Patricia Ann Merithew on the day she was released from the hospital into hospice. She was so excited to finally be out of the hospital and away from all the poking and prodding. She passed away in my brother’s living room 16 days later. - Jim Merithew

This is the latest entry in a new series on Raw File called Assignment Wired. Please read the introductory post for more information.

This assignment asks you to profile one of your family members. Follow them around on their daily routine. Dig into their history to report the most interesting and relevant info from their background.

What are their struggles? Their joys? Their eccentricities? We invite you to explore the ways that photography can be very personal: It reveals things not only about your subject, but about you as a person and a photographer.

Skills to learn:

• Intimacy: Learn to capture the personality of someone you know well so you can apply that skill to other subjects.
• Interview depth: Try to learn something surprising that you didn’t already know about this person.
• Brevity: The biggest challenge here will be to boil down only the most interesting photos and info. If you don’t make some heart-wrenching edits, you didn’t do it right.
• Feel vs. literal: Save the literal stuff for the copy and use your photos to convey what it feels like to be with this person. The right moment can tell us more about who they are than the details of what they are doing.

Deliverables:

• Several telling photographs with exposure/focus information, equipment used.
• Short caption for each photo. Include ID of subject, time/date/location, correct spelling of people and place names.
• Four paragraphs of copy limited to 500 words.
• Quotes: All quotes in the story must be attributed to your source (who said it). Include one stellar quote for us to lift as a pullquote, if possible.

Estimated Completion Time: Five hours

Deadline: August 26

How to submit: E-mail your deliverables to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it with the subject line “Family.”

File size: Submit JPEGs of your photos at 1200 pixels on the longest side.

Critiques: Once we’ve reviewed the submissions, we’ll choose a few to highlight that we think will be useful to a wide range of readers. We’ll also give our selections a professional edit and processing, so readers can see the process from start to finish. These critiques will be given along with the next assignment.

Wait, I thought this was a photography assignment: Why do I have to do reporting?
As much as we love great photography, we also want to put the journalist back into photojournalism. Photographers often have to do their own reporting, and reporters often have to shoot their own photos. If you’re learning to do either, you’re better off learning both. The walls between the two professions are crumbling and we’re happily giving you hammers.

Permission: The photos must be your own and not shot previous to this assignment. By submitting them you are giving us permission to use them on Wired.com and in Wired magazine.

So dust off your cameras, sharpen your pencil, put on your creative thinking caps, and get out there and start shooting. Also, please leave any suggestions, questions or feedback you have in the comments. We’d love to hear ways of making this crazy experiment better or more accessible.