Photovoice is highly flexible and can be adapted to specific participatory goals (such as needs assessment, asset mapping, and evaluation), different groups and communities, and distinct policy and public health issues.

Stages
The stages of photovoice include:

• conceptualizing the problem
• defining broader goals and objectives
• recruiting policy makers as the audience for photovoice findings
• training the trainers
• conducting photovoice training
• devising the initial theme/s for taking pictures
• taking pictures
• facilitating group discussion
• critical reflection and dialogue
        selecting photographs for discussion
        contextualizing and storytelling
        codifying issues, themes, and theories
• documenting the stories
• conducting the formative evaluation
• reaching policy makers, donors, media, researchers, and others who may be mobilized to create change
• conducting participatory evaluation of policy and program implementation

Community Training and Process
The first photovoice training begins with a discussion of cameras, ethics, and power; ways of seeing photographs; and a philosophy of giving photographs back to community members as a way of expression appreciation, respect, or camaraderie. The curriculum may then move to address mechanical aspects of camera use.

Community people using photovoice engage in a three-stage process that provides the foundation for analyzing the pictures they have taken:

1. Selecting – choosing those photographs that most accurately reflect the community's concerns and assets

   The participatory approach dictates this first stage. So that people can lead the discussion, it is they who choose the photographs. They select photographs they considered most significant, or simply like best, from each roll of film they had taken.

2. Contextualizing – telling stories about what the photographs mean

   The participatory approach also generates the second stage, contextualizing or storytelling. This occurs in the process of group discussion, suggested by the acronym VOICE, voicing our individual and collective experience. Photographs alone, considered outside the context of their own voices and stories, would contradict the essence of photovoice. People describe the meaning of their images in small and large group discussions.

3. Codifying – identifying the issues, themes, or theories that emerge

   The participatory approach gives multiple meanings to singular images and thus frames the third stage, codifying. In this stage, participants may identify three types of dimensions that arise from the dialogue process: issues, themes, or theories.

   They may codify issues when the concerns targeted for action are pragmatic, immediate, and tangible. This is the most direct application of the analysis. They may also codify themes and patterns, or develop theories that are grounded in data that have been systematically gathered and analyzed in collective discussion.