Blog Exercise 3: Analyzing a Picture

We were given a choice to choose a genre out of this 3 categories and write a commentary on it.

The 3 categories are:

• Photojournalism
• Social Documentary
• Commercial Photography

I chose to do the commentary on photojournalism.



Caption: Former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto waves from the sun roof of her armored car just seconds before being being assassinated in a gun and suicide bomb attack December 27, 2007. She was departing a campaign rally in the army garrison city next to Islamabad.

This photograph was taken by John Moore who came in first as Photojournalist of the Year in the National Press Photographer Association's Best of Photojournalism 2008 contest.

The photograph is blurred and the colour are pretty dull and lighting is quite poor. But it is good in the sense that it conveyed how messy and dangerous it was to be in that situation. Although the subject of the photograph should be the Former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, she was totally not in sharp focus and is infact totally blur. However, it is interesting to note that the motion blur caused by all the action leads the attention to the center of the picture, which brings the focus back on the Former Prime Minister, even if she is in fact not in focus.

The picture was taken from a lower perspective as the subject is a leader and she was on higher grounds. All the motion blur in the picture also conveyed a lot of action, a lot of pushing and shoving that must have happened at the scene.

In photojournalism, the main purpose for the photograph is to tell the story that the photographer wants to tell. The perpective and the action captured on this picture clearly shows the action and chaos and conveyed how terrible it must be to be in that situation. Blurs are often used in photojournalism to show chaos. Another example would be this other photograph by the same photographer of the suicide bombing after the former prime minister was assasinated.



This picture, as compared to the above one, is blur too. With the bight colours from the explosion and the total blur covering the people, it captured the desperation to escape and the chaotic running for safety.



This is another action shot of a fight by Jahi Chikwendiu from The Washington Post to show a fight on the streets. Similar to the previous two pictures, it used motion blur to show action, to let the picture come alive.

However, not all shots in photojournalism must be blur to be effective. Shots in sharp focus are very good when the picture wants to convey how solemn or how still the subject is.



This picture by Stephen M. Katz for The Virginian-Pilot has to be clear to show the soldier silently standing-by for his peers who are patrolling on the streets of Iraq. If this shot is off focus, it would not convey any effective message, but that the photographer is bad at taking photographs.

From this exercise, it made me realise that photographs must not always be clear to capture good moments. Blurring and shaky shots in photojournalism might be more effective than clear focused ones in telling the story to the viewer of the picture. Still and focused shots are still essential to capture solemnness and silence.

Assignment 4: Urban Fantasy

The starting of this assignment was the hardest. Because I had several very different ideas of what could be an urban fantasy.

First, I thought of doing something along the lines of "Mechanization of Nature". I wanted to show that even the sprouting of road side plants could be mechanized, could it be the urban life's fantasy that they aim to achieve? For that idea, I experimented with a few photographs.






The first flower was taken at the Changi Airport and the second picture was a crack on the ledge near my house. I combined them with Photoshop to create an illusional surreal picture of a mechanised flower breaking through a stone wall. It conveys the idea of how mechanised the world is turning into and perhaps in the future, even a simple wild flower blooming could be mechanised.




My second idea was to recreate a phenomenal scene that has occurred in the past, but this time, using ONLY urban structures. I went to take pictures of various inanimate objects at the Changi Airport and around my housing estate.









I extracted the 'railings' and flipped it to create a converging effect. Then I filled up the center to give it a narrowing perspective. Then, I blurred and smudged the tips of the railing to give the opening waves a softer feeling.

Then, I added a road. Because the original road is not as long, I extended and stretched it and then later transforming it to form a road going into the distance. After which, I added a red car to represent Moses. I chose red because it captures the viewer's attention and stands out, like how Moses, in the scene of the separating the Red Seas, is the main subject of the picture.

Then, I edited the car license plate, for 2 reasons. Firstly to not to let the viewers know which car I took a picture of ( it is afterall ethical to protect the rights of the subject ) and to let the viewers have a better idea of what I was trying to recreate with this twisted arrangement of urban structures. Thus, I added the text 'M05E5', a new license plate number for the car.

After which, I added motion blur to the car and added the background, which was the cloudy sky to emphasize on the idea of 'phenomenon'. I colorized the sky to purple to give it the last mystic touch and my first draft of urban fantasy was born!



I planned to bring both these pictures to class to get their opinions and only develop one for my final work.

Blog Exercise 2: Surrealism

Task: Give your personal comment on a selected masterwork (either painting or photography), in the context of Surrealism.

After looking through other examples of great surrealism works that was shown in the lecture, I looked around the internet for more examples of surreal art, especially in photography. Then , I stumbled across the works of Robert and Shana ParkeHarrison.

Their work appealed to me because of how they relate so much to reality but yet is so far from reality.

I particularly liked this picture, titled "Garden of Selves" under the series "The Architect's Brother".



I think that this photograph is one of the most effective ones out of the series.

This reflects how everyone in this world have a lot of dormant identities in them. They may not all be active, but they are still there. This picture portrays how the number of different facades and identities one person have could eventually form a garden of them. Every single one of your identity might look similar but might be different inside. However, only one of your identity is in action, 'awake' in every point in time. However, thousands and thousands of 'selves' lies asleep, dormant untill needed.

The colours and lighting used in the series of photographs by Robert and Shana ParkeHarrison are all similar. The dark serious tones shows the clarity of reality and the seriousness of the issues they are addressing with this photographs.

I also liked how this kind of photographs might disturb some people while it will make others think about themselves.

Out of this sea of thousands of selves... which one is the true you?

