Representational photography activities are one of the most powerful techniques for getting to the heart of topics that are emotional, abstract or not easily described in words.  In a representational photographic activity, participants are asked to post a picture that represents their feelings or impressions of a particular thing. That thing could be a product, brand, or an experience. Essentially, in this kind of activity, you are asking people to provide a visual metaphor.  And as Gerald Zaltman pointed out in "How Customers Think"  metpahors are a powerful window into how customers truly make decisions. 

Here's an example representational photography exercise taken from one of the earliest Revelation based studies. It was a study on new parents with the objective of understanding how people change when children come into their lives.  We introduced the activity this way:

"In this activity you are going to need your digital camera. We'd like you to take two pictures and describe them. For your first picture, please take a picture of something you feel represents your life before parenthood, post it and describe your picture and why you chose it.  For the second picture, please take a picture of something you feel represents your life after parenthood, post and describe below. Thanks!"

Here is one mother's response to this activity:

"The first pic is my bed. That thing that I aspire to spend time in without at least one interruption during my sleep. Before being a parent, I could sleep in as long as I wanted. I miss it so much."

"The second is my dishes this weekend. Between [my husband] being sick, me having 12 hours of work over the weekend, and [my husband] being gone most of the weekend, the place was a wreck."

The second image is particularly powerful. Of all the possible things the participant could have chose to represent her life as a mother, including her child, she chose the sinkful of dirty dishes.  It is a very honest moment and really puts the viewer in the psychology of the participant. And it is a good metaphor for some of the challenges of parenthood: it can be messy, time is always short and certain things don't get the attention they used to.