visual storytelling
Introduction
The Visual Storytelling section of my website showcases the third project that I created for my Digital Photography in Instruction course at the University of West Georgia. The assignment for this project was to create a photo story about an issue that is important to me. The photo story had to be in an .mp4 video format that was posted to YouTube, it had to be accompanied by music, and it had to have text and animation within the photo story. I chose to use the application called "Kizoa" to create my photo story. I decided to create my photo story about pet adoption, which is an issue that it extremely important to me. In my life, I have learned what a gift an adopted dog can be for a family. When you adopt any pet, whether it is a dog, cat, or other animal, you are giving a new and happy life to that animal, but you will also experience a new kind of love and joy in your own life. For these reasons, I decided to title my photo story "Rescuing Love: A Pet Adoption Success Story." My photo story begins with some statistics about the number of animals that enter the shelter every year in the United States. It encourages the viewer to consider adoption, and then goes on the share an adoption success story about a little girl named Savannah. Watch the photo story below to see Savannah's adoption success story and learn about the gift of pet adoption. Hopefully, after viewing my photo story, you might even open your own heart to the idea of pet adoption.
To view my photo story, hover your mouse over "Visual Storytelling" in the main menu of this website which will bring up the subpage that contains this video. Select the subpage, titled "Photo Story: Rescuing Love" to view the video. Or, you can just click the following link to be directed to that page: Photo Story: Rescuing Love.
The Visual Storytelling section of my website showcases the third project that I created for my Digital Photography in Instruction course at the University of West Georgia. The assignment for this project was to create a photo story about an issue that is important to me. The photo story had to be in an .mp4 video format that was posted to YouTube, it had to be accompanied by music, and it had to have text and animation within the photo story. I chose to use the application called "Kizoa" to create my photo story. I decided to create my photo story about pet adoption, which is an issue that it extremely important to me. In my life, I have learned what a gift an adopted dog can be for a family. When you adopt any pet, whether it is a dog, cat, or other animal, you are giving a new and happy life to that animal, but you will also experience a new kind of love and joy in your own life. For these reasons, I decided to title my photo story "Rescuing Love: A Pet Adoption Success Story." My photo story begins with some statistics about the number of animals that enter the shelter every year in the United States. It encourages the viewer to consider adoption, and then goes on the share an adoption success story about a little girl named Savannah. Watch the photo story below to see Savannah's adoption success story and learn about the gift of pet adoption. Hopefully, after viewing my photo story, you might even open your own heart to the idea of pet adoption.
To view my photo story, hover your mouse over "Visual Storytelling" in the main menu of this website which will bring up the subpage that contains this video. Select the subpage, titled "Photo Story: Rescuing Love" to view the video. Or, you can just click the following link to be directed to that page: Photo Story: Rescuing Love.
Reflection
Introduction
This project was very meaningful to me. I enjoyed being able to create a photo story about an issue that is important to me. Even more so, I loved that my photo story was touching and inspiring. Watching it definitely made me cry. It also brought tears to the eyes of many of my family members with whom I shared it. When taking my photographs for my photo story, I was able to use my knowledge of visual elements, principles, and composition styles. I used a lot of leading lines in my photos at the animal shelter. I also tried to make the dogs the focal point of the images that I took at the animal shelter, even though their fences made that a little bit difficult. For the backstory on Buddy, our dog that passed away, I was able to pull some older photos that I took, so those weren’t taken with any particular styles in mind. I also used balance and focal point in several of the photos of my Savannah and our new dog, Lulu. There was also a photo that had some nice repetition within it. Mostly, my goal was to make whatever what happening with Savannah and Lulu the main focal point of the image.
Challenges
The biggest challenge in this project was coming up with the idea. As much as I love where I live, I knew that I would rather create a photo story about an issue that was important to me. However, I also had to think of time constraints, and I had to remind myself that whatever I chose, I had to be the one who took all of the photographs for this project. This limited my options on the types of issues I could choose. I narrowed it down to two things: either the school that I work for, which is a second chance school for students who have dropped out or are considering dropping out of high school or pet adoption. I chose pet adoption because this issue really means a lot to me, especially since both of our family dogs are rescue-mutts that we have loved dearly. Once I decided on my issue, my next challenge was to create a storyline. For some reason, I really struggled with this at the beginning. I thought, “How am I going to do this and make a photo story that is between 4 and 5 minutes long?” That’s when it hit me. I could give some statistics and information about the need for more pet adoptions, but the majority of my photo story would be a true success story of a pet adoption. Because I know my own family’s success with pet adoption, I decided to use my own story. However, I limited the story to just one member of my family rather than including all of us. I felt that the photo story would be more meaningful if we just followed one person’s story.
