The Power of Imagery

In our day to day lives we are bombarded with imagery, in advertising, on social networking sites and television to name a few situations. Recent reading has got me thinking just how powerful that is.

Images create an emotional response in people, they have the power to trigger memories, experiences and aspirations. At first I thought about this from a business point of view, relating back to my previous blog and the website I am in the process of creating. I've thought about what reaction we want customers to have to our website. I would want people to think it looks professional but also warm, friendly and fun. Somewhere they would want to take their children and that attracts the children too! Like anything I think it will be a case of trial and error.I think a good place to start will be to see what reactions I personally have to images and will use websites such as Instagram and Flickr as my source.

I then went on to think about it personally. In previous conversations with people on the course we talked about the power of social media and the impressions people can form of other people without even meeting them. I had considered the argument of whether this is fair or not. Initially I would have sided with saying it was unfair to judge a person before meeting, speaking and really getting to know them. However further research into the emotional response to imagery has made me realise that although it is not fair to judge it is a natural human reaction. Of course the choice whether to act on that initial reaction is up to the individual but that does not change the fact that they WILL make an initial judgement based on their emotional response to what they see. For that reason I'm going to take time to look at my social media pages and really think 'Am I making the right impression?'. After all I do use sites such as Facebook to regularly look for and apply for jobs. So maybe the right think for me to do is not to look at them as me but as an employer looking at a possible future employee. What emotional response would I want to evoke in them?

Lastly I went on to relate it to my work and teaching. I was able to see the power of imagery for myself and what a positive thing that can be. This week I taught a group of very young children aged 2-4 a beginners dance class. They started off well but their attention started to wander. I sat the children down and showed them a picture of an everyday activity. We talked about the picture and they got to answer questions as well as ask their own about what they saw. I then asked them to re-create what they saw in the picture in a dance. The change in the children was remarkable. They were energetic, imaginative and responsive. It was great to see and really helped the children engage in the rest of the lesson. It is a tool I will be using again and look forward to developing further.

From considering all of these things I think it is fair to say that there are both positives and negatives to the power of imagery but one thing is clear, you cannot escape it.

I'm going to develop my ideas on the power of imagery by creating a Flickr account to collect images relating to my website and teaching to share with you all.

Watch this space for a link!