Topics as Photographs :: Writing

Writers are handle lensmans, Donald Murray reminds us. The photographer doesnt chatter a picture while scanning an entire scene. Instead he selects a single focus (239-240).This analogy was exceptionally powerful to me. The judgement of looking through a camera lens out at an event or a topic just has wonderful possibilities. You could do a panoramic photo, including the wide picture, seeing how many homos fit together. On the other hand, you could use the high-powered zoom lens to get up close and magnify a single element of the photo. Even the photographers decision to use black and white or coloring film to make a particular statement can scan into a writers decision to use sparse explanation or flowery prose to create a desired effect. A indecision that occurs to me that I might ask my students is this If your topic was a photograph, what would it look like? Would it have lots of characters in it, or just one? Is the corporal setting the most important element, or rather the expression on the subjects face? And on and on.Maybe this speaks to me because I am the yearbook editor, and one of the biggest jobs of the publications staff is to find the right picture to describe the story. From an entire role of film, we might get just one or two usable photos or none. Or we might have so many to choose from that we have to select the best angle and/or composition. Those words, angle and composition are writing words as swell as visual arts terms. Out of a notebook fully of drafts, I might find the same dilemmas -- not enough or too much usable raw material for a piece of writing.