What is your reaction to the photograph?

• What is the purpose or message of the image?

• What do you see?

• Who is the audience?

• What is the ‘story’ of the text?

• What is the context? (personal, social, historical, cultural)

• What is the source? (e.g. magazine, newspaper, digital text)

What is the composition of the photograph?

Composition is the combination and integration of the various visual elements of an image into a whole text, including:

• line, patterns, scale, salience, social distance, texture, colour, light

• icons, symbolism, signs, metaphors

• reading pathways, vectors

• framing, placement

• camera angles

• cropping, editing

• gaze

• manipulation

What is your evaluation of the text?

• Is it effective?

• Does it reach the targeted or intended audience?

• What contextual factors influence your decision? These may be contextual issues, cultural representation or personal situations.

Photograph tasks

Task 1: Responding to photographs

Task 2: Compose your own photographs

Task 3: Responding to magazine covers

Resources

Visual literacy-reading images¹ Read, understand, evaluate, create (Scootle Resource 10719).

What is Information Literacy²

Visual Literacy = Reading Pictures³

Flickr – Explore / Creative Commons⁴

Pictures of the Year International⁵ – a collection of award winning photographs

Getty Images Year in Focus⁶ – view photographs online or view the free eBook⁷ of events of the past year with commentary.