Using Photos as Writing Prompts

Photo of a 1970s woman with a journal and pen on the table behind it

I was going to throw this photo away. I've been on a mission to cull my personal photo collection and this one was a candidate for the trash bin. One of the criteria for keeping a photograph is whether it will have any meaning to future generations and the cropped head of my mother in this photo would make it impossible for anyone else to identify the subject.

But as I looked at the photo, mulling over it's fate, I began to notice that it contained multitudes of information about my childhood and sparked memories that I would one day want to write about. The trick was to sit with the photo long enough and focus not only on the person in the photo, but also the location. Once I began this process, I found I couldn't wait to get to my writing prompt notebook and start writing.

Of course, this my childhood photo and, as a writer who is focusing on the memoir genre, it is loaded with topics for future essays but even a fiction writer could find inspiration through this process of looking at photographs. It's inspiration for describing a 1970s kitchen; the Harvest Gold appliances are waiting for me to describe them in detail, the pattern on the linoleum floors could certainly be a detail to include when I am world building. The folded newspaper on the kitchen stool is a small detail that could make a short story sparkle with realism.

Character building can also benefit from this photo. See how the woman has tucked a dishtowel into the waistband of her skirt instead of using an apron? See the slippers she's wearing, while she prepares cooks a meal before the guests arrive? She'll quickly slip out of them and put on high heels when they knock on the door. These details could make your character come to life for your readers.

I could go on an on with examples of how this simple, poor example of photography, has inspired me today. Now it's your turn, find a photograph and see how many details you can pull out to use for your next writing project.

Comments

Anne ButeraJanuary 13, 2022 at 1:44 PM
It could be great inspiration for art, too! The pattern of that wallpaper!!!
ReplyDelete
Replies
Dana BarbieriJanuary 14, 2022 at 5:28 PM
Great idea Laura. So much inspiration in that photo.
ReplyDelete
Replies
UnknownJanuary 23, 2022 at 8:19 PM
Wearing a dress to cook in, I know my mom use to when I was a child back in the 60's, but I can not even imagine. The June Cleaver mom look! I love your ideas.
ReplyDelete
Replies
NicoleNovember 23, 2022 at 1:27 PM
Laura, we had that same linoleum floor!!! And that stool/ chair in the background, my MIL has the same one! It sits by the phone that is on her wall - with a long curly cord!
ReplyDelete
Replies

Add comment

Hacking My Way Through COVID

If you are wondering where I’ve been, the answer is locked in away in my master suite, battling Covid-19. That’s right, I am no longer a card-carrying member of the NOVID crowd. Which is a bitter disappointment as I really was starting to think I had some sort of superhuman immunity to it. But, despite vaccines, mask-wearing, and handwashing I caught it. My husband and daughter had colds earlier in January. They tested negative for Covid so when I came down with cold-like symptoms, I assumed I caught their colds. I tested negative but a few days later, as I laid in bed shivering and worse than ever, a small voice said I just might want to test again and sure enough I had it. I texted down to my husband and was promptly locked away, like a princess in a tower. My first thought was that I would spend my isolation writing the next Great American Novel. Or maybe I would use the time to set goals and plan for the new year? But after two days of not being able to focus on anythin...

The Garden Through the Years-June

This is our sixth year gardening. It's been a journey, every year we learn a little more. The garden has not only taught us how to grow plants, but also how to have patience and hope. It's taught me the healing power of nature. It has helped my husband and I grow our marriage through planning the garden and working side by side. It's inspired me creatively. Every year, I usually share a monthly update of my garden during the summer months. I'll continue the tradition this year, but I am also planning to share the garden's growth over the past six years. I'll show you what it looked like each month over the years. We started our garden in 2017, about 10 months after we moved to the Pacific Northwest. My husband built our raised beds and we put up temporary fencing around the perimeter to keep the deer out. It was cumbersome to get in and out of the garden and it didn't deter the deer or the bunnies. They found a way in regardless. We grew tomatoes (too many)...

Sketchbook Musings

I sometimes wonder what my grandchildren will think if they flip through my sketchbooks? When they pick-up my Botanical Wonder Sketchbook will they see that I was an avid gardener, deeply in love with nature? Will they marvel at my account of almanac-like posts and see a personal account of climate change? When they flip through my Recipe Sketchbooks, they will see the Ambrosia recipe I wrote down and illustrated, based on my great-grandmother's recipe. Will they be inspired by notes on our family tradition Taco Nights? Or maybe they will already have Taco Nights and realize where the tradition started. When they look at my Artist Sketchbooks, they will see that I designed a line of rubber stamps, based on my love of tea and gardens, and notes for some of my embroidery designs. Will they be inspired to learn how to embroider or explore their own creativity? When they look at...

On gardening, reading, and dreaming

Yesterday was a spectacular spring day. After getting dumped on with a late snow in mid-April, and then days and days of cold wet rain, the sun and 70-degree weather was a welcome respite. Gardening We headed into the garden early, just after breakfast, with carrot, radish, and lettuce seeds in hand. All cool weather crops, we usually have luck planting them early. If all goes well, we’ll be eating from our garden in mid to late May. The rest of our plantings will have to wait until Mother’s Day weekend or later, when the chance of frost is long past. Cooking As we poked around the garden, we were able to harvest some kale and parsley which somehow survived the winter. To celebrate, I made a big bowl of tabbouleh which will take care of a few lunches this week and made creamed kale to go with the shrimp and grits my husband made for dinner last night. I don’t know why I feel so much happier when I’m eating food directly from my garden, but I do. I know it’s all in my head, ...

