week 12 - photo journalism

Photojournalism

Photojournalism is basically messages that are portrayed in pictures to be shown to the society; usually this is shown through the media such as newspapers and news. In the photojournalism field, the main concern involves the ethics; there are set of rules that needs to be followed. Altering the pictures can affect the views and perception of the image such. For example;

This picture clearly shows how photo manipulation in journalism can affect our views; this picture shows manipulation by cropping one part of the picture. Moreover the alteration in saturation to a black and white image gives the impression that the sitting soldier is injured. The cropped picture on the left connotes the idea that the army showing violence towards an unarmed soldier by the pointing of the rifle to the head. However on the right, shows heroism of the U.S army, moreover. But in actuality the picture as a whole only connotes the altruistic behaviour of U.S soldiers towards a captured enemy soldier. The picture should have been released as the photographer originally captured it. The alteration will persuade the audience into a false impression thus making it unethical.

            It is said that the media has to be entertaining as it is truthful, and I find that this 2 can coexist in the world of photojournalism. It is important that the ethics needs to be followed, and to achieve an entertaining and truthful photo can be done if the photographer follows the rules of syntactic lines of composition, this enables the audience to be more appealed to the picture, and to make it truthful takes skills, patience and timing in capturing it, so it is more towards the individual choice of the photographers to either cheat or do it honestly like a true photographer. Altering the picture to achieve how the photographer wants it to be is basically lying blatantly to the us, the public.

week 11 - information graphics

Week 11 – information graphic

What is the relation of information graphic with visual communication, well basically, everything. Graphics that contains information must be simple enough for audiences/readers to digest and make out of what is trying to be delivered. Moreover, an information graphs does not necessarily come in graph forms, it is basically images or pictures that can send informative messages to the   There are sets of rules and guidelines that need to be followed in making effective information graphic. Edward Tufte rules state that graphs should have a clear title. Colours, icon, pictures and shapes should be used as variable, and lastly the legends for the use of symbols should be shown clearly.

week 9 - cinema and televisions

Week 9 - Cinema and television

Cinema and television is the greatest tool of media transmission. It is argued that televisions brainwash us and help us develop into who we are. This is done through the cultural literacy, where we learn and conform to the norms of what we see in and absorb from the media in televisions and cinemas. How? I will explain through one example of a TV series that can influence of how we think of a certain culture. The Fresh prince of Bel Air was aired in the 1990’s where it shows a hyper and problematic Afro American teenager named Will. In pursuit to be mature and responsible he moved from the ghetto life in Philadelphia to respectable Californian suburban African American family. This could help us to learn more on the Black community since it contrasted the difference of black community of America in terms of their communication, language, class, status and etc. 

week 8 - photography

 Photography

Originally photography was used as a form of portraiture and to replace the traditional way of taking portraits, which was painting. Producing pictures was expensive in the early eras of photography, however as time goes, the production of photos got cheaper and used as a form of documentation; to record the activities or events. It continued to advance and finally at a stage where taking a photo is merely a click of a button from our mobile devices.

Here is a picture taken by me during a trip to Thailand last semester, the question that was asked by Chris “what is the relationship between memory and space”. I can answer this question through this picture; firstly, what is memory and what is space? Memory is basically our cognitive ability to retain and recall past experiences while space refers to the time of when the memory was made. In reference to the picture, it made me reminisce of this particular activity that in that period of time, hence relating the ‘memory’ of the ‘space’

week 7 - visual narrative

Week 7: visual narrative.

Narrative consists of 2 natures, which are the story and the discourse. The story focuses on ‘what’ the visual image is trying to tell and then followed by the discourse which is ‘how’ it is delivered. For example, the story of Alice in wonderland, some of us were brought up to see the Disney version of this story, and quite recently Tim Burton made a remake of the story. We knew how the storyline goes; yet people still watch it, why? This is because the discourse of the story was altered thus making it a whole different story. According to Aristotle, a narrative story must consist of a beginning, middle and an end. According to Mieke Bal (1983), the plot is the story, which is linked by fabulas; plays a role where it connects one plot to the other.

            

Simply, in vague terms, narrative is the story, without the story there are no message to be told. Thus making it important when shaping visual images to audiences.  

week 5 - Gestalt theory

Gestalt theory

Gestalt theory basically follows 5 laws, which are proximity, similarity, common fate, pregnantz, and closure. Max Wertheimer coined this theory in 1924; he suggested that the whole is different to sum of its parts, to make it simple I will explain it based roughly on Köffka’s research on an ape named sultan, in a confined area, there was a stick, a chair and a banana hanging on the ceiling. The ape tried to reach the banana by climbing on the chair, however it failed to obtain it. Then it proceeds to reach it using the stick, and yet again it failed. At the end, it realized that by combining the action of climbing on the chair while swinging the stick can help it retrieve the banana. What the ape did was discovering the interdependence of the context and creates wholeness of the problem, hence gestalt.