Assignment 3: Focal Length and Symbolic of the Sun

This assignment was more interesting as compared to the rest. The first few assignments revolved mainly around technical aspects of photography and very little on the creative side. I am usually more interested in the artistic and creative side of photography.

We were given the assignment to capture the differences in focal length, high and low key photography and to try to take a 'zoom-shot'. My group have always wanted to go out together and take photographs, so we took a day off on Sunday and went off to take pictures around Chinatown area.




This was one of the first few pictures that I took. I thought it was a relatively good shot showing a leading line to the center of the picture. As a wide perspective shot, I personally liked it because one can really feel your attention going into the center of the photograph.

Another wide perspective shot was taken later in the night when I went to the airport and took pictures of the chairs at the airport. This was also a wide perspective shot, except that it is of a smaller scale as compared to the previous one.


Close perspective shot, or the zoom-in one as I remembered, was a photograph showing the fine details of something very small or have lots of details. I liked this shot that I took of a traditional pancake maker found in the National Museum.



At the museum, I attempted to take my zoom-shot but was stopped by the security because although non-flash photography is allowed, tripods are not allowed in the museum. So using my bare hands, I tried to take a zoom shot, using my group mate as the subject. Surprisingly, my hands were steady enough and the shot came out pretty alright.



As for the theme, symbolic of the sun, I wanted to find something very common that we can see, but we usually will not link it to the sun. I found this drain cover near a plant that really resembles the 'shape' of the sun and its rays. Though the colours and the nature of the photograph did not suggested anything bright and sunny, I still think that it is a good picture for the viewer to decode.

Thus I decided to take a picture of it.

Assignment 2B: CNM Action shots!

My group chose to cover 2 different events to cover this topic. We were supposed to take some action shots of Communications and New Media students and teachers interact and be able to show this action on film.

My group first agreed to cover the module NM3217: Publications and Graphics Design.

This class is carried out in a computer laborotory environment. The main thing that I wanted to capture was an act of utmost concentration. Most of the students were given things to work on their workstation and I walked around looking for a good moment to capture.



This shot was taken from the front of the classroom where the teacher's desk is placed. It aims to show the 'look of concentration' that is on the student's face and from the perspective of the teacher.

Though this is not as obvious in this scaled down picture. The actual picture had a bit of problems with the lighting. This was brought up to me during the critique session. I decided that I will make changes to this by changing white balance. The editted shots will be uploaded at a later date.



This picture is one taken from the back of all the students. I wanted to use this to show the perspective of a student. I want to viewer to feel like he/she is one of the students in class and is participating in the class.



This was taken at Contrast 2008, an event organised by the Communications and New Media department. It is a 24 hour game design competition where students spend the night in the computer laborotories creating a game from scratch.

I wanted to take a shot that shows how critical time was in this competition. At the same time I also wanted to show teamwork within the groups of students. This picture was thought to be a bit too yellowish. I learnt that I could adjest white balance on Photoshop to adjust the colours such that it is not this yellow. Again, editted photos will be posted later.

Through this assignment, I learned about how hard it was to find the correct moments to capture during these events. The moments don't happen for a long period of time and it is critical to snap at the right time. I also learned the skill of how to capture the picture without getting attention from the subject. This is very critical in the action shots as you will not want the subjects to be staring straight at the camera.

It was an essential lesson well learned.

Assignment 2A: Aperture and Shutter Speed

During the lecture, we learned about how the shutter work and how shutter mode and the aperture mode affects both the shutter and the aperture at the same time. We also looked at depth of field and how this can be utilised to show the different effects that can be done on photographs without any manipulation.

For one, objects can be frozen in action.



This is a coin that was spinning when this shot was taken. Due to the very high shutter speed, the coin seem to be stationary and not moving.

Then, I attempted to show the difference in depth of field by using 2 similar pictures of the same subject.



The first picture has a deep depth of field while the 2nd one has a shallower depth of field. This can be observed if one look hard at the let top corner of the two photographs where in the first picture, a nail can be seen , but is totally blurred in the 2nd picture.

A shallow depth of field can be used to focus on the subject and take away the attention of the viewer from the background.



This picture is taken in the Arts Canteen and the focus is on the bottle but not the background.

I found this exercise very critical to my knowledge in photography. I have never bothered to find out about why the background was blur and why certain pictures are able to maintain clarity only in the foreground or on one object. I found this technique useful, even in everyday photography.

Because one's attention is usually focused on one object. And using this method, I can direct the attention to the object that I want the attention to be on.

Assignment 1: Subject Elements

The theme for this week's assignment was subject elements. Basically we had to take photographs based on the following subjects:

• Lines
• Colour
• Shape
• Texture
• Lines
  

We were told to only take pictures around NUS and I decided to head for the School of Engineering just for a change of environment.

First of all, I found a row of lockers in the School of Engineering. It was a great subject to take a photograph of because of its location in a hidden corner of the school with an appropriate amount of lighting, soft but still bright enough for the photograph.




And, I found out that there were some sort of texture on the canteen pillars and I decided to take a picture of the texture of the wall along with the rising sun in the morning.




Then, after that, I found another subject that I really wanted to take a picture of. It was a colourful cactus plant that was outside the offices in the Engineering School. This photograph not only shows the sharp texture of the cactus, it also shows the vibrant colours of the plant.



For 'form', I managed to find a good angle to take a picture of the foot of a road side lamp. It appears to have a good form at that time as it has a shadow which seem to enhance its 3D effect.



However, as it was a group assignment, in the end, only my 'Lockers' photograph was presented for the critique session along with photographs taken by my other group members.