The power of a picture

In the olden days, text use to be an important part of learning. Currently in this new modern society, people are already shifting from reading text based print to multimodal text. In the realm of literacy education there is much discussion of the textual shift, and thus 'paradigm shift' that has occurred for today's students whose environment is filled with visual, electronic and digital texts (Walsh 2006).

Let’s try to imagine reading a book just filled with words for an hour or two, doesn’t an illustration will refresh your mind? Nowadays, many people prefer text with pictures to make the understanding process easier. Today, we are moving towards a decade that has a decrease control of language in the public media and increase importance in visual communication (Kress and Leeuwen, 1996).

Summary
From the media report from abc.net; Photography has the potential to create an impact among audiences. The interviewee, Kelly Hussey-Smith is convinced that nothing can create an impact on readers as intensive as a photo essay. As the saying goes, every picture has 1000 words. Photograph can produce own message based on the photographer when they are driven by the situation of the scene to create an interpretation for the world to understand (Socialism.org, 2000).

Personal opinion
Photos nowadays have potential to create a good message. Sometimes words cannot explain the details that are provided in a picture. Human beings construct a mental space when they look at a picture whereby the brain is undergoing a thinking process to explain the meaning of the picture (Oakley, 2005).

References
Funnell, A 2008, The Power of Photograph, Media Report, viewed 6 June 2009, http://www.abc.net.au/rn/mediareport/stories/2008/2447666.htm

Kress, G & van Leeuwen, T 1996, Reading images: the grammar of visual design,‘Chapter 1:The semiotic landscape: language and visual communication’, pp 15-42, Routledge, NY.

Oakley, Todd 2005, ‘Implied narratives in medical practice,’ in Language & Literature, vol. 14, no. 3, p.295-310 Socialismtoday.org 2000.

The Power of Photography, Monthly Journal, Issue 50, viewed 8th November 2008, http://www.socialismtoday.org/50/photography.html

Walsh, M (2006), Australian Journal of Language and Literacy "The 'textual shift': examining the reading process with print, visual and multimodal texts" Vol 29, no.1, p.24-37