GETTING TO THE HEART OF YOUR PHOTOS

by Patricia Newman

Photographs are a huge part of my middle-grade nonfiction STEM books for children. My books feature environmental science in the field, and I’ve been lucky enough to have a ready source of images from scientists excellent at documenting their work. Usually, my challenge is one of quantity! With that in mind and considering that other blogs in the NF Fest catalog focus on permissions and working with photographers, I’d like to address how I choose the best photos from the hundreds available to me.

For any nonfiction book, images must add clarity to the text just as the illustrations in picture books do. Photos are great for a step-by-step approach, to give readers a sense of place, and to drop them into the adventure. But if you’re only using your photos for clarity, you’re missing out on a fabulous opportunity to add heart to your project.

The right photographs can elicit emotions and ratchet up suspense. In each of my environmental books, my goal is to help readers understand that we are not separate from nature. We have a role to play. By establishing connections to nature, I can help readers care enough to act. And photos help me do that.

After collecting the photos, I create a digital folder for each chapter in my book project. These folders are ultimately shared with the editorial and design teams. I add images that best match the events and details described in each chapter. Then, I drop in images that make me react in physical ways. I’m lucky enough to have a design team at Millbrook Press who allow me to have input on the images we use. Often, we swap out photos during the design process. Here are a few examples of what we came up with:

On the last pages of Plastic, Ahoy!, I quote Miriam Goldstein the lead scientist on one of the first expeditions to study plastic in the North Pacific. She says, “People want to know that there are wildernesses out there somewhere. If even the open sea is no longer a wilderness, what is?”  This thought-provoking statement paired with Annie Crawley’s photo of a single water bottle floating in the vast sea still takes my breath away.

Giant Rays of Hope: Protecting Manta Rays to Safeguard the Sea focuses on an amazing conservation project in Peru that uses giant manta rays as a flagship species to inspire the community to protect the ocean. In a dramatic twist, the largest manta ray anyone had ever seen was inadvertently caught in a fisher’s net. The media called the manta a “monster” and vilified the fisher who brought it ashore. The suspended manta gives readers an idea of the size of these creatures, and its sad end shocks us into paying attention and urges us to find out more.

Planet Ocean: Why We All Need a Healthy Ocean is a book about our connection to the sea. Throughout, Annie Crawley and I use text, photos, and video QR codes to share the beauty of our ocean, but also to explain and explore the devastating effects climate change has on the sea. One of our favorite spreads includes two photos (see below, right side). In the first, two children play on a trash-strewn beach. It dawns on us that the kids probably have never seen a pristine beach. The second photo shows a submerged baby doll that Annie calls the “creepy baby” photo. The doll’s incongruous cheerful expression is at odds with her new underwater home eliciting conflicting emotions in the reader, too.

In my books about animals, photos illustrate a variety of cool behaviors to engage and surprise readers and (I admit) appeal to their sense of awww. In Zoo Scientists to the Rescue, Annie Crawley and I included a photo of an orangutan inspecting a piece of fruit. His human-like dexterity, his curiosity, and his sense of awareness draw us in.

In Eavesdropping on Elephants: How Listening Helps Conservation, the photo of two bulls fighting gets readers’ hearts pumping from the power and fierceness with which male elephants protect their territory.

And in Sea Otter Heroes: The Predators That Saved an Ecosystem who can resist a raft of fuzzy-faced otters posing for the camera?

 

Reading photos is a learned skill that our young audience must practice, but perhaps it would benefit nonfiction authors to learn to get to the heart of their photos, too! Check out this LitLinks lesson that provides a framework for describing, analyzing, interpreting, and evaluating photos.

I wish you much success in choosing the perfect photos to add heart to your project.

