So I decided for my other photo I would try doing “mobile” art. My friends really like Instagram and most of my experience with taking images involves taking pictures with my camera and downloading them onto my computer and editing them from there. My helvetica picture was done in a similar way. I decided I wanted to try out using my phone for the whole process. So I downloaded Instagram for my phone and took some pictures of my DVD collection. Instagram is interesting in that Instagram pictures you know are from Instagram. They are square which is odd considering most photos are rectangles. I played around with choosing different filters which they have a lot of. I chose a redish filter which I think made the picture look rustic despite it being DVDs. What I also found interesting with using my phone as the camera is that it gives me mixed quality for photos. This one when I saw it blown up was a little more grainy than I expected it to be. Overall the camera in my phone is surprising me in how high the quality is because I’m used to taking a “real” camera out when I want to get pictures.

The readings for this week were very, very hard to get through. I’m not sure how much I’ll be able to apply them to this part of the class, but it was interesting to see how people (attempt to) write about images.

This was my first foray into photoshop, although my roommate Isabel is an expert and everyone should go look at her excellent photography. I’m not a huge fan of how complex it is and how little the buttons are, but I think I did okay so far. I did both photo challenges here and here.

I miss audio - I really liked interviewing people for the small projects we had, strangely more than video. And it got me back into listening to This American Life on a regular basis, which I’m very thankful for. 

I’m more apprehensive going into the image section because I’ve never been very good at photography - I took a class in 9th grade and I was useless. I think it takes a special eye to be able to tell a story through one soundless, motionless image. It will definitely be an adventure attempting to do that for the rest of the semester.

Add a comic book effect to a photo.

Featuring myself and Aja Weston, circa sophomore year.

I used this program to add the effect to the program, because I was out of town and didn’t have access to photoshop this time. I haven’t approached Gimp because of what I’ve heard so far in the class, so I decided to go with a more simple approach this time. I chose this photo in particular because of the contrasting colors, which I think stand out in an otherwise blurry photo.

Take a bad photo, apply a vintage effect, and write something in Helvetica.

Taken in Arlington Cemetery overlooking Washington, D.C. circa 2006.

I used iPhoto ‘08 to put a black and white effect on this photo, and also faded the colors a little and added a vignette, because I find vignettes so tacky and therefore appropriate for this photo project. I have always found this quote hilarious, and so stupid, and thus felt it would be funny to contrast it with a more serious photo that I think is completely out of place.

I found Ron Burnett’s How Images Think a little hard to read. For me it was a bit dense and wordy and took me a while to dissect Burnett’s main points, especially through what I found to be somewhat flowery prose.

What caught my eye, however, was this question Burnett poses:

“Does human participation in and acceptance of image-worlds require new definitions of history and a radical re-imagining of what it means to engage with events, both near and far? Are new definitions of place, locality, and community needed? Are images a dramatic move to an oral culture[…]?”

I was really confused by this incredibly dramatic barrage of questions. I’m not sure I understand what Burnett means by this and I’d be interested to see what others think of it, because it makes as little sense to me in context as it would out of context. 

It may be because I don’t find images to be as much of a cultural phenomenon that Burnett seems to. We are a visual organism - we have eyes, after all. I think that our growing ability to preserve and share images has led to a greater ability to understand life, whether it be a picture of a kid from a country we’ve never visited or a snapshot of a newly discovered virus from an electron microscope. But by no means do I think that this requires a new definition of history - what would that even be? What does it mean to move to an “oral culture” (and are we not one already, in a sense?)? 

I found Burnett’s writing to be wrought with jargon that’s meant only to strike a chord with a certain type of person. I’m picturing a mustachioed,  bespectacled Park Slope resident reading this in his restored brownstone while drinking an organic IPA and flipping through Polaroids, but that may be just me.

my blog article 

my bad photo

my other photo 

So sound was both easier and more difficult than I thought it would be. Once I figured out how to get good sound quality it was easier to produce my audio pieces. I also found writing a script  and practicing it then recording to more planning but eventually worked out in the long run to save time. I like pictures and photography. I decided to try Instagram a bit for my “other photo project today.” Instagram is very good at making things look a lot better than they are. It’s like magic. 

I like the information from the sections we read in How Images Think. 

I really like the idea of recognizing how much people interact with technology. I know to a lot of people not having their technology be it their phone or computer they feel like they are missing part of themselves.

I also feel that people do communicate a lot through images and sharing media. I spend a lot of time sharing interests and images with people through my technology be it phone or computer. A lot of my media has to do with sharing pictures on Tumblr or on Facebook. I’ve recently bought books solely based on their visual appeal rather than any other type of content measure. 

I think I’m a very visual person in general. I often “judge a book by it’s cover.” I like a lot of things based on the art used and how much I like looking at it rather than sophistication or logic based arguments. 

In general people seem to be visual. We do share a lot of visual content with each other.