). The Small World Gallery features Richardson’s photography from his travels around the globe, which visitors can purchase as posters, greeting cards, and limited-edition prints. The space also includes glass, metal, and stone jewelry from IBISWoman, a jewelry line created by Kathy and artist Briana Zimmerling. The couple also uses their shop to showcase other artists and products that catch their eye.

On the shop’s website, Richardson notes that their brick-and-mortar space is a special place to share their artistry with their neighbors. “I feel lucky,” he says, “to have a base for my travels in a small town with big creative energy.”

EMBRACING THE NEW NORMAL

Richardson is aware of the concerns in the professional photography community about the ubiquitousness of images today, and the so-called desecration of the craft by mobile phone-wielding amateur shutterbugs. However, to him, it’s less a cause for concern than a shift in the relationship with photography.

“In many ways, photography has come down off the gallery wall, from behind the red velvet rope, to become part of the water cooler conversation,” he says. “Photography is how we talk in our daily lives about what we value, and what is interesting to us. So many people are using new photographic technology and discovering how to do wonderful storytelling with it.”

This evolution leads to new opportunities. People are finding innovative ways to put images to work and building careers around different types of image creation. That doesn’t mean the need for photographic skills has disappeared. Rather, it has been transformed. “If you want to be valuable, learn the skills that will make you relevant,” says Richardson. “Spend time on yourself, spend time being able to uniquely do things that other people can’t do. You can’t substitute talent and ability. That hasn’t changed at all. Because making really good pictures isn’t easy. It’s hard, and it will continue to be hard. But if it’s hard and you can do it well, then you will continue to be valuable.”  

Jeff Kent is editor-at-large.