Assignment #1: The Frame...and meeting K.J.!

In a slightly belated post, I will post the top three images I edited and produced with the point-and-shoot digital camera for the Photography as Language class.
This was the first time I attempted using photoshop, but after the prints and critique, I was very happy with the results.

These two images I chose plainly for their aesthetic value. The deep and bright greens and the overwhelming cyan-blue truly shined from the original images. After a brief tweaking of highlights and shadows then playing with color balance produced images that I am proud of.

Of course, I decided not to show my patient these, instead, ever attempting to be the amateur neuropsychologist, provided this picture of my girlfriend on the beach. I told her "go run at those birds so I can take a picture!" to which she happily obliged. I felt the image provided a story and a plethora of descriptive words to review for an aphasic patient. Sand, clouds/cloudy, birds, flight/flying, running, beach, smile/smiling, and various nouns, verbs, and adverbs. I had just read a paper for neuropsychology outlining the double disassociation of noun/verb duality. Patients often have trouble with either words related to imagery or trouble with more nebulous concepts. It's easier to imagine a bird in your head, but the imagery of "flying" requires one to create a mental scenario with an object to partake in flight.

Of course, I got what was coming for me. My client, K.J., is extremely feisty, extraordinarily smart and quick-witted. Well, she took one look at my picture, frowned, and pointed to Diego's photograph of beautifully composed and vibrant marker heads, creating a rainbow pattern of random colors. K.J. used to be a painter before her stroke, and of course was attracted to the superior and more interesting image. 

This is a great lesson in the attempt of a scientific intent and the subsequent realization of its absolute absurdity. I just might have to rethink this whole case-study idea...K.J. is much too entertaining, engaging, and hilarious to drone on about dry clinical facts. Oh, but I'm not abandoning that aspect totally. Something I noticed quite early on was K.J.'s immediate verbalization of what I'll call "frustration words." The first words I heard her speak were a "What the hell?!" pointing to her speech therapy scheduling, jotted confusingly on a sticky note. 

She presents with anomia, telegraphic speech, and other non-fluent presentations. Right-side hemipelegia is apparent as she lost the majority of fine motor control of her right hand, which must be extraordinarily frustrating to a former painter. She is acutely aware of her language deficits, and quickly inserts a frustrated "crap!!" in place of an unknown word. We took her outside to show her how to use the camera, and joked about the dismal scenery outside of the building. "What do I do!?"gesturing with her camera, "picture of dead bush?!"