 

Patricia Newman

Sibert Honor author Patricia Newman uses social and environmental injustice to empower readers to seek connections to the real world and act on behalf of their communities. Patricia's nonfiction titles have received multiple starred reviews, ALA Notable Awards, two Orbis Pictus Awards (NCTE), two Green Earth Book Awards, and several Eureka! Awards (CRA). All her nonfiction titles are Junior Library Guild Selections, and most appear on the Bank Street College's Best Books of the Year lists. To learn more, visit her website at patriciamnewman.com or connect with her on BlueSky (@patricianewman.bsky.social), X (@PatriciaNewman), Instagram (@patricianewmanbooks), and Pinterest (@newmanbooks).

Photography As An Element in Nonfiction Research

By Doug Wechsler

Well before Sir Isaac Newton got hit on the head by a falling apple, many great ideas originated from observing nature. The same holds true for writing nonfiction books.

Literature research is vital to any nonfiction book, but direct experience is more likely to lead to inspiration. Photography has been a great tool for me to experience my subjects in depth.

Whether you intend to illustrate books with your own photography or take pictures to document your subject, photography can be a great tool for writing nonfiction. Good photography, like good nonfiction writing, takes a subject and expresses a concise idea about it. The process of getting that photograph may teach you a great deal about your subject and inspire your writing.

The most obvious benefit of photography to the writer is as a memory aid. Having a picture can help you describe details you had forgotten or missed. The date and time stamp can help you keep events in sequence. Keeping track of places you visit and experts you meet can be greatly aided by well-labelled photographs.

My photography and writing revolve around nature, but if you are writing a book about a machine, an historical figure, or a scientific principal, photography can help you to understand your subject.                     

The important thing is the thought that goes into getting the shot and what you observe in the process. To capture the action on camera you must study your subject in the field and through literature. My work requires a great deal of patience to wait for an animal to perform a certain behavior. Meanwhile, I am observing everything that animal does, watching its behavior patterns, and looking to see how it relates to its environment. My  observations, experiences, and emotions will not only be reflected in my photography, but also in my writing.

In the classic stereotype, the nature photographer travels for days to a cliff, hides in a blind for hours and in the end finally catches the perfect shot of the endangered foo bird. I have had analogous experiences, but I have also had eureka moments photographing in my own basement.

Firsthand observations while waiting for the shot have saved me from inadvertently creating alternate facts. My research and photography for The Hidden Life of a Toad included raising tadpoles. I wanted to describe and photograph all stages of metamorphosis from egg to tadpole to toadlet. Over the years, I had seen tadpoles in various stages of development. I had noticed how legs start out as stubs at the base of the tail, then grow toes and lengthen. I assumed the arms would do the same.  

Researching the topic, I could not find a clear description of how the arms develop. One of my tadpole subjects was starting to bulge in front. The next day it had arms. This led me to photograph another bulging tadpole, lighting it from below. My x-ray-like photo showed a well-developed arm beneath the skin. 

Another time I waited for hours to photograph a captive tadpole pop its arm through the skin. At one point it disappeared into the corner of the fish tank and emerged moments later with one arm out. With these observations and photographs, I was able describe and illustrate for kids something that had probably never been seen in a children’s book. 

 

If you are not going to illustrate your books with your photography, you don’t have to go to the lengths that I do, but photography can still be an essential tool in writing nonfiction.
 

ACTIVITY

Imagine yourself writing a book about someone or something close to home. Take a photo of that someone or something and write down any observations you make while setting up the photo and arranging or waiting for the shot.

What did you learn about your subject in the process of getting the photo?
 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Doug Wechsler is obsessed with nature. His work has taken him to rain forests around the world as well as the occasional desert, wetland, and backyard weed patch. He is the author and photographer of 23 nonfiction books for children including: The Hidden Life of a Toad, Marvels in the Muck: Life in the Salt Marshes, and Frog Heaven: Ecology of a Vernal Pool. He enjoys giving presentations on his work to children and adults.

 

 

 ABOUT THE PRIZE

Doug will be giving away a half-hour question and answer session by Skype or Zoom.