2 Writing Through The Lens: Creating Camera Narratives
2.2 Literacy and the Digital Camera

Literacy and the Digital Camera

If a Picture is Worth a Thousand Words, Let’s Get Started!

Rationale:

What is a “Photo Essay” and how can it function as part of a literacy program?

A photo essay is a collection of images organized to “story” a progression of narrative events, emotions, and/or concept ideas. In other words, the photo essay uses the same story telling techniques as a written essay but translates these as visual images. As part of a literacy program at the elementary level, the photo essay can provide a highly engaging and accessible initiating framework for the development of reading and writing skills. The photos would act as the creative writing trigger or jumping off point. .

Our children are products of a world in which much of their learned input comes from visual information delivered through media sources - film, television, video and computer screen. They are sophisticated decoders of these visual cues, subtexts, and image driven plot lines. Those skills however, do not necessarily translate to the classroom where much of a student’s day focuses around their facility with written language and they may well be reluctant readers and writers.

Providing a student with his or her own digital camera to record teacher assisted story ideas is stage one in the process of personal storytelling. The camera quite literally gives immediate vision to the student’s “narrative voice” or “point of view”. In addition, unlike the more labour intensive process of editing in a written narrative, the student begins the process of self-editing with his choice of image. This kind of control and feedback is a confidence builder as well as a seductive incentive toward his buying into stage two which is the writing of companion text to his organized visual narrative.

Story telling takes practice but your students don’t need to be strong readers or writers to produce powerful photo essays. All they need is a bit of photographic technique, some creativity and sense of direction, and a sincere commitment to their task. Once they begin telling stories in pictures they will have a powerful tool to assist in comprehensive expressive literacy.

The birth of every story supposes two things; one – that there will be a teller of the tale and two - that there will be a listener. Literacy requires two more; that the teller will be the writer and the listener will be the reader and that the student will be comfortable in both roles.

Getting Ready

Maybe the easiest way to start is with -

The Single Photo Short Story

A photograph has the ability to convey emotion, mood, narrative, ideas and messages – all of which are important elements in story telling.

Thinking photographically then, a short story might be only one, or maybe two images.

These student images should attempt to capture the essence of what will become the accompanying written story.

Short story photos are probably shots that leave the viewer of the photograph with questions about what they are looking at. These single image stories can be very powerful because of what they don’t include in the shot as much as what they do include and allow a student a safe and consistent starting point from which to elaborate in written form.

Here are some considerations to discuss with your students before beginning their stories:

Introduce Relationship – When telling a story with only a single image think about including more than one person in the shot – when you do this you introduce ‘relationship’ into a photo, which will conjure up all types of thoughts in the viewers or readers of your shots.

Having said that, sometimes also carefully framing a second person OUT of your shot can add to the story you’re trying to tell. For instance leaving evidence in the shot of a second unseen person can add questions to the viewers’ minds (i.e. a shot of a person alone at a table with two cups of coffee in front of them – or a shot of someone talking animatedly to an unseen person). Unseen elements of a photo can add a lot.

Also think about

Context – what’s going on around your subject? What’s in the background? What do the other elements of the photo say about your subject and what’s going on in their lives?

Once your students are comfortable with the camera and have had ample opportunity to practice single photo storytelling you and they will be ready to move on to -

The Multiple Image Story

A common mistake that a new photographer often makes is that he thinks he needs to put every possible element of the story into each photograph that he takes. This leads to photos that can be cluttered, have too many focal points and which therefore confuse the viewer or reader of the photo. This of course directly correlates to the beginning writer who loses his way in the plot line and becomes lost and frustrated in the telling of unimportant or extraneous details.

One way to avoid this confusion and yet to still tell a good story with images is for the student to take a series of images instead of a single shot. What he is doing here is a step towards shooting a “personal movie” with his shots or in the terms of literacy, telling his story in a clear, concise, coherent way.

A series of photo shots used to tell a story can be anything from two or three images arranged in a frame through to hundreds of shots arranged in a photo album. A multiple image story that many of us will be familiar with is vacation pictures. Other multiple shot stories might include weddings, parties, pow wows, school events, hunting trips or holiday activities.

Structure

Good stories don’t just happen. They take planning and structure. Before your students start photographing their stories they need to consider what types of shots they might need to tell it.

Basic stories will usually include the components of introduction, plot/body and conclusion:

1. Introduction – shots that put the rest of the images into context. These shots introduce important characters that will follow, give information about the place (setting) where the story is happening, set the tone that the story will be told in (serious, humorous, mysterious, instructive, descriptive) and introduce the themes that the story will touch on (love, celebration, victory, discovery, loss, adventure…)

Introductory shots need to lead viewers into the body of the story. If you think about a good novel, it’s often the first few paragraphs that determine whether you will read the book or not – the same is true with visual stories. Introductory shots should give the viewer a reason to go deeper into the story and provide the student writer with the framework upon which he will expand his story.

So in a travel album – these shots might show the travelers packing, could include a macro shot of a map of the destination or of the tickets, the packed car etc.

2. Plot – good stories are more than just empty words. They explore ideas, feelings and experiences of the photographer/writer on a deeper level. Plot shots will probably make up the majority of the photographic story. They show what happens but also explore the themes and point of view, which will ultimately be translated, into words. To continue the trip example, these pictures might show landmarks visited, special group shots, funny events.

3. Conclusion – good storytellers are quite intentional about the way they end their stories. Last impressions count and it’s worth assisting your students to consider what lasting images they want to leave with the viewer of their photos and ultimately the reader of their stories.

Following our travel story example, concluding shots could be anything from the clichéd sunset shot through to airport shots, unpacking shots, plane shots, some shots from the last meal at the destination, signs to the airport etc etc.

Editing

Photographic story telling requires editing in the same way that written storytelling does and is a critical skill in literacy.

In the photo essay, editing happens on a number of levels and ranges from the editing of single photos (cropping, sharpening, enhancing of colors etc) through to the editing and presentation of the overall series of shots, which will become the story framework.

When the student presents his images as a series it is important that he learns to be selective with the shots he includes (and leaves out). In this way he learns not to overwhelm his reader/viewer (or himself!) but selects the best ones and arranges them in a way that best tells the story. Sometimes in the editing process the chronological order becomes less important because the story and the themes within it are more dominant.