Multimedia assignments like photo essays and web pages are creating new kinds of narratives. For this essay, you will begin to tell the story of a place - a place in Mansfield, Ohio. You will instruct your audience about the part this place has played in the history and culture of Mansfield. To do this well, you will do some research (in the library, on the Internet) and perhaps conduct some preliminary interviews. (You will do more formal interviews and sound collecting for your next project, the Audio Essay.) You will also select at least eight images from the photos you take (and from other visual sources) that allow you to convey important information about your place, and then incorporate those images into an iMovie slideshow with captions and explanations that help you tell the story of your place.

What's It to You? You will connect more with the subject you are investigating if you can establish a personal connection. Perhaps someone you know, or you yourself, have spent time there. Or maybe you see connections between this place and others that you have experienced elsewhere.

What Do You Want to Say about It? Because the purpose of your photo essay is to provide visual and verbal information about this place, research will drive the process of developing your essay. (Good research at this point will also help with later projects.) Focus your thinking on a research question: What was the role of this place in the lives of Mansfield citizens? Who are the people most connected to this place, and why? How has it changed over the years, and what is this change a sign of? Can you connect this place to cultural tropes like The American Dream or American Ingenuity?

What Do You Need to Know? The library (both OSU and Richland County), the Internet, and personal interviews will be important to your investigation. You will use all three by the time you have finished your final project, and we will talk in class about what you might learn from each of these. For your photo essay, be sure to have a sufficient array of research sources to support your project.

How Will You Do It? Because you will be combining several media, you may find the composing process for this project is more complicated that for a traditional essay. Here are some tips. First locate images that will help you inform your audience about your place and your research. You should take most of your images yourself, but you may also use historic photos if they are important to your claim.

Images should not be selected randomly. Rather each image should allow you to make a specific point about you place. Select at least eight images for the project. Next, compose an iMovie slideshow that has a title page, an opening page, a page for each of the images, a page for a conclusion, and a page for credits.

Next develop an image page for each image. Each page should contain the following:

• your image, sized and cropped for maximum effect.
• a caption (no more than one sentence) that emphasizes the key concerns of your image and situates it within the structure of the presentation.
• an explanation (at least four sentences) that explains the significance of the image. Your explanation might discuss aspects of the image in more detail. It should also integrate some of your research information whenever possible. your purpose is to make the place you are investigating significant to your readers.

Next compose an introduction and a conclusion. You may wish to use images on these pages as well. Be sure to include a properly formatted list of sources following your conclusion.

How Well Does It Work? Proofread the text you have written, sharpening the language. Check that the order of your images makes sense. Get a response from your classmates. Revise your project as needed. For inspiration, you might look at two pages from a web site photo essay by student Michael Lee.