signifiers and signifieds and semiosis, oh my!

had that first photo/image class today! sounds pretty good. tyler led us in some endearing getting-to-know-you conversation, and then we jumped into semiotics. it felt like a good call to go ahead and blog some definitions while they're still fairly fresh, so here's what icons, indexes, and symbols are!
firstly, all of them are signs. they are all things that refer to things outside themselves.
icons are the most readily legible: they are pictorial representations of their signifieds. thus, a photograph of my friend represents my friend. a drawing of my cat represents my cat. a model car represents a real car. they draw a direct line from one thing to another that is easily followed.
indexes might take some work to read. they indicate their signified indirectly. they might be text, or traces of some action or implication. a dirty plate and a fork might refer to a meal. the setting can imply a scene, cobbled together out of little clues, using foreshadowing or whatever the word is for backwards-shadowing. indexes point you where you need to look to find the signified.
symbols are kind of delicate, and they seem to require a certain level of conditioning or backstory. symbols don't look like their signified. they don't point to their signified, either. the connection is not clear, or even cloudy: it's magic, or perhaps telepathy, in that symbols are agreed upon by some manner of collective unconscious to the point that we don't need the why to know the what. logos are successful in this regard if they can come to mean their brand and everything their brand stands for without needing the pitstop of the name and the explanation.

here's the fun part: we get to apply this to ourselves in photography! at least ten icons of ourselves, at least ten indexes toward ourselves, and at least ten symbols for ourselves. the first two are simple enough. the last one is also simple enough, in a way that requires a certain non-euclidean concentration.

with my brandshinynew camera, all that is to come in the near future. and we can all thank derrida that at least none of our image class signifiers are are transcendental.