Lecture 4 Reflection: Picture Stories
This week's lecture was all about
telling a story through pictures. As I posted at the very end of last
week's blog, I have a keen interest in photographic journalism and so
I was excited to learn more about it this week. I took this image
from the lecture slide as I liked it and thought it was worth
sharing.
We learnt that pictures have been used
to tell stories for over 40000 years with Australian Aborigines being
among the first users. Holy books such as The Book of Kells (which I
have seen) in the year 800 used mostly pictures, as the majority of
people couldn't read. Also stained glass was used to tell stories.
Photography only emerged as part of a newspaper in 1879 and the first
published news photo didn't occur until 1880. Now photos dominate our
world, they are everywhere!
I actually found the short clip Dr
Redman showed us of the woman being photo-shopped into a supermodel
really powerful. If you haven't seen it watch it now! Click on the
link below!
“No wonder our perception of beauty
is distorted.”
Self-image and self-confidence of both
women and men are so often lowered by these images and they (like me
before I saw how much editing was involved in that one picture) think
this is real. I for one struggled a lot with self-image through high
school and so being able to see how much manipulation goes on in a
picture helps remind me that what I perceive as real, actually is
not. That woman was just like anybody else before they put make-up on
her, did her hair, made her eyes twice as big, her neck a little
longer, her lips fuller and so on. Basically they changed everything
that made her her! You can't get much more sickening really! The
other thing is video shows us is that photographic manipulation is
now commonly used and virtually unnoticeable. A scary thought to me! Here are some more examples incase anyone didn't get enough in the lecture.
Once again new media technology has
allowed for more flexibility with images and videos. We now have
better quality photos, galleries rather than single images and easy
ways to give and receive them (on the internet or by downloading).
Here's an interesting question I
thought of while in the lecture: What would you prefer to look at if
you had the same photo and it was the same quality, a hard copy of
it, or an image of it on a computer?
Perhaps I'm old school but I still feel
like there is something more satisfying about holding a photo in your
hand, or seeing it on the wall.
My thoughts on the three different
photos of Jonathan Thurston (as I am not at the lectures to discuss
it):
I found the first one to be the worst
of the three, not particularly interesting to look at as Jonathan is
in the background, only just visible. The second was much more
intriguing because of the interesting angle from behind the cross.
The last one was the most engaging me though, with so many people
focusing on Jonathan and looking so sad and unhappy it captures my
attention straight away and gets me asking lots of questions to
myself.
Another topic discussed in the lecture
was what makes a good photo to which we discovered: Frame, focus,
angle and point of view, exposure, timing (sport photo), capture the
moment (find some great photos)
I have therefore endeavored to find
some pictures on the internet that fulfill some of these criteria.
They are located below. Finally I just
wanted to mention this quote from the lecture as I thought it was
true and worth thinking about.
“A picture has no meaning if it can't
tell a story”
Angle and Point of View:
Frame:
Timing:
Exposure (lighting):
Capture the moment:
Focus:
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