Connecting with Gerry Badger’s reading – ‘Photobook’:

I have considered a lot throughout reading over and over Gerry Badger’s ‘Photobook’, a photo book that I want to produce is a novel and a bit like a film, the article highlighted Lewis Baltz’s quote that “a narrow but deep area lying between the novel and the film.” The way I understood Lewis Baltz’s quote was that if  I want my photo book to understand or to interpret the way I am expecting them to, the first step is to sequence it like a paragraph, imagine each photograph is a ‘word’ and each page becomes a ‘sentences’, so the sequence of each photograph is the key elements that make up a photobook.  He has also highlighted that reading “a photobook is firstly about appreciating the aesthetic worth of the individual photograph within the book, which itself is a process that seeks to understand, or perhaps even divine, the photographer’s best intentions. Secondly, it is about following the story that is being told, negotiating not only a trail of facts but a labyrinth of signs and symbols”. These two sentences were the most useful reference for me to produce my own photo book, before I started to really use Gerry Badger’s article as a reference to process this project brief, I have never carefully think about how will I lay the photograph out, I didn’t consider this to be an important element that needs to be considered thoroughly. At the first point of planning the layout of each page, as a palette doesn’t really have a sequence so I would put all colour on every page.

As he mentioned in the first part of the article, each photograph is a ‘word’ or even a ‘keyword’ for the book which means each of them has to be very carefully selected and arranged. I think I fully understand what means to create a photobook, and why is each process so important. Each of the selected photographs need to work very effectively in order to let my audience feel what I am trying to communicate. Even within the same colour group such as red, the sequence could start with a photo that doesn’t really show the main focal point, and the following photos will gradually show my intention and the focal point.

Keywords on my palette:

• Red (with yellow): Isolation, distance, speechless
• Blue & Pink:
• Green & Purple: Relax, calming
• Black: Anger
• White: Youth, the loneliness and the sense of revolt of youth

Complete shooting:

1 – shoot from above the object, but wasn’t showing too much about the main intention

2 – slowly focus to the yellowish details in the frame

3 – showing more precisely the featuring of yellow

4 – The main intention of this group of photo – the sense of isolation and distance in between

Progression towards Project Brief 3 – Taking photos in public

In today’s class, we further discussed around topic – ethics and street photography, is there an ‘ethical’ way to shoot in the public. To me, I really agree with the third reading – Eric Kim’s opinion. Think about when you were being taken by someone you don’t know without asking for your permission if you don’t feel comfortable when they shoot you then don’t photograph the others. For myself, I like having my photograph taken — with or without permission. I feel comfortable in my own skin. And I find it hilarious when others photograph me (either candidly) or when they approach me. As I think street photography is all about the sense of nature and candid. In this way, people’s features and characteristic were being highlighted.

I was paired up with Steff, another thing that I found interesting was the interaction and collaboration in between partners, Steff and I have a very different characteristic which she feels more comfortable talking to the strangers because no matter what you say to them you couldn’t meet the strangers again. Where I feel difficult when I talk to the strangers especially not in my 1st language.

During the progress towards our 32 portraits, we found some interesting facts: First is shooting with kids, parents are always being very vigilant they don’t want anyone to use their children’s photo without letting them know. Secondly, even though myself is from one of the Asian countries but I believe that most of the Asian people are very shy and vigilant when they are being photographed. This could either because they are very new to this environment so they are being specifically sensitive or they cannot really understand but they don’t want to ask too much.

Looking back to the passed three weeks I spent in this studio, I always found myself have ran out of time to complete the class exercises; or I should say I need more time to get my brain to get use to think and observe in the way we should be. I think I might be the only one who haven’t really get my head around the new studio, my friends in the course seemed to be more technically experienced than me. In order to get myself to keep progressing whenever we meet each other or meeting friends outside of the course, I always ask my friends questions like: what if I change this (an observation) to the filmed? Or imagine this appeared in a scene of a film would do you think this might work?

At least one thing I see myself that I might have progressed since the first week was my observation, during the first week I have to think back to couple days ago for some good observations but now I do always remember to write down even just few sentences when I see something interesting, at least a photo to remind myself. For example, the observation #7 posted in my media blog, I can still see the sense of awkwardness in front of me. I guess this is sort of succeed as observation are always came from our daily life.

Technically, I actually did learn a lot about new cameras. I am taking photography101 as my selective this semester, the camera we talked about there has huge differences to what we are holding to film with in the studio! First of all, SONY EX-3 is way more heavy for me to hand-held with. Secondly, it is very interesting to see how the ‘White balance’ works in the camera, personally I don’t usually play with white balance in any of the digital cameras when I take photos, but white balance makes the subjects looks more natural and close to the its actual colour. Lastly, it feels so good when I was holding the camera and try to film in the way I wanted to.

