Speaking Part 2 · PeopleIn the Sep–Dec 2026 reported set
Describe a Person You Know Who Really Likes Taking Photos
In short
“Describe a Person You Know Who Really Likes Taking Photos” is a common IELTS Speaking Part 2 cue card. You get 1 minute to prepare and should speak for 1–2 minutes, covering all four points below. This page gives you a Band 9 model answer, an idea map so you can make it your own, the Part 3 follow-up questions with answers, and the vocabulary examiners reward.
The task card
Describe a Person You Know Who Really Likes Taking Photos. You should say:
- •Who this person is
- •What kind of photos they take
- •Where they take them
- •And explain why you think they enjoy photography
Band 9 model answer
The person I'll describe is my oldest friend, Dani, who has been taking photographs since we were about fifteen and who has taken, at a conservative estimate, most of the photographs that exist of my life.
What she photographs is almost entirely people, and specifically people not noticing. She has very little interest in landscapes and none at all in the kind of picture where everyone is arranged and smiling. What she wants is the moment thirty seconds before or after that — somebody laughing at something off to the side, two people having an argument at a wedding, my father asleep in a chair with a newspaper over his face. She shoots a lot on an old film camera, partly because it's slower and partly, I suspect, because people stop performing once they've heard the shutter and assume it's over.
Where she takes them is wherever she happens to be, which is the point. She's never once, in fifteen years, said 'let's go somewhere to take photos'. She takes them at dinners, on ordinary Tuesdays, in kitchens, at bus stops. The best photograph she's ever taken of me is one I didn't know about until two years later, on a fairly unremarkable afternoon.
Why I think she enjoys it has taken me a long time to work out, because she's not especially articulate about it and gets uncomfortable if you ask. My best explanation is that it's how she pays attention. She is, genuinely, the most observant person I know — she notices who's gone quiet at a table, who's avoiding whom — and I think the camera is both a product of that and a reason to keep doing it.
There's a second reason that's become clearer as we've got older. She's the only one of us who has a record. When her grandfather died she had about four hundred photographs of him doing nothing in particular, and those turned out to matter enormously to her family in a way that nobody had anticipated. I think she understood before the rest of us that the ordinary days are the ones you'd want back.
I should say she's not remotely precious about it. She doesn't post them, she's never sold one, and most of them live in boxes. It isn't a career or an identity. It's just something she has done constantly for fifteen years, which is probably why she's so good at it.
Make it your own: three angles
A friend or relative who documents everyday life
Richer than describing a professional, because you can explain what they photograph and why — and the "why they enjoy it" bullet has a real answer.
Someone with a specific subject (nature, street, food, sport)
Good for precise vocabulary and for explaining where they go, which the third bullet asks for directly.
A professional or semi-professional photographer
Works if you know them personally. Be careful that the answer does not become about the equipment, which is a common trap.
What the examiner is listening for
The equipment trap catches a lot of candidates — nobody is marking your knowledge of cameras, and a minute on lenses is a minute wasted. Talk about WHAT they photograph and WHY, which is where the fourth bullet lives. The model's answer, that the camera is how she pays attention, is the kind of specific claim that lifts this above 'she loves taking pictures'.
Part 1 warm-up questions
- Do you take many photographs?
- Do you prefer photos of people or places?
- What do you do with the photos you take?
- Have you ever printed a photograph?
Part 3 follow-up questions & answers
Why do people take so many photographs now?
Mostly because the cost has gone to zero — when film had to be bought and developed, every frame was a decision, and now there's no reason not to take twenty. There's also a documenting instinct that social media has amplified, where an experience feels incomplete until it's recorded. I'd add that people photograph as a substitute for remembering, which is efficient and possibly not free of cost.
Has photography become less special?
The individual photograph certainly has — a picture used to be a rare object you held, and now most are seen once and never again. But I'd argue the practice has become more democratic rather than less valuable. Ordinary people now have visual records of their lives that only the wealthy had a century ago, and that's a real gain even if any single image matters less.
Do people spend too much time photographing experiences instead of enjoying them?
Sometimes, and there's research suggesting that photographing something can reduce how well you remember it — you outsource the memory to the device. But I think the framing is a bit too neat. Photographing attentively means looking harder at something, which can deepen the experience. The problem is photographing reflexively, without looking at all.
Should photographs be printed rather than kept digitally?
There's a practical argument for it that people underrate. Digital archives are surprisingly fragile — formats change, accounts close, drives fail, and most people have no real backup. A printed photograph survives neglect in a way a file doesn't. And printing forces a selection, which means someone has decided which images actually mattered.
Is photography an art form?
It can be, though not every photograph is art any more than every sentence is literature. What makes it art is selection — deciding what to include, when, and from where — and the fact that a camera does the recording doesn't remove the judgement. The old objection that it's merely mechanical has largely been settled by a century of evidence.
How have phones changed photography?
They've made everyone a photographer and made most photographs worse and a few much better. Always having a camera means the unplanned moments get captured, which is genuinely new. What's been lost is the deliberation that came with limited film, and a certain kind of image — the considered one — has become rarer as the casual one has become infinite.
Useful vocabulary
| Word / phrase | Meaning |
|---|---|
| to capture a moment | to photograph something as it happens |
| a candid photo | one taken without the subject posing |
| to pose | to arrange yourself for a photograph |
| an eye for composition | a sense of how to arrange an image |
| to snap away | to take photos quickly and casually |
| a keen photographer | someone enthusiastic about photography |
| to document something | to make a record of it |
| a portrait | a picture of a person |
| to develop film | to process film into photographs |
| precious about something | overly serious or protective about it |
More cue cards
Describe a Creative Person You Admire
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