text: The real-world spaces that surround information users have been diversely called everything from personal information environments (Kwasnik, 1991; Malone, 1983) to personal information management (PIM) systems (Barreau, 1995) and personal spaces of information (Jones, 2007). Drawing upon interviews with academics, Lee (2003) proposes a model of three concentric zones of information that surround a user: “immediate,” within arm’s reach or a few footsteps away; “adjacent,” such as a nearby university library; and “outside,” such as a more distant bookstore. Speaking largely from an objectifying stance and adopting Lee’s concept of the “immediate information space,” this paper focuses on a visual research method—photography— that seems particularly well suited to learning more about settings and their accompanying information phenomena. A variety of investigative approaches may be used to study immediate information space. Jones (2007) suggests ethnography combined with design methodologies, and places emphasis on context and situation, including contextual inquiry (Beyer & Holtzblatt, 1998), situated activity (Suchman, 1983), and situated design (Greenbaum & Kyng, 1991). Naumer and Fisher (2007) recommend naturalistic inquiry (Lincoln & Guba, 1985) and the data-gathering methods of unobtrusive observation, interviews, diaries, text analysis, pictures, and videos. Sandstrom and Sandstrom (1995) champion scientific ethnography, which sanctions both quantitative and qualitative data-gathering techniques, and carefully negotiates the views of the researcher and informant, distinguished as “etic” or “emic” perspectives.