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Week 5 – Analogue Photography

Who is the practitioner (what is their name?) and when were they practicing?

The photo was taken by French Photographer and painter, Henri Cartier-Bresson, perhaps most well-known for his notion of the decisive moment.

Bresson’s decisive moment refers to the capturing of an event that is spontaneous, whereby the photo itself is representative of the essence and atmosphere of the event himself.

“To me, photography is the simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an event as well as of a precise organization of forms which give that event its proper expression.”

— Henri Cartier-Bresson

In 1929 Bresson was given his first camera, and his focus switched from oil painting to photography.

What is the title of the photo or video you have chosen to analyse (can you provide a link?)

I have chosen Bresson’s photograph entitled Children Playing in the Ruins, Seville Spain.
This photo stood out to me because of its pathos. Seville’s ruined, damaged buildings and the emotion expressed from the children’s eyes are to me associated with the horrors of the Spanish Civil War, despite being taken roughly three years earlier.

You can find out more about this image here.

With the photo or video you are examining when was it produced (date)?

The photo was produced in 1933 during Cartier-Bresson’s set tour of Southern Europe and the Maghreb. It’s produced in gelatin silver print; prints made with silver halides and suspended in a layer of gelatin on fibre based paper- used since the 1880s.

(Pictured above is one of Cartier-Bresson’s contact sheets from 1933, with the circles being the photo he chose to publish).

How was the photo or video authored?

It’s likely this photo was taken with his 35 mm Leica – one of his favourite cameras due to its fast shutter speed and more compact size. Leica were considered super grade cameras; receiving enthusiastic support from camera users around the world. Again, it was during Cartier-Bresson’s tour of Southern Europe where he captured what would soon become his unique photographic style – capturing life on the run.

Considered a “masterpiece of photographic surrealism”, this image presents children in a very unchildlike environment; some acknowledge the camera through eye contact, while others continue their activities undisturbed. The picture’s space is somewhat ambiguous; the foreground wall acts both as a window to the background drama and as a stage for the foreground actors, the children. [JLR; Waking Dream, pp. 363-364]

How was the photo or video published?

Very little is known about how Cartier-Bresson published this image. However, the photo was published originally as hard copy-print. Towards the end of the thirties, with outbreak of World War II, Cartier-Bresson was actually known to have cut his negatives into individual frames and thrown out those he did not like.

It is believed that this image was printed in 1947, and that Cartier-Bresson gifted it to the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

How was the photo or video distributed?

This photo has been extremely widely distributed throughout the years – particularly through print media. However today, if you google the photo’s title, there are over 358,000 results, with the internet being the primary distributor. It was originally exhibited at the Julien Levy Gallery in New York in 1933 (Cartier-Bresson’s first exhibition) and from there were shown at an Exhibition at Atheneo Club, Madrid and at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, California. Many academic books feature and distribute this image, including Cartier-Bresson’s own, aptly titled The Decisive Moment.

F i n a l t h o u g h t s . . .

“While photography used to be something that others – professionals equipped with large machines that allowed them to capture a better image of the world out there, advertisers trying to sell us chunks of that world, photojournalists dispatched to the world’s remote corners that few of us could regularly access – did, we can safely say that, in the age of the camera phone and wireless communication, we are all photographers now”.

–Photomediations: An Introduction, p.7

-This week’s readings and lecture have highlighted the substantial shift in relation to having accessibility to author, publish and distribute photos. When referring to analogue photos – the process is entirely different. It involves using a film camera, processing the images in a darkroom and distributing the photos using print media. Today, in a digital age, the iPhone takes out so many of these steps to allow high quality pictures to be published and distributed online almost instantly. I’ll discuss more on that next week!

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Sources:

Kamila K & Zylinska J, editors. Photomediations: An Introduction by Joanna Zylinkska. Open Humanities Press, 2016, viewed 2 February 2018, http://www.openhumanitiespress.org/books/ titles/photomediations/, pp.7-16.

Wells L 2015, Photography: A Critical Introduction. 5th ed., Routledge, New York, pp. 9-27.

https://www.moma.org/documents/moma_catalogue_2703_300062051.pdf

https://iconicphotos.wordpress.com/tag/henri-cartier-bresson/

https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/283312

Week 4 – Social Media

When you think of social media, what do you think of?

Do you think of notifications, communication, likes, validation, a way to connect? I know personally, the words “social media” themselves conjure up images of some of the icons below…

But something I loved from this week’s lecture, is an image of a jar with a plant growing inside. (I know it’s a little abstract, but just go with it!)

Elaine explained in the lecture, that the jar itself represents new media. New media is a container with a capacity for many things, cultures, communications to grow, move and emerge.

