Month: April 2017

A visit to National Gallery of Victoria

by jasonhendriks on April 12, 2017 in media 3 • 0 Comments

On Tuesday week 7 the class visited the National Gallery of Victoria to visit some of the photography exhibition to see talented works of art and hopefully get inspired by them. I saw many incredible and intriguing photos, from Bill Henson, William Eggleston, to an Indonesian contemporary photographer Edwin Roseno, the Exhilarating photos of Amusement parks by Carsten Holler, and incredibly minimalistic yet beautiful landscape by the artist born from the same land as Brian, Derek Henderson. It is very inspiring to see very different works inspired by various circumstances. Seeing all the creative works reminds me a quote from Paul Schrader that “True creativity comes from restrictions and limitations” and watching a video of Anna Akana (Youtuber) talking to an artist. Creativity comes from playing and tweaking your capability in the limited boundaries you have. That’s what makes creativity.

An big room is dedicated to William Eggleston. He is credited for introducing color photographs in the photography world. One of his first colour photograph , the guy holding the trolleys, is one of my favorite. He likes to take candid photographs, not necessarily street photographs, but it represents the culture he was in.

The Indonesian Photographer Edwin Roseno uses product packages as pots for plants, showing the direct relation between nature-then-processed result. In his description “Green Hypermarket” is Edwin’s way of how consumable packages have been a utilized in Indonesian homes. After serving it’s commercial purpose, the packages are then used by Indonesian people for plants, changing its value to preserve life.

All of the photographers in NGV inspired me to pursue my own creative style. All of their dedication in their work deserved respect. Below are some of the Picture I took in the exhibition

Inspiration: Gregory Crewdson

by jasonhendriks on April 11, 2017 in Inspiration, Photography • 0 Comments

I randomly googles Gregory Crewdson when Brian told us about him when he was lecturing about photo essays, and I immediately loved his pictures. (From Wikipedia) born in Brooklyn, His photos are artistically unique that it looks like a movie screen-capture. The cinematic quality & style of his picture is done with extensive measure with lighting, composition, and editing. It just looks beautiful. He uses crew members and lots of equipment, but the result is worth the hassle. Most of his pictures remind me of the show “Stranger Things” and “The OA”. Here are some of his pictures (I even used it as my wallpaper):

Essays in Pictures

by jasonhendriks on April 7, 2017 in media 3 • 0 Comments

Today Brian gives us a deeper insight into our project brief, an explanation further of Photo essays. Like storytelling, photo essays are made to tell a story. and such, like a story a photo essay needs a structure, even in the compilation of the images. It needs a foundation that can make sense to the readers.

Like storytelling, a photo essay needs a beginning, middle and end. The photos then articulate the particular lifestyle of the project, but in photo essays the images are the primary storyteller, not the story itself, the captions compliment the pictures, giving a visual sensation and a relief of imagination.

When planning the narrative structure of the picture, Brian told us there are some things we should consider:

Exposition, rising action, complications, climax, falling action, resolution
How do you represent conflict in photographs?
How the photos interact with the stories when the viewers see them.
How to represent a normal style of life ina highly aesthetic manner

He showed us 4 main categories when constructing a photo story

Establishing Image: context and environment
Action image: capturing action and interaction
portraits: essential to any story
close-up or detail image: need to identify significant detail within the overall scene

and one important thing he told us when we are starting the post-production.

Figure what sort of atmosphere/emotion you want too leave your viewers when they finished seeing the video

Brian also showed us some of photographers which I will talk about in the inspiration part of the blog. Afterwards we got onto our exercise. For this week Brian wanted us to be in a group to make a short 7 picture photo story with the theme “The exchange”. I did mine in RMIT connect the kind of exchange we chose was the exchange of information. this is one of the photos that we made (sorry Michaela, but I look decent in this pic!)

Strangers

by jasonhendriks on April 3, 2017 in media 3, Uncategorized • 0 Comments

Last Friday we had a bit of practice with taking photos of strangers. But prior to that the class had a debate over photographers rights in public spaces. Is it acceptable to take photographs of strangers and publish them as your own? What are the ethics of street photography? does privacy apply in public spaces?

Unfortunately I arrived to the class a bit late so I didn’t participate in the debate. But I remembered some of the things that we learned.

in an article written by Jessica Lake, she talk about many disputes that involves privacy, some to the favor of privacy and some don’t. She recognizes Privacy in the concept of law is “notoriously slippery and contextual” because it’s different case to case. It is hard to find a general consensus on the photography style popularized by Henri Cartier-Bresson. This is why ethics was created.

Ethic defined by Cambrige UK dictionary; “a system of accepted beliefs that control behavior, especially such a system based on morals”. It basically a code that defines what is wrong and right in an activity it is related to. Most corporations have codes of conduct but they don’t usually publicize it, but in the Media and journalism department, it is strongly highlighted.

I believed that ethics are created so that an activity does not benefit only one side of the participant. When you are doing media/journalism, your main work is with other people, sometimes peering into their personal lives. Ethics guide me how far I can go/ow should I go if I want to go that far.

Brian gave some articles to help consider the morals in street photography; one made by Eric Kim and by Nicholas Goodden. They give you question pointers to consider before you press the camera shutter and after, such as considering how would you feel if some stranger take a picture of you? and having a quick conversation with you subjects. One good suggestion from everyone, is to ask for consent. It is never wrong to ask permission first even though it takes away the candid aspect. But like Kim said, you can ask them to just continue their activity, and some of the best shots are stylized. Even Henri Cartier-Bresson talks with the people he photographed.

Even though ethics are a crucial pointer in a media practitioner’s life, codes of conduct are not legally binding because it is only a set of moral principles. ethics concern your own morals and later people’s perception about you. Taking a picture in public is not considered a breach of privacy. But then again, in the context of Australian law “public” and “privacy” have their own very specific definition. One example that I learn, you can take public photographs in the State Library of Victoria, because it is a public place (according to the law you must not be a nuisance). But listen to this, the train in the train station is not a public place. Metro train is not a government owned company. Law is interestingly confusing.