Tag: reflection

Mimesis: An Imitation

by jasonhendriks on March 27, 2017 in media 3, Uncategorized • 0 Comments

Mimesis, according to the Encyclopedia Britannica, the principle of the creation of art. Plato believed that all artistic work is a form of mimicry/imitation, that God is the only creator, and human art are ‘shadowy’ representations of their ‘ideal type’. “Thus, an artist, by skillfully selecting and presenting his material, may purposefully seek to ‘imitate’ the action of life”.

And through Project Brief 1 and 2, Brian wanted us to find an mimic an artist, not for just for the means to imitate their prowess , but also to find our own ideal type. To know which ideas and people that inspire us is crucial in forming our own photography.

And so each of the student has to make a series of Five photographs that ‘imitate’ a photographer of our choice. For me, as said from the previous post I chose Duane Michals.

I find Duane Michal’s work to be very attractive, artistically and ideally. To rebel the photographic norm and include text, to me is beautiful, because he broke out of the box and challenges what is considered not normal.

In planning to create the series of photographs, I dug through may of Duane Photos and tried to seed which relevant elements can I group together. I searched through museum websites, Pinterest and also articles about Duane. Duane’s images bears the philosophy of youth, Death, gender and sexuality. After a brief thought I decided not to imitate Duane’s philosophy, only his photography style, because I think to try to do that would cross the line of imitation. Rather, I wanted to do things that concerns/surprises me, that I have been pondering for a while. I didn’t go in to the specifics and started to pour out ideas into my sketchbook

I had a lot of Ideas, but only some can be realized. To check the final photos I’ve made, visit my portfolio here

These two pictures are some of the ideas that I managed to create. The first picture is the idea I had in mind of life “Everybody’s questions” . Because I was taking my photos in natural-light, I had little control about it. So instead I focused on the composition, juxtaposition and the framing. I already had a quote in mind, made by myself and I want the picture to represent it to be someone lying down and sleeping. I included the IPhone so that people knew that this picture was more recent, and the book complimented the idea of ‘thinking’.

When I took the pictures, I obtained 2 similar but very different photos. Both have the same composition, but each has a very different light and angle. One has a slight lower angle to it, but when I took the photo, the sun was shining bright, and it casted the leaf’s shadow over my friend. The other one, is the opposite of it. This result in soft and contrast pictures. In the end, I chose the picture with the shadow because I prefer the separation between the light and dark areas. But in taking pictures of both, I used my Panasonic Lumix G7 with a 50mm lens. You can see the picture I chose from the link I put above.

The second Idea about happiness in solitude “Free me from myself”. I wanted to do a sequence photo for this one. The story about a person finding happiness through his/her own self. The initial idea was to be at a cafeteria, with a high school thematic scene. But when I was at the Summit Camp. I found a pathway that sloped over beautifully, and I improvised the Idea from there. During that time I was using a 5D Mark III borrowed from the A/V Loan with a 50mm f1.4 lens. The first few photos from the sequence, I set the Aperture low to accommodate the intense light, and to also show clearly the whole scenery surrounding the subject. The last photo’s Aperture was higher so I can blur the background and focus on the now-closer subject. In this sense I’m changing the focus of the foreground as the subject gets closer.

The third picture “Give Me That” also didn’t go according to plan, but the principle Ideas was still the same. It was about obsession over self-image. It was supposed to be a photo-sequence, but I couldn’t make the pictures work, and it doesn’t look overall relatable. Instead I tried improvising and came up with the girl taking the phone directly away from me (the photographer). I used my Lumix camera with a high Aperture to get the blur from my hand. It still delivered the message I wanted say, so I am happy with this picture.

“My camera wasn’t made to capture the stars” happened when I went stargazing with my friends. I captured the picture using my Lumix camera mounted on a tripod, with a high aperture (f1.7), high ISO (3200) and really low shutter speed (3 seconds). I increased my aperture because in the light condition lower aperture would definitely not help with the exposure, and the car was far away, so I put the focus on infinity. Surprisingly the low shutter speed managed to capture the car’s front light spread. It illuminated the path in front and created a dome of light with my friend’s silhouette. Without the tripod, I would never be able to get this picture, because my hand would shake too much to get a proper focus. Here I realized the creative ways I could play with small light in darkness

The last picture “Am I Lonely?” was made in the halls of my apartment. It was also a spontaneous shot, But it was motivated my and Idea I had to do a picture about loneliness. With the fluorescent light condition, I rememberd Duane Michals picture of Andy Warhol

So with a tripod I did a self-portrait with the Canon 5D Mark III 50mm Lens. I set a medium ISO (400), low shutter speed (2 seconds) and high aperture (f2.0). When the shutter clicked, I moved my face left and right immediately until the camera completes itself. And it resulted in a motion-blurred face. The 2 lights beside myself created a sort of frame that sits well in the picture as well.

