Have you thought of getting the person to look through his/her photo albums with you? (This may take long!)

You can input the images in Nvivo to help you systematically analyse them

You will need to decide early on if you are going to present the same set of images to each respondent, or to customise them. This decision has a major bearing on data-collection costs and time, on global reach and on repeatability.

I think context is always good to enrich a story and using images can be helpful. For example, the use of images of relevant objects of those interviewed ( a writer his or her desk or library, a painter his or her, etc). Also, the streets and buildings associated with the character’s story and newspaper or magazine covers or clips of the time to place the story, etc.

There are many different approaches to using images, some of which have been suggested above. One is to use images that you have selected to discuss specific issues with you participants; another is to ask participants to share images or artefacts that they own or that are meaningful to them (e.g. photos, mementos, etc.); yet another is to ask them to find images (e.g. in magazines) or to take pictures (as in the photovoice method) or to draw art (as in art therapy) or to draw mental maps (e.g. in geographical approaches). Photovoice is a very common art-based participatory approach on which lots has been written. In any case, you may need to ask for consent if you wish to use any of these images or artefacts in your own work.

Look into photo elicititation or photo voice methods to add layers of sophistication to your data collection.

one option is to present all with an identical image, for example of a pivotal event, and ask where they were wh the event occurred and how did it effect them.