But new media is different from just media. How? Well in the lecture and this week’s readings from Eugene Siapera, Elaine emphasized three main points.

New media is sometimes digital
New media is sometimes online
New media is ALWAYS EVOLVING.

And not to be harsh here, but if it’s not evolving, it’s not new media. As long as it’s growing and evolving, it’s part of new media, but unpredictable. It’s ability to evolve; grow, chance, expand, adjust is what makes it unpredictable.

Next, social media is one root of the plant that has begun to grow in the jar. But, social media is only one of the things that can grow (and potentially prosper in the jar) – other things can too. The social media root has taken advantage of the jar’s growing conditions and begun to – and I’m quoting Elaine directly here – “produce in accordance to their environmental conditions.” Hence, although social media’s growth is bound by the jars size and constraints, IF the jar expands, the roots will likely grow to fill their new space.

Lastly our lovely leaves represent Instagram.

The leaves extend from their root (social media) and are the product or consequence of both the jar and roots. Not only is Instagram a product of the jar and roots, but it is reliant on them to survive and function.

As Elaine suggests, the diagram helps to see a CO-EXISTENCE between new media, social media and Instagram.

Thus, by having a discussion on say new media, we are also having a discussion – or thinking about social media. If you’re thinking about social media, chances are Instagram will come up.

This week also brought a tutorial discussion on the software affordances of Instagram. (If you missed last week’s post on affordances, check it out here!)

So which parts of Instagram’s software specifically enable interaction?

Let’s think of things in very simple terms:

If affordances are something you can do and constraints are something you can’t do, then one of Instagram’s software affordances would be:

-The fact that you can split up your Instagram account into other accounts; being able access each of them by simply clicking to ‘switch user’. This enables the simple switching from a main Instagram account -> to a private one -> to a business page -> and the list goes on.

In Hinton and Hjorth’s reading, they suggest most often social media is controlling and empowering simultaneously. (Hinton & Hjorth 2013)

Instagram’s software which enables you to switch your accounts with a tap of your finger certainly seems empowering and handy for users, but it also encourages frequent use and maybe even a dependency on Instagram. Why would you use anything else if it is that easy to connect to different followers and consume different content, for a different purpose? That sounds slightly controlling if you ask me!

To finish, I want you to think of this. When your phone does its automatic updates (thanks Apple!) it is requiring you to be part of new media. When the app evolves, we are forced to evolve with it; by adjusting to changes, utilizing new benefits and even adjusting our behaviour to use new technology. Sometimes this process of is quite seamless (such as when changes to apps are minor and actually make interaction more user friendly). Other times the changes are difficult, stressful and require you to learn or relearn how you interact with something. How can we, as users of new media, evolve as new media evolves? Now that’s food for thought.

I’ve given you a lot of information to process here, so go grab a snack as you ponder these things.

Catch you next week!

-Bethany 😀

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Sources:

Siapera, E. 2013, Understanding New Media. SAGE Publications, London (pp.1-16).

Hinton, S & Hjorth L 2013, Understanding Social Media. Sage Publications, London 2013. (pp. 1-31.)

Week 3 – Affordances

Remember last week when I mentioned that this week we were going to discuss affordances? (Yes, you do!)

Well today’s the day folks! Strap yourselves in, because this concept is pretty central to lots more of the course, and I’m sure lots more of my blog posts.

First of all what is an affordance?

Well, the term affordance was originally coined by Gibson as a psychological term; describing actionable relationships between people and the world around them.

But what does that even mean?

Well we can also think of affordances as the properties of things, in relation to how they are used.

This video gives a bit of an explainer if you’re interested!

Like the video suggests, affordances are also thought to provide strong clues to the operations of things.

But there is a difference between affordances and perceived affordances. This comes down to the intention of the creator.

Simply:

-perceived affordances (how the inventor thought/wanted the product to be used)
-actual affordances (how the users picked it up and what the users did with it)

It’s important that designers don’t confuse their perceived affordances of what they’re inventing with its actual affordances. A great example Nash gave was that Gmail was designed as technology for safe sharing. But in actual fact, it has sometimes been used for terrorism acts.

If affordances suggest the range of possibilities, than constraints limit the number of alternatives.

“The thoughtful use of affordances and constraints together in design lets a user determine readily the proper course of action.” (Norman, 1998).

Let me give you some real-world examples of what constraints are. Reading these helped me to understand constraints as the limitations to affordances.

Semantic constraints rely upon our knowledge of the situation and the world. After doing something a number of times, we begin to associate it with meaning. As in traffic lights, red means stop, green means go. You don’t see explicit signs, it is a semantic reality we have embedded in us from a very early age – when we witness our parents driving.

