These exercises are adapted from Picturing Texts.
Exercise 1. Select related photographs you've taken or received and write captions for them. Each caption should be between 50 and 500 words long. You'll need to have a particular audience in mind and a purposeto tell someone about a friend or to document an event for someone who didn't witness it, for example. The goal of this assignment is to think about what you can do with words and images. What can you communicate with a photo alone or with words alone? What can you do with a captionWhat kind of information is appropriate?
Exercise 2. Social, cultural, and economic context help shape the way we read all visual texts, even the most casual family snapshots. Upload to your photo-sharing site old scanned photos of family or friends or use ones you can find on the Web. In your slideshow, use the captions to analyze how details in the photos "date" them or suggest a certain level of income or a particular event (like a graduation, prom, or family picnic). Then, select from your photo-sharing site or from the Web two or three recent pictures of family members or friends. Point out what details in these recent pictures will eventually make them seem dated.
Exercise 3. Using
Google Image Search, search for images relating to a specific general subjectbabies, pets, or flowers, for example. Select four or five of them and think create a slideshow in which you address the following questions about audience: To what extent can you identify the person or people who created or selected these images? Even if you cannot name a person or design team, what can you say about the photographer's point of view and purpose? Be specific about what details in each image inform your conclusions.
Exercise 4. Find an illustrated article in an online newspaper or magazine that interests you. In the caption area of the first slide of your slideshow, provide the URL to the article and briefly explain why you chose it. Create a slide for each of the images from the article and explain in the caption area how each one contributes to the article's effectiveness.
Exercise 5. Travel photography usually involves representing others. Whether we're taking pictures of people we know or don't know, we're representing them in a context that is meaningful to us. Choose some photographs of a people you took on a trip, vacation, or even on a visit to a neighborhood park or mall. Create a slideshow that helps to analyze some of the challenges associated with representing others. Address some of the following questions in your captions: Why did you choose to take this picture? Did you pick a specific moment, a certain pose, expression, or characteristic gesture? Consider the placewere you trying to record a particular view, building, or event? Consider the context: What were you trying to show about the person or the place? Consider too how your experience and background shaped the photographs you took.
Exercise 6. When we write we make choices that reflect our point of view. We mention some details and ignore others, for example, or quote some people but not others. Similarly, every image reflects a particular view of reality constructed by the photographer's choices. Select a few photographs of groups of family or friends and consider in your slideshow how they illustrate how a photographer's choices affect our perception of reality. As you write the captions for your slideshow, consider the following questions: Who's in the picture and who's not there but might have been? Why were they left out? What reality is pictured and who constructed itthe ones pictured, the one taking the picture, or both? When you take photos of friends, do you consciously arrange the people in a certain way? Do you wait foror ask fora big smile?
Exercise 7. Scan several images from a magazine that focuses on beauty, fitness, or lifestyle and upload them to your photo-sharing site (or, if you prefer, use images from an online magazine). Create a slideshow that addresses the following two questions: What reality do these images project and how do they convey that reality to the viewer? How "realistic" do you think these images are?
Exercise 8. Although you might not think of them in this way, the photographs in real estate ads function as visual arguments. They argue that this is a place you will want to buya good place to raise a family, perhaps, or to entertain, to retire, or something else. Look on the Internet for real estate ads that include images of the property. What arguments do these images make? Create a slideshow in which you make an argument about a place for sale or rent. You can use images from an online real estate ad, or you can take photographs of a local property and upload them to your photo-sharing site. Think about what you want the images to convey and about what written words you need to go along with them.
Exercise 9. Sometimes you can completely change a photo by cropping it. From your photo-sharing site, select a photo that interests you and, using the tools available on the photo-sharing site, crop it to create three different pictures. In your accompanying slideshow captions, analyze what each version "says" and how cropping changes the way the photo is read. The first slide in the slideshow should be the original, unaltered photo and the caption should briefly explain why you chose it.