Friday, February 17, 2012

Visual Writing Prompts

For English teachers: here is a list (it will be updated every now and then) of fine photographs and images which could be used fruitfully for writing prompts. Any more ideas? Do put them in the Comments section, or tweet them to @sccenglish.

(Above, 'Entertainers on the Aran Islands' from Imagebank, copyright Maxwell Photograph)
  1. The Writing Prompts Tumblr blog by Luke Neff is an excellent source of ideas for writing, with lots of striking visual material, and well-designed text.  
  2. Amazing, entertaining and often beautiful black and white photographs, collated by Matt Stopera. 
  3. World Press Photo: press photos are often dynamic, interesting, and really good prompts. This is the best site of all (warning: some such photos can also be disturbing - check them out first).
  4. Following which: every world press photo of the year from 1955 to 2011 (see 3).
  5. Some of history's most famous photographs, in both original black and white, and colour.
  6. The Guardian site is particularly strong in terms of photographs. If you have an iPad, download the superb free Eyewitness app, and project the images onto the board.
  7. Library of Congress photographs of the Great Depression. Memorable if often depressing images.
  8. The National Geographic photo of the day. The standard here is of course very high. Here's the Best of 2011.
  9. The Wikimedia list of images of public domain images on the Web.
  10. The Photoprompts tumblr.


1 comment:

Anna Togneri said...

Also, Wellcome Images
images.wellcome.ac.uk