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What a Photo is Really Saying: Pedagogical Insight into

Visual Literacy

M.C. Santana Women’s Studies

School of Visual Arts and Design

VISUAL LITERACY

•  Definitions/personal journey

•  Computer generated images/real photos

•  Changes in learning

•  Resources

•  Transformation

•  Discussion

I can read!

I can see!

•  Visual Literacy is a way of recognizing and understanding visual messages.

I can deduct!

•  Visual Literacy is the development of competencies of all sensory messages.

I can memorize!

•  Visual Literary works as a visual dictionary helping learning by teaching how to remember to “see”.

Visual Literacy: the ways that visuals and visualization affect the learning

process

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I can read!

I Can memorize?

I CAN Deduct?

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Personal journey

• CAREER •  Journalist by profession

•  Photojournalist by trade

•  Visual scholar by choice

•  Courses taught: •  Visual Communication

•  Visual Communication Theory

•  Photojournalism 1, 2 and 3

• ENJOYMENT •  Photographic memory

•  Photographer/media artist

•  All visual messages attract me (even when they are graphic or unpleasant)

•  Visual learner

Photography lost its innocence many years ago

•  Image authentication is a possibility thanks to the same technology that brought us a photo chip. •  A thumbnail version of the full resolution image is often

embedded in an image’s JPEG header. This thumbnail is created at the time of recording through a series of

filtering operations, contrast adjustment, and compression. Each camera model and photo software does it a little different.

Computer Generated (CG) Images

•  Computer graphics rendering software is capable of generating highly realistic images that can be difficult to differentiate from photographic images. •  However, because computer generated (CG) images are

constructed under almost perfect models of geometry, sensors, lighting, and camera optics, it is

more than likely

that their particular statistics will differ from those of

photographic images.

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CG vs Photo

 

 

 

•  Computer Generated (CG) on the left and Photo image on the right.

I can learn!

How do we use visuals in our classes?

Scan and use pictures that correlate to the concept of gender, age, race and such from your reading materials.

■Create a slide show of photographs representing the setting or time period of the novel the class is reading.

■Ask students to take digital photographs that represents the setting of a poem, short story or historical event.

Remember you can assign a grade weight for visuals on your rubric, or provide the photos yourself. Allow phone photos!

 

  •   

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Be aware

•  When creating a photo composite it is often necessary to translate, scale, rotate, etc. portions of an image. Such image-based manipulations can change the effective intrinsic camera parameters.

•  Therefore, differences in these estimated parameters can be used as evidence of tampering.

•  http://www.fourandsix.com/photo-tampering-history/

Understand the choices

See the transformation

•  A Cosmopolitan cover image BEFORE and AFTER 

•  http://demo.fb.se/e/girlpower/ - http://demo.fb.se/e/girlpower/section1/index.html

•  Photo enhancements

•  http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/farid/Hany_Farid/photoretouching.html

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Challenging materials

•  ■Create a slide showing all google images under a name or term to show the diversity in understanding based on time, era and culture.

 

•  ■Use visuals from nature in teaching math. In a unit on fractals use the Earth's natural formations such as Grand Canyon, bee hives, and snowflakes.

 

Why use visuals?

Improve reading

•  “Readers gain control over comprehension when they create mental pictures of information they understand”

•  Teaching Reading in Middle School: A Strategic Approach to Teaching Reading that Improves Comprehension and Thinking by Laura Robb.

How do we connect students to the class

material?

•  Visuals are not just pictures but charts, maps, signs, forms and illustrations.

Why use visuals?

Memory

•  Many students recall more class materials when images are used in lectures or discussion groups.

•  How do we do it for online classes? Continue sending them to websites appropriate for the subject matter.

Message

•  Be careful not to add bias in your choice of visuals?

•  Ask yourself- I am selecting the images that please me or that fit into this message?

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Theorists

Paul Messaris

•  Messaris argues that “images are a distinct means of making sense of reality and that visual education will give students an alternative, but equally valuable, form of access to knowledge and understanding”

Jean Trumbo

•  Visual Literacy has a serious immediacy compared to no other learning tool because of the use of visuals to express ideas and convey meanings to others.

Visual Experts

Paul M. Lester

•  Visual Literacy develop intellectual strategies used to interpret and understand what is seen.

Umberto Eco

•  "A democratic civilization will save itself only if it makes the language of the image into a stimulus for critical reflection -not an invitation for hypnosis."

How can words match our visuals?

•  http://www.visuwords.com

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George Lucas, film maker

"If students aren't taught the language of sound and images, shouldn't they be considered as illiterate as if they left college without being able to read or write?”

 

http://www.edutopia.org/

It’s worth it! Visual literacy is the ability to find meaning in imagery. It involves a set of skills ranging from simple identification——to complex interpretation of contextual, metaphoric and philosophical levels.

COgnitive

NEEDED to analyze this message:

•  personal association

•  questioning

•  speculating

•  analyzing

•  fact-finding

•  categorizing

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Resources (electronic)

•  Messaris, P (1994). Visual Literacy: Images, Mind, and Reality. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.

•  External Linkshttp://www.medialit.org/ Center for Media Literacy

•   http://www.ivla.org/ International Visual Literacy Association

•   http://www.asu.edu/lib/archives/benedict/index.html Joel & Irene Benedict Visual Literacy Collection

•   http://www.visual-literacy.org/periodic_table/periodic_table.html A Periodic Table of Visualization Methods

•   http://k-8visual.info/ Visual Literacy K-8

Resources (books)

•  Practices of Looking by Marita Sturken and Lisa Cartwright

•  Media, Communication, Culture: A Global Approach by James Lull

•  Visual Literacy: Images, Mind, and Reality by Paul Messaris

•  Visual Persuasion by Paul Messaris

•  Images that Injure by Paul M. Lester

•  *Visual Culture by Jessica Evans and Stuart Hal

•  *On Photography by Susan Sontag

Thank you Questions/ Comments

santana@ucf.edu