Have you ever gotten a grade for your photography?

This would get an F if I graded my photo

Gary Chapman, a fellow photographer, commented the other night that he enjoys having written something verses the act of writing.  I couldn’t help but laugh.

This got me to thinking and I like to do armchair sociology.  I came up with some thoughts about how we learn to read and write verses visual literacy.

While I have a master’s degree, which means I went through more than seventeen years of formal education, I still struggle with writing.

Testing revealed that I have some form of autism and I believe I most likely have Asperger’s syndrome.  I consider this a blessing.  I am wired differently and therefore this has given me a unique view of the world.  It has also explained why writing is difficult and why I excel at the visual.

There are different ways people see the world and learn.  I am a visual thinker and learner.  What I struggle with regularly is linear thinking that is required for writing.

How do you know if you are good at something?  With reading and writing you get affirmation through grading.  All through school you learn how to read and get tested on your retention.  Just because you can read doesn’t mean you can write. 

Contrast this extensive training we go through to learn how to read and write to visual literacy.  We are not trained on how to understand visual communication, unless you took an art appreciation class.  Learning how to appreciate good visual communication isn’t the same as then knowing how to create visual communication.

At the end of this summer when kids go back to school many of them will have a traditional assignment to write about their summer experiences.  This is how many teachers evaluate the writing skills and to see what they may have to teach to get the students up to grade level writing.

I believe if we had been required to hand in our photos from those summers many of us would have discovered our photos would have earned failing grades.  Failing grades because we were never taught even how to read visuals.  If you don’t know how visuals communicate then you cannot create visuals, which communicate a message.

There are many resources to help you learn about visual literacy, just not as many as we have for learning the read and write.  Here is one book The Power of the Gaze (New Literacies and Digital Epistemologies) that you can get on Amazon.

Here is a description about the book:

The Power of the Gaze, a textbook on visual literacy, entices the reader to seek significant structures in everyday visual reality, which are called visual orders. Visual orders can be found in representations, visible surroundings, or in nonverbal interaction that relies on gaze. In order to understand what one looks at, one must first understand what it means to gaze and what it means to look. Visual literacy is defined as the critical understanding of the meanings of visual orders. The book is written for all readers interested in visual culture and its phenomena.

I recommend taking time and learning to read visually and then learn how to create visuals.  This is especially important if you work in the communications field.