Cultural constraints rely upon accepted cultural conventions, even if they do not affect the physical or semantic operations of the specific. Basically, you try to avoid things that would insult most people’s sensibilities. This then feeds into social constraints, which are based on acceptable behaviour frames (like how we act in a restaurant in a way that is deemed socially acceptable).

Logical constraints are based on a logical relationship between the spatial or functional layout of components and the things that they affect or are affected by. Sound confusing? Logical constraints use REASONING to determine alternatives.

and lastly…

Physical constraints simplify our encounters with them everyday things. With doors and switches for example; poor design causes unnecessary problems for their users. Yet the common problems have simple solutions, which properly exploit affordances and natural constraints.

(Norman, 1998)

Let’s think about this all in regards to Instagram, the social media site of interest this semester.

-An affordance might be that filters can be added! (Instagram also favours quality and beauty or this “experience-based aesthetic”, filters can help with this)
-A physical constraint might be that videos can’t exceed 60 seconds – so you can’t upload anything longer.
-A cultural constraint might be that given the ways text has to be formatted, a certain vernacular or way of getting a message across has developed- use of emojis, and “link in bio”.

I hope that all made sense to you – I know it took me a while to wrap my head around it all.

Next week we’re going to discuss social media, so get hyped for that!

-Bethany 😀

Week One – The Blogger Essentials

Ask anyone on the street, and chances are they’ve spent some time looking through a blog or two.

via GIPHY

It’s estimated that as of 2018, there were over 500 million blogs on the internet. And now I’m joining the hype!

I want to preface this by saying, it’s not like I haven’t blogged before. I very much have – but in a different sense. As part of my journalism degree, I have a blog where I share and reflect on hard news stories and make reflections of core journalistic values. This blog took on the professional persona I wanted it to; becoming a serious platform, sharing serious news issues, that I was serious about. (And if you’re serious too you can view it here – but no pressure). But I want this blog to be different.

Why?

Because the visual architecture of a blog matters a LOT, and so does updating it frequently. And that wasn’t something I was concerned about in my last blog. Within Adrien Miles’ Blogs in Media Education: A Beginning, he suggests that blogs help us to recognise that our work is making a contribution to the wider community. A blog is a public forum, which allows ideas, thoughts and activities to be easily recorded and archived. (Miles, 2006 pg.67)

It is this hyper-textual element of a blog which makes it both easily retrievable and also a constantly evolving array of sources. How convenient is it when every product your favourite blogger writes about, is linked within the blog post? It makes the flow of information simple, easy to access and fast. This is something I hope to achieve within this blog.

Something else that stood out to me this week was in Dr Sabine Niederer’s 2018 lecture, Networked Images: Visual Methodologies for the digital age. Niederer suggests that images become networked when they are liked, shared, commented and tagged by users. The networking process also happens when engines and platforms “format, filter, and recommend them to others”.

This had me thinking about my own Instagram experience, whereby someone’s content and photos of which I engage with – eg. beauty brand Nivea, is then fed back and recommended to me. This happens all the time! See below …

Niederer also discusses the idea of visual vernaculars, which differ for each social media platform. For Instagram, this vernacular or “platform literacy” is experience based.

“Instagram is a social network that is built around image and
aesthetics, and this concept is reflected in its merged image.” (Niederer, 2018)

The picture below is one I found on the “explore” section of Instagram. With the use of its location, and the actual image content itself; a sunset is both aesthetically pleasing to Instagram users, and an experience they would’ve likely had. (We’ve all seen a sunset, yeah?)

https://www.instagram.com/pvtraveldiaries/

Focusing this semester on the affordances of Instagram, this “experience based aesthetic” is something I will keep in mind.

Something else important to note from Niederer’s lecture is that visual architecture matters; the things that get positioned on the top is what gets seen. The position of what gets on the top relies on what the community is engaging with.

I’m looking forward to this semester in Networked Media, so stay tuned in this little corner of the internet for more updates and Instagram/blogging discussions!

Until next week,

Bethany 🙂

(Now go have a slice of chocolate – you’ve earned it)

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Sources:

Niederer, S 2018, Networked images: visual methodologies for the digital age. Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences, Amsterdam (pp.1-20).

Miles, A 2006, “‘Blogs in Media Education: A Beginning’.” Australian Screen Ed, vol 41, pp 66–9.

Hey, you!

Welcome to my 2019 Networked Media Blog!

My name is Bethany Hayes and I am in my final year of Journalism.

This is my little corner of the internet, and here you’ll find weekly reflections, assessment tasks, and a whole lot of my thoughts.

I’m super excited to see if what I learn in Networked Media will translate to me being more switched on and evolving with the media. (Keep your fingers crossed!)

Sound awesome? (That was a rhetorical question, because obviously it will be!)

Take a look around – let’s explore the network together!

– Bethany 😀

via GIPHY