describe_a_photo_part1

When you describe the picture, you should use proper vocabulary

When you describe the picture, you should:
Give a summary of what you see.
Talk about of where things are in the picture.
Add details.
Speculate about what’s in the picture.
Speculate about the context of the picture.

WHAT’S THE BEST WAY TO START YOUR DESCRIPTION?
Start with a summary, giving a general description of what’s in the picture and what you can see. It’s useful to imagine that the person you are talking to can’t see the picture. Think: what does the other person need to know? What do you need to say so that other people can understand what’s in the picture.
There are several small boats next to a beach.
or
The picture shows a beach with many small boats
in the water nearby.
There are three people cooking in a kitchen.
or
The picture shows three young friends cooking together.

HOW TO DESCRIBE WHERE THINGS ARE?
Give more details about what you see in the picture.
On the left, there’s a cat sitting on a table.
On the right, there’s a man standing,
though we can’t see his face.
In the background, we can see blue sky and snowy mountains.
On the left, there’s a girl with dark curly hair.
She is holding half of a cauliflower.
In the middle, there’s a man who’s chopping vegetables.
At the bottom, we can see a counter with many
different vegetables on it.
In the foreground, there’s a sandy beach
with three metal anchors on it.
In the middle, there are several small boats,
which are close to the beach.
In the background, we can see the blue sea stretching
to the horizon.

ADDING DETAILS TO YOUR DESCRIPTION
Don’t try to describe everything in the picture. It’s not necessary or useful. You should add details to the most important parts of the picture.
The two people both look unhappy or irritated.
They are sitting at the kitchen table together,
but they aren’t talking to each other.
The man is staring down at the table,
while the woman is stirring her tea with a spoon.
You can just see that you can do a lot with just a few sentences.

SPECULATING ABOUT THE PICTURE
Speculating means talking about possibilities.
Speculating helps you give your opinion about the picture.
The horses are running through the grass.
Two of them are black, but one in the middle is white and grey.
They don’t have saddles or anything, so they could be wild animals.
I think this could be made in the USA or maybe Russia.
It’s a good photo, so perhaps it was taken by a professional
nature photographer.
Speculate about what you can see in the picture

SPECULATING ABOUT THE CONTEXT OF THE PICTURE
Speculating about what you can’t see in the picture
This must be somewhere tropical, like the Caribbean
or the Maldives.
Perhaps, it was taken by a tourist who came to the
beach on one of those boats.
I suppose the guy is a climber, or he’s on an adventure holiday.
Maybe he climbed something, and now he’s on the way down.
He must have a lot of experience, because his body language
is quite relaxed.
He might be focusing on what he’s doing, but he might just
be enjoying the view.
The footprints must have been
made by a climber or a
mountaineer.
The person who made the footprints might be standing
on the top of the mountain.

MAKING A LONGER ANSWER
In the picture, there are two people sitting at a table, looking unhappy. There’s a woman on the left and a man on the right. In the middle of the picture, we can see some things on the table, like cups of tea, biscuits, milk and so on. The two people look sad and irritated, and they aren’t speaking to each other. They’re both looking down at the table.
I suppose they had fight and now they aren’t talking to each other, or they might just be bored and not have anything to talk about. I guess it’s a stock photo because otherwise, why would their photographer be in the kitchen with them.

MAKING A LONGER ANSWER
The picture shows umbrellas hanging in the air. In the foreground, we can see the streetlight, and the umbrellas fill the picture from left to right. The umbrellas are of many different colours, mostly bright like pink, yellow or green. They’re hanging from wires. I can see at least four lines of umbrellas hanging down in this way, but there could be even more.
Maybe this is some sort of art project. It might also be a festival or tradition, that some people decorate the street with colourful umbrellas like this. I suppose the picture was taken in a city or town, though I can't tell where exactly. Perhaps the photographer was a tourist, and was just walking around the city when he saw this amazing and strange scene.