Choosing the Next Chapter

One Student’s Story to Pick the Right College

Introduction

The decision to choose a college is not an easy one. For years, students study, plan, and hope for the moment they receive their

acceptance letters. They endure many lectures from their parents about the importance of getting into a good college. This is the first step of

becoming an adult. Parents can voice their opinion, but the students have to make the decision on their own. It is one of the most important

decisions in their life. The guidance officer advises the student to apply to a safety school, target school, and a reach school. Many hours are spent

writing essays convincing schools why they should offer you a spot at their school. The day comes when multiple offers arrive in the mail. Their

hard work and dedication has finally paid off. All the nights they chose to study instead of going to the movies with their friends become worth it.

A few days later, students receive financial aid offers from the college. The cost is a significant factor in making a choice especially when full time

jobs are harder than ever to secure. Next, comes the hard part; the students have just over a month to decide where they will live for the next four

years. Another area the student needs to consider is their distance from their family.

The tide turns and the colleges start recruit to the student. The admissions officers list reasons why the student will thrive at their

institution. Students currently enrolled at the college start calling and emailing the student to persuade them to pick their college. The students are

invited to join Facebook groups with other attended students. Parents start receiving emails from other parents of students enrolled at the college

sharing the reasons the college is wonderful. The colleges send bumper stickers, hats, pendants, and other gifts to your house. Students are invited

to visit the college to spend the night with a current student. During this time, they attend class and several social activities on campus. This visit is

completely different than the regular campus tour. The students have an opportunity to meet many of the professors on campus. This makes the

choice an even harder one.

Starting a New Journey

My goal for Photo Essay, I attempted to show images of a student’s journey from school to being offered enrollment into

college, and how difficult it is to make the choice between colleges. In “Understanding a Photograph” John Berger explains, “A

photograph is a result of the Photographer's decision that it is worth the recording that this particular event or this particular object

has been seen” (292). I think this important to document because, it is an equally exciting and stressful time in a young person’s life.

I included a photograph of my son as a child with his brothers in the beginning of his life, because it shows him as part of a family not

an individual. I chose pictures of his extra-curricular to show who he is, and are they important for a student to participate in to get

into a decent college. John Berger states, “A photograph, whilst recording what has been seen, always seen, always and by its

nature refers to what is unseen.” (292). In an effort to portray his dedication to his academics I included pictures of his school books,

awards, and him on his laptop. Hopefully, the images can work together to create an intended message that is not seen. The picture

of my son holding his acceptance letters shows the specific colleges he is considering going to in the fall. The photographs of my son

with luggage are to show he is leaving home. The reason I did not take the picture of him from the front was to show him moving

forward. For the images on the campuses, I included beautiful castles like images to give the feeling of moving to a better place. I

tried to use the trees to create a frame in these images. This is a whole different world compared to his upbringing. The empty dorm

picture with all white walls is to shows a clean fresh start.

Photo Choices

The other side of the essay is way to take the images so they look appealing. This was much less painless than I assumed it

would be. According to John Berger, “The good photograph is a well-composed one.” (293). Fortunately, the advanced technology on

my cell phone provides tools to create and edit images very easily. The phone automatically focuses on subjects on a person’s face

by putting a circle around their head, which makes it easy to center them in the image. This makes it even easier to create half

decent images. According to the class reading, “10 Top Photography Composition Rules, the best way to take a picture “Imagine that

your image is divided into 9 equal segments by 2 vertical and 2 horizontal lines” and use the lines as guidance for where to position

subjects in your picture. My phone has a feature that creates the sections on the scene to take the picture. I can align the subjects of

my photographs in the lines. The software in the phone allows me to adjust the brightness, contrast, saturation, color, and hue. I can

effortlessly save the photographs to my phone with the edits and send them to my email. This allows me to open the images on my

laptop and download them to a word document.

Not Just a Photo of an Empty Room

I decided to analyze the photograph of the empty dorm room. To many of us, it is more than just that though, it is a symbol of

a new beginning. It can evoke the feeling of leaving home for the first time to take a step towards independence. According to

“Photography” in The New York Review of Book by Susan Sontag, “Photographed images do not seem to be statements about the

world so much as pieces of it: miniatures of reality that anyone can make or acquire” (3). The image meaning can be interpreted by

anyone very easily, but in order to get the full meaning a person must have lived away in college themselves.

There is no set instruction manual for taking photographs, instead there are tip to taking good photographs. However, 10 Top

Photography Composition Rules explains, “there are number of established composition guidelines which can be applied in almost

any situation, to enhance the impact of a scene” (MP). The first rule of composition I employed when taking and editing the

photograph is the rule of thirds. I placed the window in the first diagonal third, and divided the window in the two take horizontal

thirds. The article “10 Top Photography Composition Rules” on Mad Photography, “Doing so will add balance and interest to your

photo” (MP). This technique can also be viewed in the position of the trim on the wall. The pattern on the hard floor work as a way to

make the photograph more appealing by breaking up the stark white, which is a tool I learned when reading the article on Mad

Photography.com. The floor, bed rails, heaters, and window sill in the picture contain multiple lines. According to the article, “There

are many different types of lines - straight, diagonal, curvy, zigzag, radial etc. - and each can be used to enhance our photo's

composition” (MP). All tools above help the photograph appear more interesting.

Sources:

Berger, John, and Geoff Dyer. Understanding a Photograph. N.p.: Penguin, n.d. Print.

Sontag, Susan. On Photography. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1977. Print.

"10 TOP PHOTOGRAPHY COMPOSITION RULES." Photography Mad. N.p., n.d. Web. 28 Apr. 2016.

<http://www.photographymad.com/pages/view/10-top-photography-composition-rules>.