It has been said that a picture is worth a thousand words. So, how many words is a series of photos worth? When words fail to describe how a part of the world makes me feel, I fall to photography to speak for me. This type of communication allows a story to be told to and interpreted by each person that encounters the picture– it is an open-ended conversation between the artist and the audience that can create insight in both individual’s lives.
When choosing a subject for my communication I looked to the various aspects of my life for inspiration, from my hobbies and interests to the world around me. The environment in which I live provided me with the inspiration for my photo essay. After living in southeastern Nebraska for many years, I have discovered there is a definite flat and endless landscape different from most other places I have visited. This seemingly continuous plane is mixed with farm fields and grasslands (some of them native prairie). When driving down that long, straight dirt road carved through the countryside with only the horizon in sight, I have found that this landscape is not as flat and desolate as it may seem. The countryside is dotted with human creations– from abandoned farm buildings to towering telephone poles.
Through my exploration of the landscape around me I have discovered not only the subject for my photo essay, but also what I hope for this essay to achieve. We interact with our environment every day but many of us do not see the relationship that we have with it. Through a variety of rhetorical techniques employed within my photos, I hope to create an illustration of one small part of the relationship that we have with our environment in southeastern Nebraska and highlight this interaction through the contrast that is created between a man-made structure and the desolate natural area surrounding it. I also hope that if I achieve this goal, it will allow my audience to look at the other parts of their world and how they are interacting–and impacting–them. This is a large undertaking for such an inexperienced photographer, so if I do not effectively use technical elements to communicate with my audience I will not have revealed anything new or provided any insight for them about the relationship between nature and humans. But if I do accomplish my purpose for the photo essay I will have sparked an interest in my audience and in myself.
With this goal in mind, it was important for me to consider who my audience would be. Primarily, my audience will consist of my English class members and my teacher. These people have been equipped with a critical eye for the technical elements I am utilizing within the photographs, such as framing, coloration, and vectors of attention. These people also attend school in Nebraska and are probably somewhat familiar with the environment within my photos. This experience with the landscape and analyzing photos will make them tough critics of my work but will also provide them with insight into the photos as well. On a secondary level, my photos will be displayed on a blog thus allowing anyone using the internet to stumble upon these images. Even though these photos are from a specific and localized context, I hope that my purpose will translate to this secondary audience just through experience with other photographs.
The context in which the audience will experience my photo essay is also important to consider when creating my purpose. I have very little control over this aspect of the design process, but I can imagine that my audience will be where ever the internet can take them– in their home or office. In the case of my classmates, they will be viewing my photos with a critical eye in a peer revision context with the assignment in mind. This can also be said for my teacher. My secondary audience– those that stumble upon my blog– will be viewing my photos with very little background or context for them. I hope that even though this audience will have very little knowledge about the context for these images that they will still speak to these people in some manner.
I hope that my photo essay achieves the purpose that I have set forth for these images in the terms of rhetorical techniques. I hope that these images are worth more than a thousand words. And last but not least, I hope that my argument for these photographs translates to my audience and their individual context.
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