Going towards post-production, I didn’t edit the pictures extensively. I used Lightroom to edit the RAW images, turn the color images to black & white, and give slight orange tint so it felt vintage. Some of the pictures I took were overexposed, so I reduced it in post-processing. That includes lowering the luminance of overly bright colors. In this case, they were mostly green.

I inserted the text (Duane Michal’s signature style) using Adobe Illustrator since I found more flexibility in using it compared to Photoshop. Most of the text in the pictures were self-made, except for the poem written by Rainer Marla Rilke. At first, I used my genuine handwriting, but after showing the preview on Friday class, I found my handwriting to be terrible. So for purely aesthetic purpose, I used handwritten fonts to write the texts. All of the fonts that I used were Royalty-Free and can be used Commercially.

In the process of doing this Project Brief, I came across many challenges, specifically in the production process. But I managed to overcome the obstacle with on-the spot improvisations.

Reviewing the work I did, I realized that I enjoyed Duane Michal’s photography style. Staged photos are challenging, but fun to do because you can unleash your creativity. I liked to use text as a means to give broader context to the picture, and I agree with Michals that a picture doesn’t worth a thousand words (at least most of it). Because giving context is providing idea to be understood, so that people can relate to your work. It could tell a story otherwise could never be told. And typography as part of the whole picture has it’s own aesthetic style.

I learned many creative process, trying to play with low-light situations, trying different angles and compositions. But I hope for the next project I will pursue more skills in a controlled environment, like a studio.

Thanks for reading, have a good day.

Further practice for Projec Brief 1

by jasonhendriks on March 12, 2017 in Inspiration, media 3, Photography, Uncategorized • 0 Comments

Within the second week of the Month/Semester, Brian allowed the class to experiment and find our styles of photograhy by sending us around the CBD to practice using manual setting in a camera, whether it is from a DSLR or from your everyday-smartphone. It was a super-bright and sunny day, what a coincidence. I had the opportunity to check around A’beckett street. After 1 hour of sight-seeing and picture-taking, I went back with the others to check on the photos and saved it in the shared class folder.

3 days after Tuesday we had our second class. Project Brief 1 was due, which everyone in the class had to present a photographer/visual artist that inspired them. For mine I chose Duane Michals, an American photographer whose work I find very attractive.

He is the person first known for his Photo-sequences, mini movies that entails a narrative around love, mortality, sexuality, life & celebration of youth. He also likes to put his handwriting as an extension of his picture to give more context and background he believes the picture alone can not tell you. He doesn’t believe that “a picture speaks a thousand words”. Because you can only learn so much from a photo.

I love how Duane likes to break the rules, since he doesn’t know that there is a rule. He does what his mind provoked him to do, and let his emotion lead the creative process of his work. While often criticized, it only inspires him more to continue his work.

PB4 Reflection

by jasonhendriks on June 1, 2016 in Media 1 • 0 Comments

Our group’s Audio and Video essay is finally coming to an end, and I’m so relieved that all of our hard work paid off. My group members were Ryan Rosenberg, Lydia Watt and Isobel Smart. They are all a great teammate, discipline, smart and consistent at doing their job.

I think the most successful part of the essay would be the topic itself. I think the topic that we have chosen is informative and part of an ongoing debate. The topic for our Video essay is how can be misinterpreted by different cultures, for example the movie The Interview. Our audio essay talks about trigger warnings, the ongoing motion created as a means of self-prevention from traumatic memories, and how it has spiraled from books into classrooms. I liked my group’s topic, and they did a good job structuring the arguments. Given the fact that the topics are quite new, we could not find a person that considers themselves as an ‘expert’ or an ‘academic’ of that topic, so finding different opinion was a very interesting and anticipated work. Our video essay has done a good job at giving different opinions, both from a Korean student, to the creator’s words itself. We also showed news coverage about the video release. Overall I think our essays have given a strong argument.