This picture can help further explain gestalt theory; there are no definite lines to show of what the image should be depicted. Our brain works in a complex manner, it thrives to find and fix and figure what is being displayed on the picture, although it is shown as spots of black inks on a white background, our cognitive will create wholeness and will eventually see a the picture of a dog.

            The first law of gestalt can be seen in this picture, which was proximity. The smaller spots were positioned and group together which help to fixate our eyes towards the area of where the dog was positioned in the picture. Moreover, the law of similarity was also used, to create the lines and show the shape of the dog, and lastly the law of closure, which is the generalization of the whole image.

Schema also play an important role on figuring out a picture, as mention by Minsky (1974) when we are come across a new situation, we will recall from our past memory to create a framework of the situation, by changing details of it to relate to the present image. The purpose of schema within an image acts a trigger for the audience, to help them instantly relate to the picture. 

week 4 - visual syntax

Week 4 - Visual syntax, semantics and pragmatics

Visual syntax is basically the grammar of visual images. Semantics is the cognitive process where we try to make sense out of what we see. And lastly pragmatics, it is where the context can be used to in another meaning, for example.

Traditional linguists argue that the images cannot be considered as a language since it does not carry a formal grammar. However it can be argued that since according to traditional linguist, the alphabets symbolize sounds that we utter which is known as phoneme, therefore this can be applied to what we perceive such as colors, which is known as coloreme; it can still connotes feelings and meaning hence creating language.

Our eye movement is important when it comes to interpreting an image; there are 5 laws in this. Firstly only certain image will attract our attention, secondly the fixations of eyes are dependent on the things we wish to see, third the parts that contain information attracts more eye fixation, fourth different kinds of picture gives different fixations and visual learning, and lastly positive correlation between number of fixations and visual learning. (petterson,1993)

Here is an example:

                  When reading a text, our eye movements are fixed starting from top left and gradually moving to the right. You may notice why I put a picture of an arrow on the top left and the title on the top right; my main goal on doing this is to prove this theory, if it is true you may have fixed your eye movement on the arrow first (which proves the first law) and then proceed to looking to the picture of a potato (which proves the second law), which shift our fixation to the texts below trying to figure out what the purpose of the arrow (which proves the third, fourth and fifth law)

WEEK 3 - SEMIOTICS

Semiotic is basically the study of signs and symbols. Initially every word that we use in our everyday is a type of sign, represented by combining letters to spell out the meaning. For example, a rock is known as a rock, how do we know if it is? Through our 5 senses; which are touch, sight, smell, taste and hearing. We touch and we feel the solidness, we see and we know the shape, we smell so we know the smell...well not really, but you get the point…

So how did everyone know a rock as it is? And call as what it is and spell as it is? It is from the consensus of the majority of the people in the society to understand the rock is a rock, and everyone agreed that it is spelled with R, O, C, and K.

If the whole society agrees to call the rock as a potato, nevertheless it WILL be called a potato. According to Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913), a text is made up of

SIGNIFIER + SIGNIFIED = SIGN

To create a word, the signifier is the letters that are combined to make a word, for this case R O C and K. the signified is the image created in your mind. Thus resulting it into a sign, the agreed letters to come up with the object.

         When we have come up with the sign, we can denote it, which is the literal description of the sign or signifier. Then later on connote the sign, which we describe the object not literally, or metaphorically of the object.

Example:

Sign: potatoes

Denotation: 4 goldish brown potatoes stacked together

Connotation: dull, random, and etc

WEEK 2 - SEEING AND PERCIEVING

Seeing [ˈsiːɪŋ]

 the sense or faculty of sight; vision

Perception [per-sep-shuhn]

the act or faculty of apprehending by means of the senses or of the mind;cognition; understanding.

These are the definition on "seeing" and "perception" that can be found in dictionaries, seeing is basically what we can pick up through our eyes, however perception are the images that is shown in our mind. What we see can be different to those of others, one can see an object as a normal object however some others may perceive it as something else; probably it could bring sentimental values, different meaning and etc.

One good example of this is, being an infant who does not know anything about fire. He/ she might not be intimated of be scared to touch the fire, but when the infant felt the pain from the burn, they will immediately associate FIRE = PAIN.

 When what we see is processed, and saved in our brain, it is when it becomes our perception. The way we deliver our perception are through our words we send to others. Saying one particular word to another can cause them to create the image differently due to the fact that they may have seen or absorb a different meaning when the first time they heard the particular word. In reference of the pictures I provided, when we say the word “apple” some perceive the word as in the pictures

FOR EXAMPLE:

Figure1.

To some, apple can be seen as this

 

Figure2.

However, some people may perceive apple, as a green apple

        

Figure3.

While some others, may see it as this….

           “The way we see things is affected by what we know or what we believe…we never look at just one thing; we are always looking at the relation between things and ourselves. Our vision is continually active, continually moving, continually holding things in circle around itself, constituting what is present to us as we are” (John Berger, 1977)