Teaching Visual Literacy through Digital Photography and Imaging Exercises

Students of visual communication design need the ability to analyze, compose, and interpret images that speak in a visual language. Teaching visual literacy is one way that enables students to be aware and critical about images that surround their lives everyday. Visual literacy gives students the ability to actively unravel and deconstruct codes given by an image, rather than become a passive receiver of it. As a method for teaching, exercises or challenges in creating or composing images can be a good complement in developing this ability, rather than mere analyzing. Digital photography is an excellent medium for this, since it is quick at capturing and producing many images that we want, and very lenient on mistakes or technical errors so students are less afraid to take risks and more productive. Through strategic exercises of digital photography and imaging, students can learn visual literacy in a very dynamic way; not only reading images, but also creating them and reinterpreting them through class presentations and discussions.