Photo Essay

Childhood

I chose this image from my group's photo essay project to analyze. I think that it shows childhood really well.

I took this photo with my DSLR camera. It was at about 3:30 in the afternoon on a clear day so the lighting was great. This was taken at the elementary school near AU. He is probably 8 years old or so, and he was playing in the sand alone and having a great time.

Color: Being on the brownish-colored sand, the boy really stands out. His bright blue shirt and dark jeans both contrast with the light sand.

Postition: The stick the boy is burying is in the center of the photo, and he is postitioned in upper half and right side of the photo, but still very close to the center.

Space: The sand takes up the majority of the space in this photograph. That is, the negative space is the sand. The boy takes up a very little amount of space, which also reminds us of childhood. He is a little kid playing in a very big world.

Line: The rock on the left side, the boy, and the other stick on the right are all pretty much in a line. This gives the photo a very flat look to it. However, it also directs the viewer's eye across the picture. Also, the boy is lined up diagonally with the stumps in the background, directing the viewer's eye toward the focus and making the image more interesting.

Focus: Every object in this picture points toward the boy. The stick he is holding points up at him. The stumps diagonally point towards him. The feet are facing him, implying that the man is facing the boy. The rock has a point on the end and is directed at the boy.

Visual Aspects

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Alternative Photos

Production Report

The process of creating the photo essay was fairly simple: figure out how to use the word we picked and then take photographs displaying the meaning of the word. The difficult part was figuring out how to actually depict the word and choosing only the best photographs.

My partner and I had nearly finished selecting photos for the photo essay, but they all showed the same thing: cute children. The word was "childhood," but childhood embodies much more than just children. There are the things children do, the way they act, the things parents do for their children, etc. Once we learned to think more abstractly, we were able to take more interesting photos.

The most difficult part about this project was deciding which pictures to use in the end. We had to choose only the best seven photographs out of about forty options. There were only two photos that survived the entire selection process; all of the other photos were changed multiple times. Luckily my group had two people instead of three, so it was easy to discuss why we wanted to make certain decisions and there weren't too many opinions to take into consideration.

With this project, the most difficult part was deciding which seven photos to use in the photo essay. We had to deliberate about every single photo to make sure that the message was clear. This process of choosing photos taught me to make decisions when needing to choose the best option. I even posted some pictures on Facebook a few days after working on the project, and I didn't post every single picture that I took; I tried to choose the best ones. I think this project will help me with future assignments because it has shown me that, as with museums choosing exhibits, only the best should be displayed.