Photo Essay

Design Plan for Photo Essay

                My purpose is to inform my audience about the dangers of concussions. I know people know some of the obvious dangers of concussions, but people need to know how common and the hidden dangers of concussion. I know I want my pictures to tell a story of getting a concussion so that the reader can follow it. I want people to see the different ways to get a concussion show it is not only for athletes. I also want some of the symptoms to show how dangerous and scary concussions are. My audience will not just be my classmates and professors, but will also be interested people, people with concussions or even medical professionals. In class, the students and professor will be reading mine along with everyone else one after another, so I need to make mine stand out. In the blog the whole world can see it so I need it to be professional, but it still needs to catch the average person’s eye.

                I am going to use a series of photographs with a narrative and captions to get my message across. I need to focus on how people get concussions and symptoms of one. I also want to show in the beginning that you can get a concussion from sports, but people can also get it from other traumatic events injuring the head. I need to take a picture of someone going through the symptoms of a concussion, and I think my brother, Kyle will be up to the challenge. I know I cannot accurately photograph every symptom, but I will try to photograph all of them, and just cut out the ones that do not clearly portray the symptom. Since my phone is the camera I will be using I will need to email them to my computer so I can save them and put them in my essay.

                This is a serious topic, but I do not want my audience to think that I am a super strict safety person that lives in fear of a concussion. I also do not want my audience to live in fear of a concussion after reading my essay. Therefore, I could in my captions, talk about the correct way to treat concussions, so concussions do not seem like an injury that could ruin someone life. I could also potentially throw in a joke or some humor to lighten the mood a little, and make me seem less strict. I know my essay needs to be focused and professional looking, but to avoid being too informative and boring I need to make it funny and interesting. I want my audience to feel informed, but I want them to enjoy reading the essay. My argument is about showing the dangers of concussions. Since none of the symptoms will seem like a positive, but rather a negative, people logically will view them as dangerous. I know I need to put a caption for each picture or group of picture so that my audience can understand clearly, what the picture is trying to portray.

                I will start with a narrative before any photographs to introduce my argument and start my story to my audience. After that, I will have two different photos of someone getting a concussion, with one caption explaining how in both situation you can get a concussion. Then I will show some initial symptoms of a concussion. After that, I will show some more serious and long-term effects of a concussion. This way it seems more like a story of someone dealing with a concussion.

                I will test the photo essay, by showing it first to Kyle since he is the model in the pictures. I also will be having someone from my class peer edit the photo essay. I will take in to consideration both of their reviews and know I was successful if they can clearly understand the photos and caption.

My Photo Essay
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B0PjniY3sd-jWC1rSzJzVE05RkZkNGlPdjkwQlF0SWJVYkU4/edit

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B0PjniY3sd-jWC1rSzJzVE05RkZkNGlPdjkwQlF0SWJVYkU4/edit

 Did I accomplished my goal?

My main purpose was to show my audience the dangers of concussion. I did show the audience the symptoms of concussion, which are the main dangers of a concussion. I just wish I could have found a way to show the rare, extreme affects of a concussion. (Post-concussion syndrome, Dementia Pugilistic, etc) I did get photos of all of the symptoms of a concussion, to show the dangers with a concussion. I also wanted to get people interested about concussions, which after going the essay you will not at least think about it more than if you did not read my essay. Overall I think it went as close as possible to what I wanted it to.

P.S. I wanted to apologize to my readers, the pictures for some reason come up messed up and a little creepy. That was not intention and my brother does not have a cherry red face (usually). If I knew how to work blogger (and a computer for that matter) better it could come up correctly, but I do not have the skills. I hope you can get pass the off colors and see the purpose behind the essay. Enjoy!