Surprises
The biggest surprise for me in creating this photo story was how much it affected me emotionally. Buddy was a part of my life for 13 years, and I miss him every day, but when I went back and watched this photo story that I created with the music and the text and everything that I added, I just broke down into tears. When my daughter and my mother watched it, they also cried. Even my husband teared up a little bit. Seeing this emotion come out of my family helped me believe that I had been successful in getting my point across. Of course, it was more emotional to my family than it would be to someone who didn’t know our family or Buddy or Lulu, but I still hope that viewers will feel some sort of emotion and sentiment when they watch it and might be encouraged to adopt a pet from their local shelter. Something else that surprised me was how easily it was for me to get back into the hang of using the program, Kizoa (Pixvisio, 2016). I had used Kizoa before to create a photo story for my school to encourage teachers to really make a difference with their students (Pixvisio, 2016). It has been a long time since I used the program, but I was able to pick up just as if I had worked in it yesterday, so that was a nice surprise.
Lessons Learned
The lessons learned during this project were enhanced by the discussion portion of our class, which contributed to my knowledge about using photo stories in the classroom. I learned ways to include photo stories almost every subject area, and I learned how to incorporate them as both instructional photo stories and as project-based photo stories for the students. I also re-learned how to build photo stories, how to add music, and how to make sure that the music is creative commons licensed so that I can use it legally in my photo story. I’ll carry the lessons that I learned about how to incorporate photo stories into the classroom with me into my career, and I hope to also build photo stories about our school to share with the public.
Contribution to Professional Growth and Development/Value to My Own Practice
This biggest way that I believe that this project contributed to my professional growth and development was reminding me that these photo stories can really evoke emotion and response from the viewer, and I could use photo stories to evoke emotions out of my students or teachers in order to motivate them or encourage them. Relearning the Kizoa program was great for my professional development because I used Kizoa the one time I created a photo story for my school (Pixvisio, 2016). I definitely think that using a photo story is a great way to begin a training, lesson, or discussion.
Conclusion (pertaining to alignment of this project to course-related activities)
This project really aligned well with our discussion three and some specific chapters from our textbook. When I was working on the initial posts for our third discussion, I read chapter eleven because it is titled “Photo Story” (Kobré, 2013). Reading that chapter really helped me connect to this project because it instructed me to have a clear theme for my photo story, to create a fitting title for my photo story, to order my photos into a cohesive narrative so that my story holds the viewer’s attention, and to follow the conflict resolution plotline for my photo story (Kobré, 2013). Reading this chapter prior to creating my photo story was a perfect way to focus my train of thought where it needed to go. Chapter twelve of our textbook, which is also a chapter I read for our discussion, is called “Multimedia” and really helped me with this project as well (Kobré, 2013). In this section, I really learned about the sound that will accompany my photo story and how to pace my images so that I keep the viewer’s attention (Kobré, 2013). This project also aligned with some of the course-related activities that we’ve done earlier in the semester. I was able to use my knowledge of the elements, principles, and styles of photography in order to help me get the best images for my photo story. All of the projects in this class definitely align, especially with the readings each week and the discussions, which is really helpful as I am working through creating my project.
To view this reflection as a Word document, click the link below:
7466_steele_project 3 reflection.docx
This project was very meaningful to me. I enjoyed being able to create a photo story about an issue that is important to me. Even more so, I loved that my photo story was touching and inspiring. Watching it definitely made me cry. It also brought tears to the eyes of many of my family members with whom I shared it. When taking my photographs for my photo story, I was able to use my knowledge of visual elements, principles, and composition styles. I used a lot of leading lines in my photos at the animal shelter. I also tried to make the dogs the focal point of the images that I took at the animal shelter, even though their fences made that a little bit difficult. For the backstory on Buddy, our dog that passed away, I was able to pull some older photos that I took, so those weren’t taken with any particular styles in mind. I also used balance and focal point in several of the photos of my Savannah and our new dog, Lulu. There was also a photo that had some nice repetition within it. Mostly, my goal was to make whatever what happening with Savannah and Lulu the main focal point of the image.
