Arizona State University Outdoor Studying Areas to Photograph Photo Essay

I’m working on a english project and need support to help me learn.

A View of My World (Photo Essay with Text Analysis)

This is a new assignment for a new situation. Take ten (10) photographs of your current environment and write about them. They will be come the text which you will analyze.

You should have an introduction and conclusion to your essay which discuss the entire project. Tell us where you are, why you chose the focus you did. Give us some insight into your thought process (this will become your context, subtext, and intertextuality). Then, present us with your first photo(s) and tell us about it. Work your way through your photo collection, with explanation, one at a time, or in pairs or sets if they work together. After analyzing the images individually, your conclusion should bring the photos back together as a collection.

First, take a ton of photos of your “world”, wherever you are spending the most of your life right now. You will select ten to share, but you probably need to shoot considerably more to find 10 you want to share. You are expected to use a camera on a phone for this process. Of course, if you have access to other photographic equipment, you may use it. (If you do not have access to a camera to use for this assignment, discuss options with me ASAP.) You will not be evaluated on the quality or composition of your photos, rather on the essay about them.

You have total control of your photos, but you must explain this in your essay. If you are shooting outside, you may want to try at different times of day. If you are using artificial light, time of day may not matter, but you can still turn on and off lights or open and close curtains. Try different perspectives on the same object (close up, medium, distant, and maybe super-close). Change it to black and white, or add a filter.

Your photos should let your audience get a glimpse into the world you are currently living in as we finish this crazy semester. Your images should represent you, right now. Whether or not you appear in them at all is entirely up to you. Whether there are any humans in them is entirely up to you. If your current environment is one room, with 20 house plants, perhaps your photos will all be of plants. If your world is all dogs, perhaps we get pix of ears, paws, bored yawns, playful fights… You may have to try a few approaches to find something that fits. If you start inside and are not finding images that work, move outside (or vice versa). If you tried large-scale images, move to macros. If your world revolves around cars, we will probably have some inside and some outside shots. The perspective of your world is YOURS, but also consider what you want your audience to see of your world.

Do not throw your images together in some random order. Select them carefully, then strategically decide how you want to present them to us. Explain this process in your introduction. Do they move from general to specific? Show us a tour of your space, one wall at a time, moving clockwise? Show us the same view out the same window, at different times of day? Tell us why. This is your analysis.

Your audience is our class, and I encourage you to share your project with the whole group.

Schedule:

Wed. March 17: Begin unit. Read pp. 152-154 and 163-167. Start taking photos of your world!

Mon. March 22: Read The Weight of Sanity (pp. 155-157) and pp. 168-177.

Wed. March 24: Read 17 Cool Photo Essay Examples https://expertphotography.com/17-photo-essay-examples-ideas/ (Links to an external site.) and Documentary Photo Tips https://expertphotography.com/documentary-photography-tips/ . (Links to an external site.)

Mon. March 29: Read about common pitfalls with text analysis essays (pp. 183-187). On Discussions, share a short video (anything 10-minutes or shorter that is appropriate for a general college audience). Tell us about the text, context, subtext, and intertextuality.

Wed. March 31: Thesis workshop. Read pp. 177-179. What’s in your rhetorical tool kit? Read pp. 179-183. This is our important content for our own analyses, on text, context, subtext, and intertextuality. Read carefully. Twice.

Mon. April 5: Stop taking photos and curate. Select your ten images and figure out the order you want to present them in.

Wed. April 7: Invention due. It can be an outline, a brainstorm, a mindmap…but it should show your major ideas. Your images should also be complied and in order by now.

Mon. April 12: Intro and conclusion due.

Wed. April 14: Complete rough draft due. Peer review.

Mon. April 19: Final drafts due. Informal sharing in class.

Wed. April 21: Final Reflection due. Last day!