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Mari Morlyan
Professor Malvin
English 114A
September 23, 2015
The Memorable Photograph
Some people may not realize that a simple photograph can have such a deep meaning
behind it. In her story Polaroids, Anne Lamott is trying to communicate the idea that when a
photograph fully develops people might end up finding things that they didnt see before taking
the picture. Lamott was first inspired by her lunch bag and so she decided to take a picture of it,
but when her Polaroid picture was fully developed she noticed a boy by a fence. Later on she
explains how she was assigned to write an article about the Special Olympics. There she met this
man who showed her a Polaroid picture of him and his friends; this picture helped her form her
article. This story and from my own experience has shown me that photography has a deeper
meaning that creatively expresses literacy.
A similar thing happened to me. In fifth grade I was assigned to pick a picture and write
about why it was so important to me. I went through all of my family photos and I ran into some
very memorable pictures. However, only one really caught my attention and inspired me to write
my best essay yet. It was a family picture in the backyard of the house we rented that winter at
Mammoth Lake. In the picture was my mom, dad, brother, aunt, uncle, my cousins, and of course
I was in it too. As I looked at the picture I immediately had memories flying through my head
and slowly my essay started to develop. I knew right away that this was the perfect picture to
write about. By just looking at it I imagined describing everything that happened on that trip in

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my essay. All the laughs we had, all the activities we did, and all the memories we shared. Also
with this photograph I was able to relate to Lamott as well. When she was watching the
basketball game she said, I imagined describing the game for my article and then for my
students: the loudness, the joy (333). The experience of the game inspired her to write a great
article just like my family vacation inspired me to write a well written essay for my class.
On the last day of my trip I decided that a memorable photo should be taken of all of us
so that we would remember this great trip. Before the picture was taken, my cousins and I went
to the backyard and played in the snow. We had a snow ball fight, we snow sledded, made snow
angels, and we made a snowman. While we were making the snowman, I imagined how great it
would be to get a family photo of all of us in the picture surrounding the snowman. I told my
cousins about my idea and they loved it. A family photo would be a nice memory to look back at
about how great this trip was. We called our parents and I had our neighbor take our picture. We
didnt have to wait for the picture to fully develop like Lamott did, because we didnt have a
Polaroid camera, but we were still anxious to see how our picture would look when our neighbor
was done taking it. As soon as he took it we all ran towards him to get the camera. The picture
was great, but later on when I closely took a look at the camera I noticed that we were
surrounded by the snow angels my brother, cousins and I had made. None of us noticed the snow
angles when we were building the snowman or when we decided to take our picture. It was an
amazing picture and breathe taking because of how incredible it looked. We would never have
guessed that this family photo would look this creative since we didnt even plan it to look like
that. The same thing had happened to Lamott with her lunch bag and the boy by the fence. She
explains, But as the picture developed, I found I had a really clear image of the boy against the
fence. Or maybe your Polaroid was supposed to be a picture of that boy against the fence, and

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you didnt notice until the last minute that a family was standing a few feet away from him
(332). The exact thing happened to her and thats why this story spoke to me right away. Lamott
might be right, what if my picture was meant to be just the snowman and the five angels
surrounding it, just like her picture might have been meant to be just the boy against the fence.
She inspired me to get my picture after all these years and look at it in a deeper meaning that I
didnt think about looking into back in fifth grade.
My family vacation and this story made me realize that a photograph can be a great use in
literacy and education. I feel like literacy is a creative writing way to express a story, event, or
situation that has happened. Even Lamott compares photography to literacy. She says, Writing a
first draft is very much like watching a Polaroid develop (331). She is explaining that writing
takes time to develop just like a Polaroid picture, and when both are fully developed a beautiful
piece of art is formed. I had a topic to right about in the fifth grade of an important photograph
that was special to me, and it helped me express my memories in a creative way. When I wrote
my essay I explained every detail, starting from the moment we got there, what we ate, what we
did, and all the way back to when we got home. In my essay I also wrote about how the picture
was taken and why I decided to form that family picture. I feel like this is what education should
be about, learning in a way that you can take something creative and put it down on paper. This
picture helped me write an essay that was put up on the excellence board in my class. My teacher
told me that this was the best essay I had ever written because I wrote freely without
overthinking the topic. I took my photograph that had creative elements in it and I described
those same elements in a clever way, and to get to look back at this day and connect it to a
similar story is amazing.
I agree with Lamotts idea that when a photograph fully develops people might end up

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finding things that they didnt see before taking the picture. The larger implications of this story
is that its important to take a closer look at something we have accomplished or done in life
even if its just a picture, because at the end of it we might end up finding a deeper meaning to it
and it will give us the inspiration to value certain things more often. My own experience
influenced my thinking that if people have a gut feeling to take a picture of something or
accomplish certain things they should just do it because then a positive outcome can come out of
it. In mine and Lamotts case we ended up writing a creative piece of a day that was special and
memorable to us.

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Works Cited Page

Rosa, Alfred F., and Paul A. Eschholz. "Polaroids." Models for Writers: Short Essays for
Composition. 12th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2010. N. pag. Print.

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Evaluation Letter
When we started talking about the essay in class I wasnt sure if I picked the best story to
write about because I was having trouble brainstorming of what I would write. But then I
remembered the perfect event to write about. Exercise 1.3 really helped me with my essay
because what I wrote for that assignment was similar to what I wrote in my essay. I expanded on
the things I wrote for that exercise in my essay and all of my ideas just started to flow. I think my
strength is that I was able to connect with the authors story and create upon what I already had
written. A weakness I would say was that in the process of my essay I was doubting myself and I
was not sure if I was addressing the prompt correctly, but then when I read my completed essay I
was positive that I was addressing it just right.