What are benefits of using a photograph as a text in an elementary/middle school classroom?

A picture is worth a thousand words, or so they say.  When
the direct text is not given to the student, and they are instead forced to interpret,
as they would be with a photograph, then this has a number of educational benefits. 
They must use focus, imagination, association and inference skills to get textual
meaning from images.  These are fairly high level thinking and learning skills to use in
a classroom.

Some students are visual learners, and respond
more effectively to visual stimuli such as graphs, videos, photos, and
charts.

On the down side, photos will elicit a number of
different responses, so if he information or skill you want them to learn isn't
flexible, then pictures won't be as effective at getting all students towards one goal. 
Science and Math, for example, would have harder time using images than say English or
History, because the content is so much more specific, and less open to
interpretation.

Some students are not
visual learners, and look for more specific direction from the teacher.  So while it is
beneficial for some, it is detrimental to other students.