A young man clutching books to his chest looks into the distance in horror. It appears he is a student. He starts sprinting through a courtyard past an old brick building, with a determined look on his face. He approaches a staircase and hurtles down it, but falls at the bottom and is stampeded by passerbys. His face contorts in pain as he is trampled over. He picks himself up and continues his dash, arriving at a classroom. On the door is a note which reads ‘Class Cancelled (public holiday)’. The student makes his disbelief and anger towards the whole debacle clear with a single expression of utter incredulity.

This is the synopsis I wrote in class of the photo essay ‘Don’t Call me Late for Dinner’. In retrospect, I think that I probably should have been more detailed in some places and less detailed in others.

For example, I don’t think that ‘It appears he is a student’ is a particularly worthwhile sentence. I’ve already established that he’s clutching books to his chest, so that narrows it down already, and I think that I could have made the fact that he’s a student apparent in some other way. For example, I could have made it more apparent that the building he was in was a university. I think it would create a better image and sound nicer to read – it always feels a bit awkward saying explicitly what’s going on.

It also feels slightly awkward stating exactly what is written on the door of the classroom, although I don’t know what I’d write instead. Maybe just mention that the class was cancelled.

I think my adjectives and verbs are generally fairly good, I tried not to overdo anything but use enough expressive words to create the images as vividly as I could. Hurtling, stampeding, and sprinting, are all words I used to try to instill movement into the photos, and to create action in between the frames as well as within them.

Overall I think I did well with the smaller, individual pieces of action and expression but had a harder time getting the overall plot into smooth language.