The first most problematic aspect of the work would be our time management. We all had a drastically different schedule, and we can mostly meet up twice in one week, including the tutorials, so we mostly rely on individual contributions to the work, then after we met we would assemble all the materials together. Fortunately we had a good communication, we primarily used facebook, because we could share links, videos, pictures more easily and it’s easier to connect with a platform that everybody was using. The second most problematic aspect of the work would be time itself. Honestly, I think my group had a late start. On the first week we hadn’t figured out yet how we were going to pursue with both essays. We wasted a lot of time figuring when we could meet and what our topic (Text & Narratives) was actually about. Then we were left with 4 weeks of cramped up work, and trying to get interviews. I learned that you had to email your interviewee as early as you can. It’s always better. Because there was no guarantee my interviewee would even read the email, let alone replied to it.

My role for both of the essays were to gather interview materials. For the video esaay, I had to find a korean student to aksk about their opinion regarding to the movie. It was a challenge, albeit there were so many korean students here in Melbourne. It’s hard to find any student who wasn’t shy to have their face on camera. But I managed to interview one of my friend’s friends, who gave an interesting viewpoint on the topic. For the audio essay, I gave out articles that might relate to the topic in facebook, and primarily I had to find an academic who would willingly give their opinion on trigger warnings. I tried emailing teachers who were experts on information technology or law, but the first one was on a another country working, and the latter does not seem to be interested on the topic. So I asked Brian for his advice, and he recommended me Rachel, also our lecturer. And I have to say she had a strong opinion on the topic. She gave an rational and logical reason, and her opinions had helped our essay so much. Finally I also made the formal documents for the group, that including the Audio script, the minutes, and the bibliography. Annoying jobs, but important anyways. Overally I think I contributed quite well into the group with gathering materials and interview, and making the compulsory documents.

Before doing the PB4 assignment I hadn’t interacted with audio-based media very much. I didn’t find it appealing whatsoever, mainly because it couldn’t give me the stimulation that i can get from videos. But after doing the project brief, I could see the appeal in it. Creating an audio media is challenging and fun, it forces you to be creative, you only have one senses to appeal to, so you have to somehow channel that one sense to trigger the others. I also learned that from Louise’s tutorial lesson, where she played us a podcast about dreams. Using sound effects to create a sense of space, time, atmosphere is a pain in the stub, but rewarding regardless.

I think the most lesson I learned about collaboration is teamwork. Brian, Rachel, Louise, Paul all told us how imporant it is to have teamwork skills in the media industry. Everyone will be working seamlessly together, so you need to keep a good attitude to build your career in the industry. I’ve learned that with this project brief. Communicatin is the keys, behaviour is the door. withouth the two object you can’t really do any useful action. I’ve learned to always be positive, to always encourage my teammates to do the best, even though we were really struggling with our projects. And lastly, do your job! Do not ever think that anyone will help you even if there were anyone. Try to do the best yourself first, then if you couldn’t, then you ask for your teammates

Reflecting back on the first semester.

by jasonhendriks on May 31, 2016 in Media 1 • 0 Comments

Having done 12 weeks in my first Media and Communication degree, I have learnt many important lessons around the world of media. The reason I first wanted to take this degree was because I am always surrounded by media,so why not take media studies for a degree? How stupid that thinking was, but still taking this degree has been one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. But it also one of the most important one, as this major will carve the path for my future career, and I need to show my parents that this is the right choice for me. I loved that my parents supported my decision, but understand they still have their traditional value, with their first son taking the creative industry, it is an uncomfortable support. Even though it has only been 1 semester, I have learned plenty, I am closer to the media then ever before. I am going to tell you what I learned the most from the last 12 weeks.

Semester one focuses on the basics of what a media is, and how ubiquitous media is in our lives. I remembered at our second lecture, Brian told us to create a group to go out of the class and go to a location and scour the media that exist in the upper ground, lower ground, middle ground, foreground, and background. Some of the medias that I found I posted in around my first few blog post. There I was intrigued by so many different media items, from on-screen advertising to poster, billboards and radio stations and how apparent they are. I shared an article in the blog, about an inmate using Instagram to sell “hoodies and caps” and posting images of drugs, cash weapons, because that’s what their followers want. Then Brian gave us an article by John Mason about noticing (really good article) that tells noticing is a beautiful and rewarding action, but it requires effort, and you shouldn’t notice everything, just the things you want to notice. I learned from this article why noticing is important for a media practitioner. Sometimes the best scene and media material comes from the simplest situation. Time-lapse videos are an example of this. Time-lapse shows us changes that happened over a long period of time, but static in its location. If you stayed at the same place where the camera was standing, you wouldn’t notice the same way the camera will.