Challenges
The biggest challenge in this project was coming up with the idea. As much as I love where I live, I knew that I would rather create a photo story about an issue that was important to me. However, I also had to think of time constraints, and I had to remind myself that whatever I chose, I had to be the one who took all of the photographs for this project. This limited my options on the types of issues I could choose. I narrowed it down to two things: either the school that I work for, which is a second chance school for students who have dropped out or are considering dropping out of high school or pet adoption. I chose pet adoption because this issue really means a lot to me, especially since both of our family dogs are rescue-mutts that we have loved dearly. Once I decided on my issue, my next challenge was to create a storyline. For some reason, I really struggled with this at the beginning. I thought, “How am I going to do this and make a photo story that is between 4 and 5 minutes long?” That’s when it hit me. I could give some statistics and information about the need for more pet adoptions, but the majority of my photo story would be a true success story of a pet adoption. Because I know my own family’s success with pet adoption, I decided to use my own story. However, I limited the story to just one member of my family rather than including all of us. I felt that the photo story would be more meaningful if we just followed one person’s story.
Surprises
The biggest surprise for me in creating this photo story was how much it affected me emotionally. Buddy was a part of my life for 13 years, and I miss him every day, but when I went back and watched this photo story that I created with the music and the text and everything that I added, I just broke down into tears. When my daughter and my mother watched it, they also cried. Even my husband teared up a little bit. Seeing this emotion come out of my family helped me believe that I had been successful in getting my point across. Of course, it was more emotional to my family than it would be to someone who didn’t know our family or Buddy or Lulu, but I still hope that viewers will feel some sort of emotion and sentiment when they watch it and might be encouraged to adopt a pet from their local shelter. Something else that surprised me was how easily it was for me to get back into the hang of using the program, Kizoa (Pixvisio, 2016). I had used Kizoa before to create a photo story for my school to encourage teachers to really make a difference with their students (Pixvisio, 2016). It has been a long time since I used the program, but I was able to pick up just as if I had worked in it yesterday, so that was a nice surprise.
Lessons Learned
The lessons learned during this project were enhanced by the discussion portion of our class, which contributed to my knowledge about using photo stories in the classroom. I learned ways to include photo stories almost every subject area, and I learned how to incorporate them as both instructional photo stories and as project-based photo stories for the students. I also re-learned how to build photo stories, how to add music, and how to make sure that the music is creative commons licensed so that I can use it legally in my photo story. I’ll carry the lessons that I learned about how to incorporate photo stories into the classroom with me into my career, and I hope to also build photo stories about our school to share with the public.
Contribution to Professional Growth and Development/Value to My Own Practice
This biggest way that I believe that this project contributed to my professional growth and development was reminding me that these photo stories can really evoke emotion and response from the viewer, and I could use photo stories to evoke emotions out of my students or teachers in order to motivate them or encourage them. Relearning the Kizoa program was great for my professional development because I used Kizoa the one time I created a photo story for my school (Pixvisio, 2016). I definitely think that using a photo story is a great way to begin a training, lesson, or discussion.
Conclusion (pertaining to alignment of this project to course-related activities)
This project really aligned well with our discussion three and some specific chapters from our textbook. When I was working on the initial posts for our third discussion, I read chapter eleven because it is titled “Photo Story” (Kobré, 2013). Reading that chapter really helped me connect to this project because it instructed me to have a clear theme for my photo story, to create a fitting title for my photo story, to order my photos into a cohesive narrative so that my story holds the viewer’s attention, and to follow the conflict resolution plotline for my photo story (Kobré, 2013). Reading this chapter prior to creating my photo story was a perfect way to focus my train of thought where it needed to go. Chapter twelve of our textbook, which is also a chapter I read for our discussion, is called “Multimedia” and really helped me with this project as well (Kobré, 2013). In this section, I really learned about the sound that will accompany my photo story and how to pace my images so that I keep the viewer’s attention (Kobré, 2013). This project also aligned with some of the course-related activities that we’ve done earlier in the semester. I was able to use my knowledge of the elements, principles, and styles of photography in order to help me get the best images for my photo story. All of the projects in this class definitely align, especially with the readings each week and the discussions, which is really helpful as I am working through creating my project.
To view this reflection as a Word document, click the link below:
7466_steele_project 3 reflection.docx
references
Kobré, K. (2013). Photo journalism: The professionals’ approach. Burlington, MA: Focal Press.
Pixvisio. (2016). Kizoa [Application Software]. Retrieved from www.kizoa.com
Pixvisio. (2016). Kizoa [Application Software]. Retrieved from www.kizoa.com