The definition through dictionary is ‘an organization found for a religious, educational, professional, or social purpose,’ or ‘institution is a group of people that was formed for a specific reason or a building that houses the group of people. Personally, I agreed with the second definition more. I think when a group of people were formed together for a specific reason such as followers or something, they think of themselves being different to the others they can be called an institution. Myself as one of the followers who are extremely addicted to k-pop, what I have been noticed are the k-pop followers see themselves as another institution. For example, there are something called K-pop reaction which is very popular recently on YouTube, it is when people filmed their reaction when they first see a released k-pop music video. There are lots of Youtuber who has this channel in their program. I use this as an example of institution was because when the Youtuber are uploading their video they always name the title to be ‘K-pop reaction of xxxx (a song) by xxxx (a particular group).

On the opposite side, there are also YouTuber who created reaction but they grouped themselves as ‘non-kpop fans’. What they do is they will record their reaction to the popular k-pop songs as a non k-pop follower. Such as:

So institution here has been divided into two parts: k-pop followers and non K-pop fans.

Moreover, in lots of Asian countries when they are introducing themselves they will always mention to be: k-pop lovers; crazy for k-pop or k-pop followers.

Secondly, institution is a group of people see themselves differently to the rest of the group. In the Korea pop industry, not all the celebrities or any actor/actress, singer can be included into k-pop institution, only the singers who are being called ‘idol’. Idols usually appeared as a group, sometimes there is solo singers debut as idol as well， people choose an entertainment and take audition to get in for training, once they get into the entertainment they become trainers and start to prepare to be a celebrities. The training period can be short or long, there isn’t a shortcut to debut quicker. The word ‘Idol’ sounds simple but it actually needs them to be perfect in order to have the qualification of idol. During their training period there are things other than singing/ dancing/ acting that the entertainment think is necessary for a celebrity to have. The way the walk/ speak/ smile/ laugh/ language they use/ styling even the way they sit etc. each entertainment provide a full package of preparation for trainers to be ready to debut.

Trainers no matter which company they are originate they see themselves as an institution, because they are in the same ship before debut. Trainers are in the situation where they have no income; no free time; there are no limited time of debut for them to count on.

Furthermore, idols must to be well-behaved for all the time as their followers, fans, public and the media always watching them, especially for the fans who support them, they look up to the ‘idols’ so they always have to be perfect and better behaved.

This week our lectorial we learnt about the laws and rules about copyright, the united state of America as an example which they have interesting set of copyright laws, different country will have different terms in order to protect the content we publish originally. I believe to work in the media industry, it is very important to make sure we follow the copyright rules closely, when we are using published production from another territory we still needed to make sure we have ticked off the copyright laws.

Myself found this lectorial extremely helpful. My family was from China where I noticed people in the Chinese media industry didn’t take copyright so importantly. The k-pop industry has become more and more popular all around the world, China has been influenced by the k-pop culture for sure. A lots of popular variety shows from Korea has attract the Chinese media industry’s attention. One variety show in China called ‘happy gagman’ was ‘created’ recently, which lots of people found it is extremely similar to the Korean variety show – ‘gag concert’. Its true that we can’t deny ‘Creation was originated from imitation, but the gagmen in ‘gag concert’ spend day and nights to produce different ideas for their fans and followers, it is extremely difficult to be gagman in Korea. This episode boomed in between the two countries, lots of Korean said hope the Chinese can pay respect to what other people have produce or published, as the author take a long time for this idea.

Reflecting back to week7 lectorial and reading, we noticed the same example of the gap toothed women was shown during the lectorial which really attracted my attention. I think is very clever that who has noticed the specail of gap-toothed women and the director has make it a advance instead of a flaw.

Categories are groupings that individuals or societies create to organize their knowledge of the world. It may base on scientific research, and these will often attempt to account exhaustively for all the data in question. An example of categorical form was Gap-Toothed Women, which was conceived, directed and filmed by Les Blank, who has been making personal documentary films since 1960s. I have never heard of a category called gap-toothed women until I saw Blank’s documentary and I think the documentary was well break down into segments that indicate that gap-toothed was seemed to be flaws at the beginning, by the end, Blank shows how being gap-toothed is associated with attractiveness, active and creativity. I particular like the part when there were few shots give on a close view of a woman’s mouth with a large gap and leads to their ‘signature’ bite on an apple, this was sort of showing being gap-tooth was disadvantaged but Blank has shown this through a humor, cute way.

