April 2010 posts

May 3, 2010
My final blog until I decide whether I want to continue this blog or abandon and do something different with a different name. What did I learn about blogging and using visuals? I think the one thing that stands out the most is that the visual element of a blog makes it more interesting. While I'm a writer and love reading what other people write, I sometimes just want them to cut to the chase and also let me see what they're talking about. I'm a visual person, and I appreciate the visual as much as I do the written. Now that the final presentation is over, I also want to address that. The group I worked with was a dream team. It could not have been a more creative and enjoyable experience. Every member carried his/her own weight and could be depended on to do what they said they would. It encouraged me to try putting together my own film, something I've wanted to try but hadn't taken the time. The result was something I was proud of. It also helps me as a teacher since I really need to know how to do these things to help my students with their visual assignments. I just learned that I'm teaching 5 sections of comp II in the fall, and that's going to mean five classes doing a visual assignment. I'm adding one last photo and saying that this is the end for now.

April 25, 2010
My students are finishing their visual projects in comp II this week. I've been impressed with the quality of their work. I'm attempting to upload a video that one group is working on. The subject is world hunger, and it's a group that includes students from the US, South Korea, and South Africa. The groups this semester have really gotten into their projects and are producing some more thoughtful projects than last semester. There is a learning curve whenever using a new assignment, and this one has been no exception. I find that know more about seeing visually each time I teach this assignment. The first 3/4 of the semester is spent working on argumentative writing, then we add the visual elements during the last quarter. Most of the work is done in class, but some of the groups have opted to use Wiggio to connect outside of class or use Delicious to share the sites they're finding. Some of the lectures I give are on design, resources, how we see, and then I show a variety of visuals. Next fall I will be teaching two sections of this class, and I plan to use blogging to a greater degree. This semester it was just for extra credit. Next fall I want to require it and add in some visual elements. (In the video below, there is a watermark on the screen because I used a free program to convert a Windows program to my Mac.)




April 22, 2010

The picture of the woman in white to the right is a photo I photoshopped for a performance I did for a communications class. I removed all context from the photo, leaving only a white background. This was actually my mother's high school graduation picture, but what interested me most was the fashion and the woman--what it said about her at that time in her life. The background actually distracted--it was merely a building, and she was lined up against it. Is it inauthentic to take out the background? It does remove anything that would tell where this was taken and when, but it still doesn't relay any information about why the picture was taken.

How important is context in determining a picture? Can context be changed according to the use of the picture? Context is important in decoding the picture, but it doesn't always decode everything we see. This picture tells many things about the woman, and by removing the building, I can more clearly observe details that may have been lost by trying to focus in on the subject alone. The vintage of the clothing and hair style tell more about when the picture was taken than the background actually does. The flair of the skirt tells us that there is a breeze blowing, so even though the outdoor image is removed, one still has the sense that the wind is blowing.

It's also evident that the subject was a willing subject since she's looking directly at the camera with a very rigid, posed posture. She wanted this moment recorded or allowed this moment to be recorded.

April 19, 2010

I'm still thinking about the film discussion in class last week and what I got from the film Higher Learning. I was thinking about the discussion as I finished a paper for my Woody Allen as auteur film class. One of the theories I examined for the paper is Susan Sontag's on photography as fiction (in her essay "Pluto's Cave"). Her belief (and I agree with her) is that all photography, including film, is voyeuristic and representative--not reality. Another theory that expanded this thought was that all film, fiction or documentary, is fiction. As a means to begin a discussion, some films are effective. I think there is the responsibility to show film that is well done rather than stereotypic--unless the purpose is to introduce students to good film by way of showing bad film. Granted, the terms Good and Bad are subjective, but not unlike a literature course, when we present material on which students are to base their knowledge of literature, using film in class requires one to make judgments on the quality of the material. It just wasn't there with Higher Learning. The characters were flat cutout that represented a type of situation or a type of person. This, in my mind, lends itself more to perpetuating stereotypes than it does presenting a fully realized situation. The question then, is whether an image was even needed for the discussion of date rape, neo-Nazis, and bullying. I think the conversation we had that ended up in discussion of religion could have just as easily taken place without the visuals. I still contend that this film was fluff and that I got nothing new from it.
April 4, 2010

My picture of the old oak tree was taken when I worked for an environmental organization. Part of my job was to take still photos and to write and produce promotional videos. This was the first time I wrote a script. Thinking visually isn't always as easy as it appears. Not only did I have to match the visuals to the script, but I had to find the people for scenes, find places for filming, line up equipment--a cherry picker for overhead shots, help with the editing and select the music. Doing still photography is much easier if photographing things like trees. People and animals are much harder. I've taken a few that are the rare ones that I like.

This tree was one of my favorites. I didn't capture the whole tree, just the parts that had character--the lost limb, the gnarled branches. Oaks have so much more character than many trees, perhaps because they live longer.

One of my other favorite images was purely an accident. I'd taken my son to the zoo and took several pictures of the animals. Near the end of the day I snapped a picture of two rhinos, and at the exact moment I shot the picture, they moved. One turned so that the front of its body curved around the other animal, and it appears that I have a six-legged animal. Without the use of Photoshop, I have an impossible picture.

Visuals, I think, are harder to control than words. Their meanings are so subject to contexts over which we have no control. This old oak to me is a remnant of another time in my life, a beautiful old plant that I stumbled upon near the Mississippi River, while to someone else it will have other meanings or even just be an old tree.