I’ve learned to be a media practitioner, professionalism must be at its best at all times, even if you are making a media material of you family/friends. I learn about what do yo have to do during pre-production, production and post-production. Forms, form and forms. Personal release forms, location release forms, insurance forms. It is important to inform the subjects of your video that you will be modifying them when you edit it, and they have given you their consent to release their identity to the public commercially/non-commercially. You also have to use location forms, because privacy. You can’t take a video in public space without interrupting the public, and you also can’t take a video in a private place, because privacy and ownership. That’s why you need forms. It’s annoying, but it gets things going. It’s a rule that you can bend around because the process is rudimental, they have been accepted by every media practitioner. Responsibility is also a key learning here. The responsibility to follow agreements, the responsibility to protect your subject’s contract terms, The responsibility to handle borrowed equipment with care, and most of all, the responsibility to finish you project in time. My first experience with the forms was when I did my project brief 3.

I’ve also learned to be critical, to my own and to others. Everyone here in Media one are in the same boat, even though some of us already have skills in creating media. As fellow classmates we are obligated to give opinions to our peers about their mistakes and how they can improve them and vice versa. Being a sassy sensitive prick is not going to get you anywhere in this industry. Take the critics as a sign that they care about you. Louise once showed us a technique for criticizing in a fair wa, “The Six Thinking Hats” by Edward De Bono. I tried using the yellow and black hat while giving my opinion on my classmate’s assignment, and it helped me a lot. I usually can’t find any mistake in my classmate’s videos, because I always think they did a great job in their videos.

Lastly, I’ve learned how important group work is in this industry, and our lecturers haven’t stressed enough how crucial it is for your career. We all have had our own anecdotes for bad teamwork, but let’s try to keep it an anecdote, not an ongoing story. I learned about collaborative contract, a written agreement by group members about their effort to pursue their group’s goals. Throughout my project brief 4, I learned how important communication between team members, is because we all have our own schedule, so making time for meetings is an effort. We also need trust, trust that each members will do their best, but we also need to do our own job, for others to do theirs. Rachel gave us a Ted talk link which I found to be very useful.

While I was writing this reflection, even though it was quite late, I realized that this semester we have been taught mostly soft skills, skills involving our manners, etiquette, and professionalism. While I’ve also learned media theories, practical skills stuck in my head the most. I understand why we are taught about this in our first semester, to prepare us into the real-work environment, which is the next semester. Definitely I’ve learned a lot this semester, can’t wait for the next, right after I’ve enjoyed my holiday first.

and this is my learning graph.

P.S thanks for my team members: Lydia, Ryan, and Isobel for making those awesome PB4 assignment.

Strength, Weakness, Opportunity, Threat

by jasonhendriks on May 27, 2016 in Media 1 • 0 Comments

In a group work, it is important to acknowledge every member’s strength, weakness, opportunity, threat. I believe from a personal analysis, these are mine:

STRENGTH

If you have a better Idea than mine, I will 100% support it and give new ideas that I think will be useful
I will do what my task is and complete it under the given time
If no one dares to try something, I usually will be the one to step up my shoes
I am quite optimistic
I can handle critics for my project, and I’ll try to improve by their tips

Weakness

I tend to procrastinate, it also means that I’m at my best only when I’m under pressure
to people that I feel are much more smarter than me, I tend to be quiet and very reserved because everything I said would sound stupid in front of them
I care too much about other people’s opinion, so I tend to agree to go with their plan, even though their idea isn’t that good itself (luckily this isn’t the case for my project brief 4 group!)
I work really badly in a pessimistic group

Opportunity

I will try to speak up more and give my opinions.
I will try to be more friendly (my friend believes I have one of those “RBF” faces, which makes me look really uptight)

Threat

I think my biggest threat is my self-confidence

Culture and Technology

by jasonhendriks on May 24, 2016 in Media 1 • 0 Comments

The readings gave me a lot of contemplation. Here are some of the points that surprised me the most

Technology was used sparingly in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, refering [to] the study of the arts…But by 1860 its meanings began [to] shift to its modern usage; the word had come to mean the system of mechanical and industrial arts

According to Wikipedia, the term ‘technology’ was used to describe useful art, forms of art that is manufactured and crafted, and basically the antonym of performing/fine art.

