Visual Essay and Presentation

Visual Essay and Presentation (100 points)

Create a photo or visual essay that will connect both textual and visual components around a particular theme.  In our multi-media rich world, this assignment will explore the interplay of textual and visual information.  The photo essay will also be presented to the class using presentation style or technology of your choosing.

You are familiar with writing general essays, where you develop a thesis statement, have a compelling introduction and conclusion with carefully thought and constructed supporting paragraphs. In the end, an essay is meant to tell a story of some sort.  What, then is a photo essay? According to Merriam-Webster:

a group of photographs arranged to explore a theme or tell a story

Simple, right?  Just as writing an excellent essay is a challenging endeavor, so is producing a strong photo essay.  Below are links to an article with some helpful tips as well as some interesting examples to help with developing your own photo essay.

Create Your own Photo Essay

  1. Choose your subject matter or theme.  Something that you are interested in or about.  It does not necessarily have to be about technology or social media.  This exercise is more about using a non-print format to convey information or tell a story.
  2. Do your research on your subject and create your “data” collection plan.  What story do you want to tell?  How are you going to take these photos?  When?  How will you determine how they pertain to your topic?
  3. Organize your photos.  Determine which photos will be included in your final essay and which will not.  Determine the flow of your essay.  How will the photos make up your introduction, body, and conclusion?  Your photo essay should have 10-20 photos.
  4. Write concise and meaningful text to accompany each photo.  Photos can tell different stories to different people.  The text should help tell the story you wish to convey.
  5. Choose a title for your essay that expresses your theme and your story.
  6. Prepare a visual presentation of your photo essay for the class.  This can be done with presentation software, as a blog post, a slide show, poster session, etc.  Photo essays will be presented in class and each presentation must be no more than 10 minutes in length.

Photo Essay Guidelines / Evaluation

  • creative, thoughtful, and original work
  • subject matter or theme is clear and well developed
  • the theme is well-developed and substantiated
  • photos and the accompanying text work together to support the theme
  • content (an interesting subject matter for you and your audience)
  • well-developed organizational strategy (arrangement of photos and text)
  • each photo and caption contribute to the overall story and tell a different aspect of it
  • there is clear ‘essay’ organization (introduction, body, conclusion, flow)
  • language and style of the written components
  • timely completion and preparation for presentation

Deadlines and Due Dates

  • A practice recording of your photo essay presentation must be turned in by midnight on Friday, November 9, share with tinahertel@muhlenberg.edu. Your recording will be made using our One Button Studio (a separate digital activity), which will save a file to your flashdrive. This file you can then upload to YouTube, Google Drive, or other video platform where you can share it with me.
  • The One Button Studio Digital Activity as part of this will be graded separately; video should be sent by November 9, 11:59pm.
  • Feedback will be provided before presentations are to be done in class.
  • Presentations will take place week of November 13.  Each presentation should be 7-10 minutes in length.
  • You will also need to send me a copy of the photo essay, in any format (the software you are using or saved as a PDF). This file should be sent by midnight Monday, November 12.

 

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