You are a photojournalist investigating the stories of La Cima Middle School families. You will work with one or more partners. Your assignment is to create a photoessay based on and inspired by a photograph (which you will bring from home) of one of your family member(s). You will present the photo and a 1000 word essay.

You will be accessing on-line resources, human resources, text readings, and visual prints to develop background information about photojournalism. You and your team will be taking notes, coming up with ideas, following web links, making references, etc.

You will be asked to look at photoessays: on the web, in printed books, in PowerPoint presentations, in handling and looking at real photographs. You will be asking and answering questions, investigating visual literacy (learning how to see), and using the powerful program called Photoshop to work on the photograph digitally, returning the original safely home.

The final product: the end result will be an photoessay exhibition at the La Cima Fine Arts Event held in May, both on the walls and on-line.

Timeframe: this project will unfold over a period of several weeks, maybe months, as we will be working on once a week for two hours.

The Big Questions:

How do photos tell a story?
How do photos enhance a story?
How does writing enhance a photograph?
How do photos make a story more interesting?
What qualities make photography an effective story-telling tool?