When you plan and make a photograph, there are many things that you use to communicate your intention to your audience. This section includes the elements that you include to produce particular thoughts, feelings or story: the things that are in front of the camera. Examples include:

• Subject, the main part of the image (where your subject is a person, include positions or facial expressions)

• Background

• Props & Objects

• Actions that are occurring

• Lighting (time of day: outside / inside)

Example: Metallica' master of puppets includes hands in the sky with strings attached to soldier's gravestones to represent the idea of soldiers not making their own choices but being controlled by the government.

Metallica (1986) Master of Puppets. URL.

Method means the process that you take to make something (for example, in a recipe, the method section tells you what to do with ingredients to cook something). In photography, this relates to the ways that you capture the things in the 'Make' section above: the choices you make behind the camera to convey your intention to your audience. These choices include:

• Camera settings (shutter speed, aperture, ISO)

• Compositional Tools & Colours used

• Angles

• Using a tripod / self timer / remote 

• Anything you thought about or did to set up or capture your photograph

Example: In Joker (2019), the shot of the Joker on the stairs uses leading lines to draw attention to the Joker, while the low angle and fill the frame make him seem important, powerful and scary.

Gleiberman, O. (2018) Why 'Joker' is All of Us. URL.

Editing refers to anything that you do after taking a photo. Digitally, this looks like changes you make in Photoshop or Pixlr. Historically, editing has included lighting adjustments in the dark room, painting on photographs and using methods like collage. When outlining your process for others, you should try to be specific about the actions you have taken to edit your image and which tools you have used. This could include:

• Cropping your image

• Making brightness / contrast / exposure adjustments 

• Using filters to change colours or make pictures black and white

• Using layer masks to cut different parts of images together

• Using text tools to add text to images

Example: This movie poster was developed for the Barbie movie (2023). Editing choices included applying a filter to make the image very pink, her signature colour. The fabrics would have been added by using layer masks as these created contrast and emphasised the subject (Margot Robbie / Barbie).

FontBolt (2023) Barbie 2023 Movie Font. URL.