Perspective in Photos: The Story Behind the Picture

Focus: Students will learn how to evaluate and interpret primary source materials, using photos as the focus. Students will learn how the photographer's perspecive affects the interpretation of the photo, by analyzing manipulated photos and by creating their own photos.

Audience: Middle School Library Class

Time Frame: Three to Five 50-minute sessions.

Colorado Model Content Standards Addressed:
Information Literacy Standard #1: The information literate student accesses information efficiently and effectively.

Information Literacy Standard #2: The information literate student evaluates information critically and competently.

Reading and Writing Standard #4: Students apply thinking skills to their reading, writing, speaking, listening and viewing.

Colorado Model Content Standards Assessed:
Information Literacy Standard #1 and #2 (see above).

Assessment: The instructor will observe the students accessing photos from online databases such as Heritage Colorado, American Memory and Denver Public Library. The students will study historic and modern photos and complete photo analysis worksheets. The students will complete a portfolio of photographs that they have taken showing a subject from different perspectives.

Materials/Teacher Preparation:
The instructor should be familiar with the technology the students will be using as well as be comfortable with searching for photos on databases such as Heritage Colorado, American Memory and Denver Public Library. The Instructor should also be familiar with bias in primary source material, and how photographs can be manipulated by the photographer. Helpful websites:

• http://www.bcr.org/cdp//index.html
  
• http://www.cyberpod.com/cyberpod/media3.htm
  
• http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/cwphtml/cwpcam/cwcam1.html
  

• A computer will be needed for each group or pair of students (Computers need to be internet ready, have enough RAM to download photos and be hooked up to a printer)
  
• Video Projector for instruction and presentation.
  
• Photo Analysis Handouts, several copies for each student.
  
• Copy of photo of a familiar street scene, one for each student
• Copy of photo on another topic, one for each student (Key elements in the photos should be detail, student interest and tie-in to a unit of study the students are currently engaged with. This is an excellent opportunity to collaborate with the classroom teacher to enrich a unit of study). An example of an interesting photo to use is http://ccpl.lib.co.us/pictures/cd-3/P87-009-709N-1.jpg
  
• Cropped version of photo, above (using a program such as Adobe Photoshop, crop the photo chosen above to alter the composition of the photograph)
• Metadata, bibliographic record of the photo.
  
• Printers (Color and Black and White)
  
• A digital camera for each student or pair of students.

Support Materials (optional):
Print resources such as Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature, encyclopedias, magazines

Possible Procedures:

Prerequisite Skills: The student will need to be familiar with computer use, basic web searching skills, and digital camera skills, before starting this lesson.

Day 1: Teacher Lecture/Discussion
Instructor can use Intro to Primary Sources <http://www.cdpheritage.org/educator/documents/PBS.pdf> as a reference.

The instructor should tell the students that they will be concentrating on photos as a primary source for this portion of the unit.

Day 2:
Hand out photos and analysis sheets to students. The photos should be chosen ahead of time by the instructor. Key elements in the photos should be detail, student interest and tie-in to a unit of study the students are currently engaged with. This is an excellent opportunity to collaborate with the classroom teacher to enrich a unit of study.

Initial photos to use with the students can be familiar street scenes with a lot of detail.

Students will receive a detailed photo of a familiar scene. The instructor should ask the students a variety of questions about the photo. Where was this photo taken? How many people are in the photo? When do you think this photo was taken? What was the building used for? Was the building new or old? Do the children look happy to be there? Etc�.

Next the instructor should give the students a portion of another photo. (The instructor can crop a piece out of the photo using a photo manipulation program such as Adobe Photoshop)

Using the photo analysis guides from the Colorado Digitization Website, the students should make some inferences about the photo.

After discussion, the instructor will give the students the whole photo. The class will go through the exercise again and tell the story behind the photo, before looking at the metadata. After looking at the Metadata, the students can compare and contrast their story with the actual story.

Day 3:

The instructor will introduce searching Heritage West for photos.

The instructor may use the Heritage Colorado Tutorials or the Searching Heritage West handout as references.
The students might begin to search Colorado using People and Sports collections in Heritage Colorado to start with. Both collections have interesting photos that really tell a story.

Students will locate a photo that interesting to them. They will print both the entire photo and a cropped portion of the photo. In groups the students will do photo analysis using day 2 activities as their guide.

Day 4:

Students will choose a subject to photograph with a digital camera. This subject must be capable of setting changes. Suggested subjects might be a person, a child, a pet, or a couple. The student/photographer should photograph the subject at least 5 times in a different setting or pose. The student will chose 2 contrasting settings and should be able to explain the story behind both photos. The student must be able to give plausible reasons for the changes in pose, expression, background or setting.

Other Resources:
Media Alert! 200 Activities to Create Media-Savvy Kids by Susan Lockwood-Summers
Available through Hi Willow Research and Publishing, Castle Rock, Colorado

- Fran Adams, Ridgway School, Ridgway, CO