Which essay from the assigned chapter spoke to your own experience the most? Summarize the main points of the essay and give a personal anecdote that elaborates on why this article spoke to you the most. Which essay made you think about photography in a new way, or spoke to experiences you may not have been as familiar with? Again, summarize the article and explain why this essay has reshaped your ideas about photography. Write your 200 word (minimum) response below. Make sure to put your name in the comment.
Presentations -
9/10 Sara Watts
9/12 Olivia Teague
The article Photography Changes What We Long To See spoke to me the most because it is what I enjoy in photography the most - taking the unreal and making it seem real. The article was about how photographs can be taken that are representing something in a way to manipulate a viewer into thinking a certain way about the object(s)/meaning in the photograph. As an example, the article used travel advertisement photography and how it made travel look comfortable - when in reality travel back then was rough and difficult. This manipulation grew even further as companies started staging shoots to look a very specific way that would benefit them most with hardly any reality present. Today, people are hyperaware of how photographs can be manipulated and are not always how they appear to be. However, in my opinion this isn’t always a bad thing. People have consistently shown that they love the unrealistic. Fantasy skyrocketed as a genre and is still huge today. Magic, unreal creatures, and unfathomably beautiful landscapes are all over the place in this fantasy genre and even though it is fake, people love it. The reason travel companies used the unrealistic is because they knew people would love it and it worked. Although manipulation is morally wrong, using photography/photo manipulations to show the unreal is not altogether wrong because it can create what is in the imagination and create things more beautiful than anything you can find on Earth.
ReplyDeletePhotography Changes what we are willing to believe, spoke to me the most because nowadays there are fake photographs everywhere. In this era of "fake news" never has it been more true not just about photos. Every time I open my news feed, I have no way of telling what is true and what is not until somebody exposes it a few days later. The article points out a surprising fact that faking photos has been around since the last century. Specifying on the fact that Lincoln's head was fixed to Calhoun's body, and how John Kerry's photo was faked in order to produce negative feelings about him during his presidential run. Another interesting point is how cumbersome it was to produce fakes. It amazes me that people actually took the time and effort to produce a fake image that took a long time, which today you can do in less than 5 minutes with the least of effort. This article interested me the most because I have always loved learning how to manipulate images for fun. In certain situations knowing how to fake images perfectly is almost like a superpower with great responsibility because so many people can be reached and easily fooled which will impact every decision that they make about the matter. The number one reason for faking public photos of important people is to evoke a certain emotion out of those who see or identify with it.
ReplyDeleteby Alvaro Munoz
DeletePhotography Changes Our Desire For Celebrity and Glamour was the essay that stuck out the most to me. This is a subject that, I think, people relate to quite often. I often look at tabloids or Vogue Magazine and find myself wishing to be like the celebrity pictured or have a piece of their life as my own. How easily a photograph expresses that, but also makes the idea so appealing. The essay spoke of Veronica Lake and her extraordinary burst of fame during World War II. Her appealing face was used to market makeup, and the simple connection of her beauty and the product that she was endorsing was enough to make the young woman looking at the photo long to look the same. The people that are in the photos that we look at and long to be like are simply that: photos that are staged and marked up to appeal to the general longing of glitz and glamour. This essay remarks of the lurking darkness that Lake dealt with outside of the press and within her personal life. It spoke of the schizophrenia that she dealt with. This is not something that we would guess from the images produced to promote a makeup product that covers up and conceals the blemishes underneath.
ReplyDeleteThis essay spoke to me personally because I often focus far too much on the beauty and eloquence of a photograph. I want someone to look at my photos and have a sense of longing to be a part of it. There is an underlying desire to be recognized for something that seems so ordinary in the grand scheme of things but it something that means the world in another light.
by Claire Rodgers
DeleteIn the article by Irene Jeruss, “Photography Changes Our Relationship to Gardens and Plants,” I found it particularly inspiring and interesting how they wrote about wanting to capture the beauty they saw from their garden in the moment. Especially how they found it like an art to take photos just at the right time, on the right day, in the right season. Because it’s very true, capturing such beauty would be difficult if you had a number of plants that only bloom in certain seasons, or certain times of day, or even under certain weather conditions, and I found their passion really nice. Their use of photography in their sales was also an interesting note, and how they talked about needing to communicate things like color, scale, shape and form of the fully-grown plants customers were buying seeds to grow. And lastly, I loved how their hope for their photography was for them to inspire others to want to grow their own gardens, to inspire them to get out there and make their own art as well. It was wonderful to read and made me think even more on all the different ways you can use photography as a passion and as a business tool.
