For week 3’s reading piece, it was a comic! Honestly, I dread every piece of reading, especially if it’s an extremely long piece of text. Of course, this week’s reading was particularly long but was an easier read because, well, it was a comic!

The intention of the author was to display different styles of storytelling (particularly in comics) and also our preconceived notions of the stories within comics, film, TV shows, etc. What really grabbed my attention was at the beginning of the comic and how the author tackled the concept of “perception of the world through the experience of our senses”. 

(Week 3 Reading: Blood in the Gutter, Scott McCloud) 

My interpretation of this from a media practitioner’s perspective is how we can use this concept to our advantage. As mentioned in the comic, the reader/viewer can use their imagination or sense in order to piece a whole story together. McCloud also dove deeper into this practice and compared the Western and Eastern styles, exemplifying the techniques and the differences between the two influences.

This was quite the interesting read and enjoyed the break from reading massive chunks of text. It also gave a certain perspective that I myself have never thought about before – it is how we dissect media and how it plants a message in our logic.

S t u d i o  v i s i t s : Uses of Photography (This week’s initiative)

(Source)

I’ve just gotten out of my studio visit which was a Photography class with our lecturer, Brian Morris. I actually found out it was 3rd year class when one of the girls I sat with told me. I was expecting a more competitive atmosphere when in fact, it was completely relaxed in comparison to my Media 1 workshop.

In terms of the learning and the delivery of the lesson, it was very similar to the tutorials I’ve been attending. I guess there was a misconception in my mind about 3rd year classes. Getting into the content, Brian gave the class an extract of the class’ reading – it consisted of different quotes and anecdotes from several authors, and mostly depicted the history of photography and its uses. There was a discussion of what an image can do and how it projects a certain message. Whether it’d be aesthetically pleasing, a propaganda or a selfie – what can an image present?

Moving on, Brian also showed the different types of softwares used to edit images. I was familiar with some such as Photoshop, Lightshow, Snapseed, VSCO, etc. The different techniques were shown and explained i.e. the saturation, the brightness, etc. I’m glad to see that each and every simple of step of photography was being demonstrated instead of jumping into the hard stuff.

In the future, I’d also like to get more opportunities to explore other studios to get more experience and outlook. All in all, this studio visit has given a better perspective on what to expect for my 2nd and 3rd year of this Media course. Bring it on!

(I only got 3 hours of sleep so I’m sorry if this sounds quite sloppy, I’ll sleep more next time I promise)

Lyreca 👐