Using Photography to Inspire Writing 3

By Hank Kellner

Go Google!

If you Google the phrase “photographs and writing,” you’ll discover an astounding 23,400,000 entries for that topic. That’s enough to keep you busy for the rest of your life and beyond — if that were possible.

But 23,400,000 entries are just a few drops in a teacup when they’re compared to the mind-boggling 77,100,000 entries Google cites when you enter “photography and writing” instead of “photographs and writing.”

Obviously, I couldn’t sample more than just a few of the websites cited in Google, but I did find this one that’s especially helpful to anyone who’s interested in using photographs to inspire writing in the classroom.

According to the unnamed author of this “Learning Page” from the Library of Congress, some photographs can help to launch “projects that will develop visual literacy and creative writing skills,” while others “lend themselves to expository writing.”

In the section of the article that deals with creative writing, the author presents a photograph of five students who are on a field trip, directs the students to select one of the students shown in the photographs, and then asks such questions as: (1) How old is the student? (2) Has the person you chose been on an adventure like this before? (3) What unexpected events occur on the trip? (4) Are friends along on the trip? (5) Is there someone in the group the student dislikes?

In the expository section of the article, the author presents a simple, uncluttered photograph of a sand dune and points out that “…in writing about a sand dune, an essay might include the definition of a dune, an account of where dunes exist in the world, the kinds of animals and plants that live among the dunes, and an assessment of the human impact on sand dunes.”

Every Photograph Tells a Story

On a more personal level, today almost everyone owns a digital camera. Except for a few diehards, gone are the days when people waited anxiously for rolls of film to be developed and prints to be made. Now, as if by magic, images appear instantly to be downloaded, stored on hard discs, and printed at the drop of a sombrero.

This means that most students probably have collections of hundreds, if not thousands, of digital images that can trigger writing assignments. Consider these two photos, for example. A student at almost every level could have created them. And the photos could easily trigger any number of questions designed to inspire writing. For example: (1) What were the conditions under which the student photographer created the photos? (2) What were the reasons for creating them? (3) What was happening while the student photographer snapped the photos? (4) In what way are the people in the photographs related?

Indeed, the number of questions you can ask is limited only by your imagination and by the imaginations of your students.

Alternatively, you could simply show the two photographs without comments or questions and ask the students to respond to them based on their unspoken thoughts and their feelings before they write their compositions.

Continue to article page 2 »