October 10th 2017 archive

Photos and videos: How visuals complement writing

Complementing her writing with striking visuals, Pulitzer-Prize-winning photographer Lynsey Addario demonstrates how blending text with images not only proves to be effective, but also a great way to convey her message throughout the piece. With that said, Addario’s photos are simply stunning; it’s difficult to select two of the best from the book. However, I would have to choose the photos on the 18th and 28th page of photos after page 210.

These two photos particularly stuck out to me among the others, because they capture the extremely fragile, delicate, helpless state of a human being. Seeing these two photos, which capture a child individually and a mother among other compassionate children, evokes a true sense of empathy. With the child’s face covered in bandages from wounds, piercing eyes filled with tears and fear and a mother holding onto her child with limp arms, it’s difficult to avoid the emotional connection and response that the photos elicit.

Recognizing how influential the photos are and how they contribute to the meaning of Addario’s writing, incorporating images and videos throughout my blog posts would benefit their quality. At the end of the last two of my posts, I added photos that were related to what I described in my writing. I thought that a visual representation of my ideas would better connect my points and allow my audience to have a better understanding of what I was describing.

However, I hadn’t thought about incorporating videos in my posts. My school district has a YouTube channel called NPTV, so I could easily embed videos from their channel in my posts. Videos definitely have a unique way of capturing moments that greatly different from the concept of a photo. Seeing motion and action and hearing voices or other sounds allows the audience to live the moment vicariously through the video.