From old family photos, have students choose a photograph of one of their parents or grandparents when they were about the same age as them. Ask students to spend 20 minutes looking for details in the photograph. Then, have them write their impressions. The form of the writing may be descriptive, narrative, persuasive, or informative. It can be humorous or serious. The primary requirement is that they capture and embellish images from the photograph.

          For students who are unable to locate a photograph of one of their parents or grandparents in their youth, offer two alternatives: (1) Have them locate a photograph of themselves in a situation that brings back memories with strong emotions---joy, fear, surprise, sadness, or (2) Have them find a magazine photo that reminds them of an experience they or one of their parents or grandparents once had.

          After students have written about their experiences, ask them to revise using the Artist's Structural Palette, and seek out volunteers to share their writings.

          Jim Kagafas, a writing instructor at the University of Akron, has used a variation of this idea with his college freshmen for about fifteen years. Kagafas introduces the assignment with "Looking for My Mother," an excerpt from the novel Camera Lucida by Roland Barthes and shows students a companion photograph of Barthes' mother. In the essay, Barthes writes about the photograph and discusses what an image can capture and miss.

          Reflecting on student responses to this assignment, Kagafas commented, "I found the writing produced from this lesson to be richer with metaphor, sensory inventories, lyrical passages, and active verbs than other assignments. Surprisingly, too, the students made fewer punctuation errors." Although not statistically documented, Kagafas' observations lend some support to the notion that the quality of writing may correlate with the emotional involvement of the writer.