ReplyDelete- Chris McCallister
The essay that spoke to me the most was “Photography Changes our Awareness of Beauty and Hope” (24-25). This essay discusses how photographers express their ideas in part by what they decline to tell us, essentially leaving the unspoken context of the image to the interpretation of the viewer. At first glance of Nicholas Nixon’s photo titled “West Springfield, Massachusetts, 1978”, all I saw was a sleeping calf being touched by a person. But, as I read through this essay, I discovered that there was a sense of beauty and hope about the photo. Minus the human hand, the calf appears to be alone in confined space, which leaves to question where its mother is. Without its mother, who would nurture and care for it? That’s where the hand comes in. Even with the slightest touch, the calf appears to be comforted by the human hand, even making out what could be seen as a smile. The mother’s absence is seemingly made up by the affectionate contact from a person, and through this photo, we can see what the photographer saw/thought of as beautiful.
ReplyDeleteThis same concept can be applied to all photos. Every with very little content, photographers can speak volumes of what they find beautiful/hopeful through their photos. In my own experience, I rarely take the time to capture something I think is beautiful, rather just looking for something I think looks cool/good and capturing that. After seeing this photograph and reading this essay, I now see that a lot can be said about what was going through a photographer’s mind, what they find beautiful in even the simplest-looking photos. I find that to be a very powerful skill and something I would to implement into my future work.
In an article, "Photography Changes Our Relationship to Gardens and Plants", by Irene Jeruss, Jeruss talks about her garden in detail that has led her passion to photography. She describes the flowers in many varieties of how they blossom, points out the beauty of the ending changes of her garden and wants to capture them, and how it makes her feel and what it like to be there. This articles spoke to me to most because of my photos I take for a while is plants and flowers, which has always been my realm of my favorite photos. Most of them would be in garden like one from my home where my mom planted variety of flowers. I take pictures of them changing throughout the seasons. I’m always fascinated by the changes of flowers from small sprouts to blossoming to full grown pedals. The patterns and textures of flowers are very intriguing and mesmerizing to capture in macro photography. With many colors and shapes makes every flowers special in their own image help me discovery new ones. This article has many points that relate to a lot of what I enjoy the most taking photos of and in detail the feeling and description of changing phases of plants and how new seed grow out of flowers for new plants to grow.
ReplyDelete- Ezequiel Delgado
The article I found most interesting was, "Photography Changes What and Who We Desire" written by Lois W. Banner, who is a professor of history and gender studies at the University of Southern California. The article talks about the infamous photo of Marilyn Monroe, the one where she is clothed in that iconic white dress standing over a subway grate, grasping at it and attempting to hold it down as a subway car passes by. The article mentions interesting behind the scenes facts about the photo, such as the fact that it was a staged publicity stunt planned by Twentieth Century Fox for the upcoming film “The Seven Year Itch”. In addition, there was never really a subway car passing by causing that infamous draft, it was indeed a technician with a wind machine hidden under the grate. The article also discusses why the photo became so iconic and pushed Monroe into becoming the nations biggest sex symbol. In the photo, Marilyn is depicted happy and carefree a symbol of post war optimism. The white dress a symbol of purity and the fact that is she is attempting to cover herself, speaks to the largely religious American audience of the time. This aspect along with Marilyn’s striking beauty played hand in hand to portray her ideal image of the modern woman.
ReplyDeleteI've always been aware of the fact that photography has a major influence on what the general public sees as beautiful. I know that what we see in magazines and online showcase the ideal modern standard of beauty; however, these body shapes and proportions are very different from what the average woman looks like. The standard of beauty is ever changing. In todays society we are seeing women featured in campaigns in all different shapes, sizes, and ethnicities. The standard is growing from what has long been seen as the perfect woman into something that recognizes the beauty in every woman.
-Madison Morrow
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ReplyDeleteThe article I chose was “Photography Changes How We Shop”. In this section Paco Underhill explains how photography was once a source of facts while a painting was for expressing imagination and fiction. He continues to say that photography now can be as fictitious as a painting. Throughout the article Paco talks about how photography is used for retail purposes. It impacts how people shop for products. Photographs used in advertising are intriguing and catch consumers’ attention which makes them want to buy it, but usually the product doesn’t look as good as what’s depicted. He refers to humans as a “shopping species” because we are always buying the products that we don’t need to survive. He claims that “our visual language and skills evolve faster than our spoken tongue or the written word”. He believes that we’re headed into a “image-driven future” because how we process flashing images on a screen rather than receive information in a more well-paced manner.
