Mini Mystory: From Interpretation to Invention



 Interpretation:



This photo was taken on the way back from our Key Club convention my junior year of high school. We decided to take this photo because we thought it was hilarious that our friend fell asleep like this on the ride home on the bus. Once we realized it everyone on the bus started taking pictures to capture the moment. As for composing the image: at first  I took the photo from behind the sleeping girl’s seat, but soon we realized that in order to get the full effect the photo needed to be taken from in front of her in order to fully show the humor in her sleeping position. What shaped this photo was that since Brooke was sleeping, it was in no way posed and we could take multiple shots to capture the perfect picture. We assumed that she would not wake up. Other background knowledge that shaped this photo was all of our familiarity with Brooke’s funny and quirky personality.

Reflection:

If Broke were instead to take a picture of me it probably would not be as funny, because I would be in a much more normal sleeping position, therefore it would be a lot less entertaining of a photo. If I were to be in an equally funny of a position Brooke would most likely have captured it the same way I did. The caption she would put under such a photo would be something along the lines of “Typical Christine” or implying a dirty comment. She would assume the same things I assumed about her, that she slept like that all the time, and that she was strange.

Invention:

This exercise will change the way I take travel photos because I now realize I never take pictures of strangers.. All of my photo albums on vacation are composed of the people I’m on the trip with, landscapes, or the sights. From now on I want o capture the strangers around me. If I were to take pictures of “others” I would inherently make assumptions about their lives based off their actions or appearance. I think there is no harm in composing photos of others in this way; people naturally make assumptions about the “other” and capturing a photo does further contribute to this. A different way of representing others would be to capture the first photo as a candid and then the second with their permission. This method creates a contrast of how we perceive the other and the way the other wishes to be perceived.

Picniking :)

This week in class we learned about the ethics of digital manipulation. How do we know when a photograph is natural or when it is digitally altered? And is it ever ethical to digitally alter photos? For this blog I decided to alter a photo of my boyfriend and I using picnik.com.

Original Photo:

Digitally Altered Photo:

I made several modifications to my original photo in order to make us more appealing to society’s ideals. For instance I used a "boost" tool as well as adjusting the color saturation to make both of us look more tan and vibrant. This is because in today's media the men and women in advertising always appear tan and sun kissed. Another tool I used was"insta-thin," even though Picnik's tool didn't do much it horizontally shrunk the photo making everything within the frame to appear leaner. This once again shows how society’s ideas influence us, enough to make an "insta-thin" tool on a free photo editing software. Other tools I used were the blemish remover which allows you to remove any imperfections from your skin. I used both Picnik and Windows Live Photo Gallery in order to remove both of our freckles and imperfections. I also used teeth whitener to make my teeth appear whiter. All these tools show the how easily photos can be manipulated to fit into a more ideal form of beauty. One last tool I used, which I found quite funny was "Fake beard." This tool allowed you to paint on a beard in the color and "dapperness" of your choice. Even though I think they invented this tool as a joke, it also can show how males also have a masculine ideal that society pressures them to fit into through media.