Photography is visual communication or literacy, which involves sending and receiving images with the aim of constructing a meaningful message. The skills required to form meaningful images in this process entail exploitation, critical assessment, and reflection. In the multimedia world of photography, various combined abilities are required, skills that call for one’s capacity to read visual information. Most visual communication techniques are for capturing people’s attention, reinforcing knowledge, and encompassing the audience’s extra responses. The audience, on the other hand, needs the ability to interpret images within a certain period in the present, past, and future.
The various forms of visual communication include gestures, signs and, symbols in various fields, but mainly in films, dance, fashion, photography, advertisement, monuments, designs, or lighting, among others. Visual literature requires one to have the ability to analyze, interpret, and understand images with the aim of acquiring meaning through the cultural context in which the image exists. Significant skills include the ability to analyze the syntax and techniques of the image, including style and composition, for image production. The ability to evaluate the synthetic merit, purpose, anticipated audience, synergy, interaction, innovation, effectiveness, and feeling of any visual image also requires some expertise skills.
Photography has the capacity to communicate instantly and universally; indeed, “Photographs may have placed greater importance on the visual over the written literature.” Since a picture is worth a hundred words, most sensory learning is visual, but the viewer should be in a position to interpret the idea in order to understand the message. According to Oring (58), the need to learn this interpretation skill is urgent because photography touches on all levels of society. The level of visual literacy in a person determines his or her ability to read images in a meaningful manner as a vital aspect of enriching life.
Images today, especially photographs, have become part of the principal structure of communication. From the technological world where users interface graphically via computers to various other media platforms, the need for visual representation over text seems to increase day by day. The current era emphasizes this culture of the visual, which influences attitudes, lifestyles, values, and beliefs. Such visual representation can be in a public or private domain, in various forms, and can occur through different channels of communication (Rose, 7). It offers the strength of visual interpretation and the discrimination of actions, symbols, and events. Through the proper understanding of the basic principles of visual literacy, one can be in a position to communicate effectively by the use of images.
A great connection exists between consumerism and photography because they have been evolving over the same time span and feature an initial basis of personality (Howard & Pintozzi, 174). Like modernized photographic communication, consumerism has equally evolved as indicated by the architectural designs on churches as well as most museums in the United States. As economies expand globally, they have major effects on architecture and design.
According to (Vosjan 3), this art ought to possess principles that represent oral communication so as to enhance the integrity of design, regardless of the common external forces. Current consumerist designs fail to meet these requirements because artists are focusing on lifestyles, innovation, and, beliefs, just as branding and marketing fail to meet personality because of mass production. Therefore, consumerism seems to be drifting away from individual images and toward combined enhancements, just as in photography.
For both photography and consumerism, images are visual aspects that enable people to produce and communicate thoughts about reality. Compared to oral communication, the symbols of visual communication are diverse in terms of vocabulary and exist in a particular context. Meaning finds a formulation from perception and thinking; therefore, the conventions in use for these cases entail a combination of syntax and semantics from universal or culturally-based conventions.
Syntax assists in building up the image, thus representing the pictorial organization or structure of a message, while semantics is the way images relate to the external factors to gain more meaning. This is the way images bond with the cultural procedure of communication, thus presenting the relationship between the meaning and the form of an image. Photographs undergo semantic formulation, from the form and structure of an image and the ideas that go through cultural construction to shape the interpretation of pictures, signs, symbols and other visual appearances. Photography also involves interactions among images (Vosjan, 5).
While it is possible to analyze the syntax and semantics of an image separately, when the semantics work jointly with the syntax, some joint considerations occur within an image. Just like written or spoken content, visual images depend highly on the context and purpose of communication, just as in consumerist advertisements. For instance, one would consider a family photo to be less formal compared to a school photograph.
The aspects also change according to usage, as well as the person using the image; for instance, images that enhance communication among adolescents are quite different from those used for adults or children. The images also differ depending on gender differences, age, and ethnicity. The grammar of visual communication may be constant when considering various media settings, but all the media settings have different skills and characteristics of interpretation.
Although a distinct style of communication, visual enhancements, such as pictures, are stronger than written literature because of the various requirements for interpretation. A person may be in a position to use greater sophistication of perception in order to distinguish between superficial, pseudo-code sophisticated meanings, glamorous and variable images. This also requires a strong visual and lingual vocabulary. Arguably, photographic interpretation requires very little guidance unless in cases of emotionally related themes.
The skill development occurs automatically as a standard procedure at lower levels, and the skills develop continuously in a procedural manner since talents are easy to identify and teach. When one is in a position to understand the implications of imaging, such as photography in advertisements, one is able to become more resistant to imperative usage. Pictures are very powerful tools in teaching because, for the individual consciousness, they involve coming up with solutions for problems and engaging in critical thinking as applicable in all areas of learning. The pictorial representation in education is the basis for all formulation of reasoning as a foundation for understanding visual resistance.
Initial stages of education require the use of images, such as pictorial presentations, to improve the required critical knowledge. This is achievable by exposing the brain to a variety of photographs, which can provoke thoughtful insights and critical analysis to gain imaginative responses. The essence of teaching through photography is to create minds of aesthetic openness with a critical awareness of the capacity for manipulating images (Rose, 47).
Technological changes today have made a variety of software available, such as Adobe Photoshop Elements, for learning and expressing meaning through photography. Such programs broaden the scope of visual expression because they allow one to discover and explore personal thoughts. The students also have the advantage of being in a position of representing their skills and enhancing modes of communication.
Photographs may have placed greater importance on the visual over the written literature especially in early childhood development and education, where language meaning and information have to be embedded in photos or other images as opposed to text. Photography is liberalized to overcome the constraints of written text. The learner and teacher are able to encode meaning in a direct and intuitive manner, thus enhancing proper understanding, since photography varies in complexity depending on the person perceiving the image. From the early development point of view, one is able to find more meaning or sense through images, plus the probability of forgetting the information represented through photography is minimal. A picture, after all, is worth a thousand words.
Works Cited
Howard, Kindred & Pintozzi, Devin. “Passing the North Carolina United States.
History End-of-Course Test.” American Book Company, Inc., 2006.
Oring, S. A “Call for visual Literacy.” School of Arts. Jones and Bartlett Publishers, Sudbury, MA. 2000.
Rose, Gillian. “Visual methodologies: an introduction to the interpretation of visual materials.” Visual Culture Series. SAGE Publishers, 2001.
Vosjan, Karen. “Overt Consumerism.” Overt Consumerism. 2008 EzineArticles.com.