Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Ah, what is wrong with TV?



This one is just for fun. Enjoy!

Tuesday, February 9, 2010

My PWOP


Since you have posted your "portraits without a person," I thought I would share with you one of mine. I took this shot while studying for my preliminary exams. My apartment was so small, I studied on the porch during the fall months before it got too cold up in Minnesota. To sooth my anxiety about the whole experience, I would bring out candles and a camping light to read by. One night, after getting up for a glass of water, I came back to this scene and I had to stop and take the picture!

Still images v. moving ones

Is there a difference in how we respond to photographs versus video? Of course, since the 1920s, filmmakers and scholars have thought and wrote about the different attributes of films and photography. Eisenstein wrote of the collision of meanings when two images are juxtaposed with one another. Houston talked about slicing up the images in a room to represent the experience of being in that room. In the meantime, filmmakers began to control space and time to give their viewers a visceral experience.

But what about the still image? As with all images, doesn't it communicate a sense of "being there" evoking emotions?

Well, lets bring this conversation up-to-date. Recently Anderson Cooper "saved" a child in Haiti. Yep, re-read that sentence. Ok, he pulled him from danger and into safety might be a better way to put it. In any case, AC's blog posted both the still images photojournalists took of the event and the CNN clip of the same action. Look through the still images before you click on the video to see how you experience the difference between the two.