How to Stay Friends without Social Media

How do you stay in touch with people once you leave social media? This one of the main concerns I hear from people when they find out that I’ve quit social media. To be truthful, you will fall out of touch with some people. But you know, that’s not always a bad thing. At least it wasn’t for me. According to anthropologist Robin Dunbar, the number of people humans can sustain relationships with is 150. He based this number (called Dunbar’s Number ) on the size of the human brain. The thesis is that primates are wired to be in group sizes that will assist with survival. While there are arguments about the validity of this theory, I know I feel stressed-out when I have too many relationships going on and not enough time to nurture them. Being a good wife, mother, daughter, sister, and friend is very important to me. It brings me joy to take care of the people I love. I cook for them, check-in on them regularly, and give them my focused attention when I am with them. But I mus...

Summer

I don’t know when I began to hate summer. When I was a child, I looked forward to it all year. My childhood summers, spent in Ohio, near Lake Erie, were filled with long, hot, humid days, playing in our yard with the neighborhood kids, and going to Headlands Beach. Our evenings were spent hunting fireflies, sleeping with windows open, hoping for a cool breeze. A week at my grandparents, and family vacations to dreamy seaside towns on Cape Cod were something to look forward to. Summers, back then, were made of the stuff that you read about in coming-of-age novels like Thimble Summer . When I was 12, we moved to Southern California. I don’t think my hatred of summer began then. Our summers simply took on a new rhythm. They were, overall, still the stuff of storybooks. We had a swimming pool in our backyard and spent hours bobbing around in the water and driving the neighbors crazy with countless games of Marco Polo . My best friend and I would play in her parent’s camper, ...

Melting Reading Watching

Want to know the best way to bring on a heat wave? Blog about the lovely summer weather you are experiencing... Melting A week of heat is just breaking here and I've fallen back out of love with summer. I think I may need to move Iceland if I have any hope of truly embracing the season. The good thing about being locked up in one's house for a week, fans carefully organized around oneself, air conditioning blasting, is that you get a lot of reading done. Since this is the year that I'm working on becoming a better writer, I've been reading more. I credit the fact that I can write to my insatiable reading habit. If you read any book about the art of writing, reading is usually touted as one of the ways to become a better writer. I patiently explain this concept to my husband and daughter whenever they find me in the middle of the day, draped over a couch, iced tea in hand, reading (instead of doing laundry or making their lunch). I'm working I announce. And I'...

Fridays Are For Art

Those of you who have been with me since the beginning, the ones who have watched me go from mixed media art to craft design to watercolor to embroidery, may wonder if I have abandoned all visual art. I haven’t. I just stopped sharing it. At first, my lack of sharing came from a place of hurt and vulnerability. All those years I spent trying to make a business from my visual art came to nothing. Although I wrote bravely about closing Laura Bray Designs, it felt like a profound and humbling blow. My creativity teetered. Then something amazing happened. I began to create just for the sake of creating. Now I sit down at least once a week and make art just for pure pleasure. There is no wondering if it will sell. There is no rushing because I need to put something pretty to look at on my Instagram feed. I just create. I make mistakes. A lot of mistakes. I create the same thing repeatedly until I land in a place of complete originality. This is easier now that I am no longer...

What Lies Beneath

Since I last wrote about my garden , a lot has happened. And a lot hasn’t happened. We went from a wet spring to a few sparse weeks of beautiful summer weather, and then roared into blistering heat. My garden, unable to contend with Mother Nature’s mood swings, had suffered. Between heat waves, I would wander into my garden and, instead of looking to see what was growing, I looked for destruction. Which crop failed this week? The beds, usually lush and beautiful, have big bare spots where the vegetables failed to grow. Our potato plants, which seemed to be the only crop that survived the wet spring, had dried and brown foliage, leaving me to wonder if my Irish blood somehow invited blight. While the garden withered so did we. Heat, illness, and general malaise made us wither almost as much as our garden. In the midst of this ennui, my husband and I trudged out to face our wilting, seemingly dead garden, ready to pull the dead plants, and to grieve over the failed plot. ...

What I haven't told you

I told you how I started making art, when a surprise pregnancy, at the height of my business career, propelled me into an identity crisis and I went in search of who I really was. I worked through The Artists Way , discovered a love of art in my past and built a new identity around that. I hung that idea high and called it my North Star. The stories I told around that idea supported it. I talked of my love of art and how my wicked art teacher took that dream, stomped on it, and sent me fleeing into the business world. But that is not the whole story. I didn’t leave out parts of my story to lie, I just brushed past them to connect with my creativity. I didn’t tell you about the literature classes I was taking in high school. Beloved teachers taught my literature classes and they opened the world of literary criticism for me. They most decidedly were not like my wicked art teacher, they supported and encouraged me. I didn’t tell you there were always stacks of books piled up ...

laura k bray

Search This Blog