Visual Literacy

We had a class yesterday on Visual Literacy. You may ask...what is visual literacy? Well, here's my take on it. Take the words apart. Visual - what you SEE...what comes into the synapses of your brain. Literacy - the ability to read and write. So combine the word and you have the ability to read what you see.

Our instructor John did a great job showing us different forms of media that we take in and showed us how it can have an impact on the way we think. Before we left for Christmas, we had to submit images (from the internet) that were our "image diet" - things that represented what we take in visually on a day-to-day basis. I put in such things like an iPod, a computer, movies, tea, and stationary. They are the things that I look at/take in on a day-to-day basis. He showed us a slideshow of all of the images from my section; it was interesting to see others' image diets.

Then he put up a headline of an article he wrote a number of years ago...it was, "Do you remember black and white?" We played the game of what-comes-to-your-mind-first. Sadly, my mind was NOT thinking photographically and so the first thing I thought of was the Civil Rights Movement. I thought maybe he'd talk about images inspired by that time period. But DUH, we're at a photography school...and it was in reference to black and white film/photographs. How silly of me to not think of that!?

He then asked us a series of questions in relation to the article he wrote, wherein he was driving one day and was inspired by a church he saw. He "saw" in black and white. He stopped reading and asked us to write down what about the church made him think black and white. Then he kept reading. The exterior of the building had a pattern to it that he thought would be perfect in b/w and not in color.

Then he asked us some questions about how each of us sees....do we see in color or in black and white? Then he asked us to come up with describing words/phrases for both black and white and color.

The following is what my section came up with:

Black and White
emphasizes form and tonality, always different from how you see the world, dogs are colorblind, nostalgic, classic, shows texture, light and pattern, prevents distraction, simplistic but clean

Color
vibrant, energetic, truer to what you see, conveys emotion - different colors represent different emotions, backbone of how human beings are, it's how the world runs - in color, dynamic to convey the tone of the picture, how you want people to see it, can be used for emphasis

And finally, he sent us out to take two pictures....one in color and one in black and white. We took our pictures then had to submit them. In an upcoming class, he's going to show us the images we took and talk further about visual literacy.

It's all very interesting and makes me think about what I'm photographing and why I'm photographing it. He said sometimes he gets inspired for a photograph by something he's read or seen, or even from hearing the beat of music, or seeing a pattern in something.

These are the two pictures I went and shot as a result of the assignment: