How do artists create a signature style?

How might artists portray mood or emotion in their work?

What strategies might an artist use to convey a narrative?

How might an artist employ specific compositional devices to elicit a particular experience for the viewer?

In what ways do artists borrow technology and ideas from other disciplines, such as photographers borrowing from cinematography and cinematographers borrowing from still photography?

What do you see in the photograph? Consider both human-made objects and nature in the composition to find clues that help to describe what’s happening in the image. How does what you see in the photograph help in understanding it?

Who is the protagonist of this story? Is it the girl sitting on the swing, or the figure in the window of the trailer? How can you tell?

Where is the light coming from, and what mood does it create? What time of day is it? How can you tell?

What is the story here?

How do the postures of the two figures convey the mood of the photograph?

If this single image were a still from a movie, what might be the larger story?

Are the light and the rain characters in the story? How about the toys and the swing? The trailers? The telephone pole?

Grades 3–5

Students will expand the narrative in this photograph. Create a storyboard of what happens just before and just after the photograph was taken. Did the girl walk out while it was raining, or was she caught in the rain? What is the woman in the trailer thinking? What happens next? Create a thought bubble or a drawing that illustrates these moments.