Category: Week 11
PB4: The Uses Of Photography That Most Intrigue and Inspire Me
“The framework of photomediations adopts a process- and time-based approach to images by tracing the technological, biological, cultural, social and political fows of data that produce photographic objects.”
——-‘Photomediations: A Reader’ by Kamila Kuc & Joanna Zylinska
“Photography implies that we know about the world if we accept it as the camera records it. But this is the opposite of understanding, which starts from not accepting the world as it looks”
——-‘On Photography’ by Susan Sontag
Photographs of absolutely anything and everything are taken to give proof of what we did, saw, ate, or looked like on that given day. A photograph appears to create proof of something, if we are shown a photograph of a time, person or event we are less likely to doubt it happened.If one tells a story it gains substance if there is an image to go with it, in the modern time we are more likely to believe what is seen rather than what is told, which becomes truer in today’s digital era of social media and short attention spans.
People said that photography is the fingerprints of civilization, I quite agree with this analogy.The invention of photography is a great progress of modern civilization because it appeared was deeply branded with the “civil” brand.
Photography is a common thing now, camera into each ordinary families spare nothing. People with family or as go out to play and take a few photos is very ordinary. People take photos during their daily time, traveling time and even important moment. People take photos of their happy time or sad moment. The photography accompanies with people in this century.
I think photography for me is to present the stories and thoughts behind the photos. Photos can not speak and move. However, as a photographer, we can give the photos their own life. And we can let the readers imagine through the photos. Everyone can express their own story and the feeling to the photos. I think photography is a way for people to express and record their eyes of the world. We have our own mind of everything. We can shoot the photos just for a record. But for me now, as a photography studio student. I want to use the photos to express myself and my eyes of the world. I want to use my photos to communicate with people. That is I’m learning from this class through plenty of exercises and project brief. We are not just recording. We are talking through the shooting.
Week 11 – Workshop
This week’s workshop is talking about our group video essay of our PB4 :
| Brainstorming and specify topics in video essay: |
| Explore Instagram as an important medium which |
| covers topics in photojournalism, business marketing |
| and personal communication |
| Delegated work: to collate text and visuals for |
| Photojournalism |
| Marketing and Influencers |
| Personal Creativity and Communication |
Also, we show Brian our audio rough cut, here is his suggestion:
- It represents an academic style of out audio essay, which applied and utilized a lot of acamedic resources.
- Some recorded voice in the audio is too high. If we can’t edit it in software, we should re-record these part.
- It will make our audio essay seems more like a real radio if we apply more sound effects.
For me, the work of making a audio-based media is difficult for me because it is a new area for me to adapt to. Generally speaking, a audio-based media is much more harder than a vedio-based media. The most important really is that we can use a lot of visual resources in a vedio-based media. There is a word says seeing is the most accepatable way for people to mutually understand. However, the only method we can utilize to make the theme clear is sound. We can not present images to audiences to express the central theme. In the processing of audio-based media, the most challenge part is how to use sound effects, tone of people taking, emotional transformation and efficently representation of footages, despite these areas are still crucial to vedio-based media. During my processing work, I guadually utilized sound effects into the media, but the rough cut effect does not reach the expecting standard. Brian figured this issue out and suggest me to pay more effort on this problem. I understand this issue and fix it up in next few days.
Collage
The collage collection things look like unrelated, but actually the unrelated things may combine to a idea from the artists. It is hard to they how close or unrelated to every collage collection, because the relationship is created by people. It not just a simple random combination sometime, it is a combination of creative ideas.
The idea of my collage:
The first collage: I wanna present about the relaxing life. I wanna present that one day we can live without other people’s comments, we can do what we exactly wanna do, not just in our home alone to do these things. When we are at home , we won’t care other people’s thinking. Nowadays, we care too much about other’s thinking, sometimes it will narrow our eyes and lifestyle.
The second collage: Nowadays, media is more and more important in our daily life. However, most of us even can not live with out internet. Even we are having meal, our eyes still can not move from the smart phones or laptops. It is really danger if we continue this, it will reduce people’s communication and let life chaos.
Week 11 Initiative Post – Multimedia Technology and Education
Nowadays, one of modern teaching devices called multimedia have been brought into public concern, and the heating debates are right on their way. Some people hold that multimedia technology is necessary and significant to education. Besides, I also agree that multimedia has made great progress with its contribution to education community.
There are reasons accounting for my view. First, multimedia provides more ways and wider resources for students’ learning. Compared with the traditional teaching model, multimedia allows teachers to spread knowledge in a more flexible and optional way. Second, motion pictures, slides, and cards are used as training aids, which will raise students’ interest and help them to be more concentrated. Therefore, with the help of multimedia, our learning will be more effective and efficient.
On the other hand, this technology might distract students’ attention sometimes, but I think its advantages far weight than its disadvantages.
In short, I consider that multimedia technology has a great contribution to teaching. Here, I advocate that all schools should try to use it in teaching and introduce more advanced technologies to improve our education.
Week 11 Lectorial – Mediums and Technologies
‘Mediums and Technologies’ is my gourp’s PB4 theme.
So i will discuss this topic with our PB4 idea which is based on our phone camera.
Today, the phone has become a necessary, everyday item. This handy piece of technology instantly connects us to our friends, emergency hotlines, the web, the world. We keep up-to-date with news and trending events through our phones and especially through social media.
Among the many social media apps, Instagram seems to be the most popular choice for businesses and market influencers. As a photo and sharing service app, its simple and user-friendly interface has garnered more than 400 million users with 80 million photos uploaded each day. Coupled with our high tech phone cameras, it is a breeze to produce and share user-created content. The phone’s screenshot function also allows content from instagram to be uploaded and circulated on other media platforms. Communication between producers and consumers is also easily set up with the like button and comment section. In this way, businesses can analyse their product’s reception as well.Instagram has definitely contributed to our modern photo-taking culture. The app encourages us to share pictures with the world while advanced phone camera functions has spurred our instant-shoot-and-upload culture.
And some people hate that. Some camera lovers prefer to experience the slower processes of photography. They may say that taking time to work with natural lighting, tweaking focus and aperture to compose a well-proportioned image; that playing with the many knobs and buttons on the camera is what’s most important in photography.
Why go through the trouble of studying photography process when we can take advantage of our smartphone’s auto-adjust technology? The latest iPhone 6s Plus has a 12-megapixel camera and Apple says it has added a “state-of-the-art sensor, new image signal processor, advanced pixel technology, Focus Pixels, improved local tone mapping and optical image stabilization”. One may not understand what these jargons mean but one knows it means good quality. Apple even launched a photo competition upon releasing their iPhone 6 series to prove their point.
Even before the popularity of phone cameras, DSLRs had always been expensive. Its price tag and many functions to study, made photography an elitist affair. Comparatively, phone photography is accessible, easy, instant and mainstream.
Rather than being labelled a “dying art form”, use of digital or film cameras have become a high-end niche activity. Where there is time to appreciate the photo-taking process, these chunkier tools are superior to phone cameras. Because DSLRs allow users to change lenses, this function allows a wider range of aesthetics and quality that the phone camera and editing apps cannot achieve – at least not yet. Today, many business and public event photographers still use DSLRs.
Ultimately, businesses need to be social-media-savvy to establish brand presence and promote their services. And if you want a consistent global audience to follow your advertisements, well Instagram is a great place to start!