WEEK 7 readings – what are collaborative teams?

Before any readings was done, in my perspective collaborative teams would have each member understand their responsibilities, the team members have common target, performance goals and everyone takes one part of responsibility. I have heard a lot from my friends that they have met group members who never contribute anything, so they have to finish everything by themselves. I think it is very important to grasp the skill of working collaboratively. First of all, ‘a team is…a small number of people with complementary skills who are committed to a common purpose, performance goals, and approach for which they hold themselves mutually accountable.’ Each member engages through self-organization and through shared commitment to their goal. In order to evolve to high performance team trust, sharing, self- organization and mutual accountability.

Now, this part is where I am most curious, when a team get to divergence? There are ways to solve divergence, but I think is better to keep the original members will take less time. For example, if we take a member out, how can the rest of members absorb the person’s role and does this need a shift in power/ influence or control? In another way, if we change the team’s goal questions still emerge, such as: how can we best formulate our complementary skills around the new goal? Or is there any reason for the new compelling reason for the team to exist?

I believe everyone can understand that it is very difficult for all the individual characters to come together with our complementary skills, so I think this article is basically telling us to hold mutually accountable and do our best in order to let the group meet the performance goal.

PB4 is going to be complete within small groups of 3-4, we received ‘institution’ as an area to be explore upon. We were very confused of what we are going to do upon this area, so we started with brainstorming of what do we think of when we looked at the word institution. I first think of schools, church and company, they are the most obvious institutions we see the most.

What are the others that might or seat on the edge of institution? Institution is a broad range, so we have to pick a specific area to focus on. Institution let me think of k-pop, Korean pop music is blowing all around the world and attracts different age level’s followers. Myself as one of them who are very addicted to K-pop, the movies, music videos, dramas and variety shows, most people are attracted by the idol groups. They can sing, dance, acting and they are good looking, before the idols debut, they have to pass audition of a particular entertainment. After they have entered the entertainment, they are arranged to learn to be a celebrity and this is what people called ‘trainers’ before debut. There is no time limit of training time, some trainers are lucky so they can debut within a short training time, but some trainers have been practice for more than 10 years. The trainers practice dance, singing, acting, how to show up in the public etc. everyday and they get an evaluation exam after a period of time.

Recently, there is a popular variety show called ‘Produce 101’. Which means 101 trainers were selected from every entertainment in Korea and combines to make this variety show, at the final chapter of this show, the judges will pick 11 from 101 to debut. Although this variety show creates a huge reverberation in the k-pop industry, lots of people have argued that as the 101 of them were select out from each company to the public, so they do not belong to any entertainment anymore. Amount of them are not even over 18 years old, so many people think they are not allowed to release songs and perform in the public as celebrities before they actually belong to an entertainment.

Kpop is an interesting topic to me as it sits on the edge of institution, but we can still argue it not include in institution just as a culture.

Collaboration, I was quite interested when the word was presented on the big lecture screen. I do think collaboration is one of the important skills that everyone should grasp and I have noticed in the Australia educational system we learn it since kinder. Once we really get out from the university, collaboration is the basic skill that is necessary to be able to survive in this society. I believe for media or communication work people is more important to be able to work collaboratively.

I was originated from China, the reason could be there are too many people, but the educational system there is completely different to Australia. When I first arrived to Melbourne I was in year 8 and I received the first collaborative group assignment in Geography, everything was new to me in particularly how the system works and how we divided work to each person. I found that learning within a group actually helped me a lot, I speak English as second language, so I need the local students to correct the grammar mistakes for me.

ZHIYUN QIU – reflection for myself

• ‘more use of found footages, but the ones used were suitable ‘
• ‘the use of shadow when my interviewee was dancing, good angle that i didn’t get myself filmed’
• ‘like the flashing stars edited through the who video, worked very well…’

WANTING XU –

• The introduction of her interviewee was well edited, the different shots of her introducing herself which has really shown her characteristic, she looks comfortable talking in front of the camera and she loves to talk.
• Maybe have some more questions for her, with deeper questions such as: why do you study Spanish

Chynnae Jewell –

https://youtu.be/hGBaJy8FI64

• I like her title, it really sums up what her video going to talk about, her interviewee keeps changing her mind of what she wanted to do
• The use of found footage was very deliberate

Camilla Moi –

• Title was very straight forward
• I like the background being used when the interviewee was dancing, very suitable for his urban dance style
• I can tell how Camilla has designed the interview questions very deliberately that his introduction was very cleared and complete