"Photographs
don't lie"

This is why we take pictures at crime scenes. There is an idea that, unlike words, photographs are inherently objective. Photograph separate moments in time by replicating it visually (via technology) so they can show
everything that was physically there at that point in time. Photos contain what Walter Benjamin calls the "optical
unconscious" (Trachtenberg 202). So though we may have not noticed certain things when we were at that time, the photo captured everything in it’s entirety.

Further, we assume that the photographer, or creator of the photograph, despite possibly having had some kind of intent behind taking the photo, cannot fully control the meaning of the photograph. Borrowing from semiotics, if the photo is the signifier and the thing in the photo is the signified, the signifier is tied to the thing that it signifies. Simply, though words are not necessarily tied to the thing in which they refer, photographs are.

This is not to say however, that photographers are entirely without a perspective. By looking at some of the following elements, we can see some ways in which photographers can communicate things to the audience:

angle/ perspective:

The position of the camera from the scene it photographs can tell us a great deal about what the photographer wants us to see. For example, I usually interpret a "wide shot" as intending to show the whole thing – an entirety. In this photograph, the photographer(s), by pointing the camera straight on seems to be taking a picture of all of it: the water, the buildings on the coast, the boat.

composition:

(foreground, middleground, background)

Position of objects within the frame suggests importance
Space and diagonals can indicate movement


framing:

What does the photograph include in it's borders? What does it exclude?

In the following photograph, the frame within the frame implies a point of view. Because we are clearly seeing the Harbor through a window, we know that we are not seeing it “as is.” We’re seeing it through the eyes of someone else. But then  again, the same happens when we look at all photos in general.