Photograph

A photograph is an image created using a camera showing how a person, place or thing looked at a particular moment in time. The first of these was taken 200 years ago using a camera called a camera obscura by a French photographer. It was a photograph of the view out of the window from his house.

They are useful in all kinds of academic subjects like history and geography as well as being a fun way to capture memories.

You take a photograph using a camera, when you press the button a shutter opens and lets light in through a lens. This light hits the sensor or film creating an image.

Photographs come in two varieties:

Ground level photograph - these are photos taken from the ground, it can be taken standing up or closer to the ground.
Aerial photograph - these are photos taken from above, these could be taken from a satellite, an aeroplane or a tall building. They can help us identify the key features of a place.

A Photo is Useful in Geography

A photograph is useful in geography as they can share a lot of information about a place. They can help us remember what a place looked like so we can see how it has changed over time.

Photographs can also help us learn about other people, other countries and other cultures.

When using photographs for geography we should add captions and labels.

Captions describe the photograph and labels identify the key parts of an image, these should:

be short
include simple language that others can understand
not have long descriptions

A Photo is Useful in History

Photos are useful in history as they can last a long time, they can show us what a person, place or thing was like in the past. Historians can use photographs they find to look for clues about the past to see what it was like.

Questions historians may ask about photos to help them find the clues about what has happened in the past:

Who? (e.g. who is in the photograph? who would have had a car like his)
What? (e.g. what are they wearing? what is happening?)
Where? (e.g. where was the photograph taken?)
When? (e.g. when was the photograph taken?)
Why? (e.g. why was the photograph taken? why are they celebrating?)
How? (e.g. how did the car work? how is this car different from todays cars)