A picture is essentially an image-based or graphical representation of a situation (past or present) which may be real or imaginary. The image that is of interest may be created manually using some type of drawing or painting activity using an appropriate form of ‘scribing instrument’ on a ‘recording medium’ such as paper or a computer screen. Alternatively, the picture may be ‘captured’ by a ‘recording device’ such as a camera. These possibilities are summarised, in a generic way, in Figure 1.
Tools to capture or create pictures
A picture will normally contain a spatial array of objects called ‘picture elements’ (not to be confused with pixels). The nature of the objects in a picture, their attributes and their relationships, one to another, will determine the ‘meaning of the picture’.