Picturing the PhD

It follows that making a picture inevitably frames an event and the frame, which the resulting picture encodes, guarantees that it will attract the attention of a viewer for at least a split second. The picture maker, therefore, is first of all a viewer. She frames the picture by her own act of looking and her motivation to realize the event often involves finding more and more to interest her in the scene. We are able to align ourselves to the picture and the events it depicts because, in a very real sense, someone else—the picture maker—was aligned to the scene when she made the picture.

John Grady (2008) in Visual Research at the Crossroads Vol9;3 FQS Forum Qualitative Social Research.
Seems to me that the life of text messaging is also only really appreciated on the small screen, I could spend a lot of words describing the constraints, the imagery still does it with different impact. Debates might continue on the merit of picture vs prose and of whether a picture is truth or just one rendition thereof...and that how it might be interpreted is also subject to the eye of the beholder....none the less, with ANT the environment is a valid field of study as it shapes the performance.
There are at least 2 levels to consider- that texting is shaped by constraints
and that a phd with pictures is also a performance shaped by context.
I'm planning on putting images in the PhD, will just need to provide persuasive rationale on their validity.

In another article Giolo Fele (2008) using images in qualitative research provides an example of emergency service use contrarting the audio with the visual, demonstrating the intense coordination of work requiredshows that

a dispatch does not consist purely in information transfer, but is the outcome of intense coordination work among the actors involved face to face and through technological media.

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This is the stuff i too am finding. I've really got to get stuff out there, seems i keep tripping over my own thoughts before i have them!

Now i have a whole new field of reading for me to catch up on Visual methods research interest.