There’s no question that photos like the one above that accompanied a New York Times article on China’s surging demand for coal accentuate storytelling.

In some cases, we’re actually seeing storytelling revolve around visuals like the seafood charticle in WIRED Magazine.

I think The New York Times does a particularly good job in building their stories around a strong narrative and compelling photographs. At a time when the photo staffs of newspapers have been decimated (to be kind), The Times augments its skeleton crew with other photo sources.

The photo of the chap shoveling coal comes from the European Pressphoto Agency. It fits perfectly with the opening graph of the NYT story:

Even as China has set ambitious goals for itself in clean-energy production and reduction of global warming gases, the country’s surging demand for power from oil and coal has led to the largest six-month increase in the tonnage of human generated greenhouse gases ever by a single country.  

Furthermore, two more photos round out The New York Times’ story on the China energy challenge, both secured from Reuters.

What does this mean for communications professionals?

It behooves us to strengthen our stories with compelling photography or other visuals.

In fact, one could make an argument that internal staff cutbacks create even more opportunity for companies to use photography to make a case for their stories with the media. 

If you ask people what’s the one digital device they absolutely can’t live without, the mobile phone comes out as the clear leader.

That’s why you have industry heavyweights like Google’s Eric Schmidt calling mobile advertising the  single most exciting opportunity for the do-no-evil guys as far back as 2006 (The Wall Street Journal).

It also explains the strategic importance of the Android platform for Google. Mobile search and the ads that come along for the ride will be a massive market.

While predicting the size of such an embryonic market is a little like Mrs. Magellan asking how many lunches to pack, this hasn’t stopped the prognosticators from taking a shot. Industry analyst firm Informa, for example, forecasts annual expenditure on mobile advertising reaching the $11.4 billion mark by 2011.

Whether you buy this number or not, the point is that people are increasingly turning to the phone for content … which brings us storytelling on the “small screen.”

Rudy De Waele’s blog called Mobile Media Lifestyle looks at this very topic. In fact, De Waele delivered a presentation called Mobile Digital Storytelling in Seoul last week (appreciate Kathrin Eiben in Spain flagging it) that even touches on the tools emerging for packaging a story for display on mobile phones.

Obviously, a tiny screen puts a premium on the visual element.

You can check out the early days of visual storytelling on Flickr via its “tell a story in five frames” initiative, which offers the following guidance:

Guidelines are not rules, but a formula that can be used to suit your creative imagination. Several avenues exist for story telling, such as journalistic reporting, sequential photos that reveal a moment, photographic poetry, and narrative. The following guidelines are for narrative.

A good story has characters in action with a beginning, middle, and an ending. Fortunately a lot of information can be given in a single photograph, enhancing the limitations of five photographs for your story. Location, time, and atmosphere aid viewer imagination. Keep standards of pictorial beauty, but pack as many storytelling elements in one photograph as possible to develop an action.

1st photo: establish characters and location.

2nd photo: create a situation with possibilities of what might happen.

3rd photo: involve the characters in the situation.

4th photo: build to probable outcomes

5th photo: have a logical, but surprising, end.

Like any form of storytelling, drama keeps an audience engaged. 

You don’t think B2B trade publications have a sense of humor?

Think again.

SmallBusinessComputing recently covered a new storage device from Fabrik with the following photo and caption: 

Pass the Wasabi: What looks like an elegant way to serve sushi is, in fact, Fabrik’s eco-friendly, bamboo-encased external drive.

The juxtaposition of the wasabi and a hard disk drive makes for a good caption.

I’ve always thought that if a line brings a smile to the reader’s face, you’re on the right track.

Reminds me of a caption that ran in Electronic News years ago on a new Hitachi optical disc: Holds ten gigabytes of storage or approximately nine jelly donuts. Sure enough, the photo depicted one of the Hitachi executives holding the disc as a serving platter showcasing the finest from the local Dunkin Donuts.