What objects or agents seem to be the center of attention in the photograph? What is literally in the center of the rectangular frame? In other words, what is it that the photographer seems to want you to pay attention to?Explain

Reading and Writing about Human-Animal

Studying your Photograph during the Prewriting Stage: Some Questions to Ask

1 What objects or agents seem to be the center of attention in the photograph? What is literally in the center of the rectangular frame? In other words, what is it that the photographer seems to want you to pay attention to?

2 Consider sources of light and shadow, brightness and darkness. Is the shot interior or exterior? Is the light natural or artificial?Can you tell where the light is coming from? Are there shadows? Does that affect the feeling the photograph creates?

3 Consider lines and shapes. Try to imagine the photograph going black and white, or converted into a line drawing. What are the line-figures that would be left? Are some figures more dominant than others?Would it be easy to trace a line-drawing from the photograph? If not, why not?

4 Consider sight lines. Is anybody in the camera looking out at you the viewer (at the photographer)? If so, how does their gaze make you feel?If the agents in the picture are not looking at you, what are they looking at – how do they therefore direct your attention? Do you feel like an intruder or like a guest on the scene?

5 Consider the items in the foreground and center in contrast to those in the background and periphery.Keep a steady focus on that which is the center of attention, but consider too whether there is any tension between the things in the center and those on the periphery.

6 Read the photograph from left to right, top to bottom. Start at the left edge and slowly move your eye to the right edge; do the same from top to bottom. Do you notice anything?

7 Ask about action, movement, significance. Who is doing what to whom? The photographer has captured a specific moment: the moment is significant or revealing or strange for some reason or another. Choose one of those words and try to explain the significance, the thing revealed, or the strangeness.

8 What questions does the photograph leave unanswered? Resist the temptation to create stories or narratives for which we have no evidence. List two or three questions that the photograph suggests, which it leaves unanswered. “We do not know…”

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