ReplyDeleteI can relate to this article because when I’m scrolling on social media at a slow or fast pace I will stop when I spot something interesting. I’m usually distracted by attractive clothes or food. As soon as I see the item I immediately want to know where I can get it or something similar to it. The comment’s sections of those posts usually contain excited consumer’s asking when and where they can get the item, expecting the quickest and easiest answer. Even when I’m walking in the grocery store something with an intriguing image on the packaging will catch my attention as I’m sure it does for others. The article made me realize how much photography impacts our shopping habits.
-Kenjinique Davis
The article I chose for this assignment is Jon Stam’s “Photography Changes What We Expect “Reality” Will Look Like.” In this article, he adds three different images, one is a photo of a painting by Jacob van Ruysdael, the second is his own photography of a coast in southern Portugal, and the last is a computer-generated image of an ocean. These images are helpful when realizing that different means of portraying a landscape can show the same amount of realism. I have had experiences where I’ve looked at an image, whether it be a painting in a museum, a digital drawing of fan art, or a photography taken of a scenery, and needed look closer at the image because of the amount of realism it portrays. An example I have found is on a website called Deviant Art, established for a community of artists to create art they want to share receive feedback from other artists. Searching on this website, I found an image of the singer/ songwriter Billie Eilish and found a digital illustration created by an artist under the name meybelle. This drawing is so close to an actual image of Eilish, I’ve needed to zoom in on it just to make sure. Though art like this and other are misleading, they provide inspiration and imagination for those that may not have experience that moment, seen that artist, or been to that location. Photography especially give us the inspiration to travel to a place and see the real thing for ourselves, letting us make our own interpretations.
ReplyDeleteHere is a link to the image of Billie Eilish:
https://www.deviantart.com/meybelle/art/Billie-Eilish-776261831
-Rebecca Ross
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ReplyDeleteFor chapter 1, I chose Irene Jeruss’s essay, titled “Photography Changes Our Relationship to Gardens and Plants”. Throughout her essay, she talks about how her love for gardening and flowers really overcame her life, and how she even gave up her career in marketing in order to follow her new passion. She lives in the New England area, which is known for having a lot of rocky soil and not the best for growing plants, but she worked hard and pushed through in order to nurse some beautiful plants into maturity.
ReplyDeleteShe mentions “Unlike a painting, which lives on indefinitely in its finished form, the challenge and art of gardening is that a garden never stops changing”. This can prove to be both quite difficult and keeping your job interesting at all times, because there is always something new to capture and show off. While many people think of garden and plant photos as “just botanical details”, Jeruss wanted to capture the beauty of the scene and how it made her feel as she was admiring it. She wants to share the peace and serenity that she felt when she was witnessing the scene.
After she quit her job in marketing, she worked her way up with creating stock photography and marketing those off to gardening companies. While she still continues to freelance garden photography to magazines such as Women’s Day, Gardening & Deck Design, Connecticut Magazine, and Connecticut Home & Garden, she eventually landed a job at a company named White Flower Farms, which is a mail-order nursery, as their staff photographer and photo editor. Throughout the course of her new career, Jeruss had always tried to capture the true beauty of what she saw. She would make the most minimal edits in her post production, such as taking out a blemish on a leaf or flower, or would even take out a telephone pole or electrical wires, in order to keep it strictly about the plants. She states “ I will never alter the essential photograph. I will not add blossoms or make colors more vivid than they are in real life. I object to manipulation that is the equivalent of laying; my truth is this-if there is beauty that I sense and see, then that is what I want to record and reveal”. Although I personally love making photos either brighter or darker, switching up the colors in the photo, or adding things in there that were not previously there, I understand her point of view, especially as a professional who is trying to sell flowers. It would be wrong to show the customer a false image of something they are trying to grow themselves.
Through her work, Jeruss hopes to inspire the people who view her gardening photography to garden themselves, and to show them how beautiful they can really make the earth. She states “in that sense, photography encourages us to reach for more-to create our own art”. She wishes for everyone to find some creativity within themselves and not be afraid to express it.