The article also cited from another author: William Barret

“…if our civilization were to lose its techniques, all our machines and apparatus would become one vast pile of junk”

This basically applies to all of our media work right now. No matter how expensive and advance our equipment is, without the right skill and technique the content will basically be a pile of junk

It seems that ‘technique’ is not just a specific of skills towards a certain kind of machinery, but also towards the body. Marcel Mauss believes that techniques “crucial to culture and to the transmission of culture as technologies”. The way we walk, we swim is a result of techniques pass down from our ancestors. It’s effective and traditional.

As the time goes, culture is associated with the artistic or the mind. The romantics embraced culture while the industrial opposed it, labeling the two word as if in black and white, completely contrast to each other.

Culture is dynamic because,…ideas and values change, often quite quickly, over time. Older attitudes to culture may be susperseded, or they may overlap with new ideas, or the older values may re-emerge at a later time.

like culture, technology is also messy. Technology such as the internet has allowed everyone who have accessed to it to put whatever content they want, whether it might challenge other people or not.

While corporations attempted to wring new profits out of this huge entity, governments sought to impose regulations on what they saw as an ungoverned system. The latter attempt, at least was made difficult by the properties of the internet as a global network. As one of instance of the globalization process, the internet does not respect national boundaries or jurisdictions

Just to show that the internet has become a powerful entity, capable of passing the fences each country has built.

Because the reading is way too long, I couldn’t give out all the points, because it would be stagnant and boring. Do you have any points you want to point out?

Light, Dawn & lamp light

by jasonhendriks on April 24, 2016 in Photography • 0 Comments

Photography 101 assignment

I am a photography enthusiast, though I am still hoping to be able to be a professional, right now I am more focused toward my major that is Media communication.

An unpredicted idea spring always gives the best kind of work, that is why I love serendipity. But whether or not serendipity exist, you should not lean your back towards it.

I have a big passion towards photography. I focus especially in portraiture, because I find every person to be very complex. But with my photographs I want to share emotions from my perspective. I am very inspired by Evan Atwood, Rachel Bran , Kylie Thompson, Brendon Burton and any other similar photographers. I’ll try to give you the best photos can explain my sight

Noticing

by jasonhendriks on April 22, 2016 in Media 1 • 0 Comments

So two days ago i just read John Mason’s “the discipline of noticing”. Of course, I didn’t try to do any of the excercise he mentioned but he taught me one thing, that to notice, we require effort. Because we are given thousands of stimulation every day, our mind would have to be selective and blurs out all the ones not necessary for us. Maybe that is what marketing student try to overcome #randomthought.

To notice is not just to experience, but also to reflect upon it. We see advertisements, we feel the heat, we hear the taxi’s engine, but we do not notice. What the text meant by noticing is by realizing that I am typing, I am looking at my screen, I have acomputer with, I am studying abroad, my carpet pattern’s is circular, and so on. When I travel to a new town, I always have this perception of unfamiliarity, that a place is new, and thus everything that I saw wasy interesting to me. But the roads that I had travelled in my hometown for the past 17 years seemed colourless and not vibrant. But when I try to change my perception, as if everything that I saw was new, I began to notice how much things had changed. Another simpler example is your growth. You seem to never notice that you were getting taller and older, until you’ve seen a photograph of yourself when you were still an infant.

To notice is to make a distinction, to create foreground and background, to distinguish some ‘thing’ from its sorroundings.

John also describes about recording. To him, recording is the desire to keep a memento of the things you notice, in the form of a note, journal, or for me, photographs.

By making a brief-but-vivid note of some incident, you both externalise it from your immediate flow of thoughts, and you give yourself access to it at later date, for further anaysis and preparation for the future.

I think this is one of the reasons why we are subjected to read this article. To make great media content we have to notice all the media sorrounding us, to be inside the group. We would use that to show people the things left behind, un-noticed. Because sometimes we try to create the most interesting and complex form of media, when we forget the simplest ones. What I learn from this article is to notice the simplest things, and figure out the best technique to represent what I notice in the most interesting form.