Analyzing Documentary Photography-3

• Koudelka might find more interest in places rather than people due to his engineering background. Also, growing up in a scenic area might deter his interest a bit.

• The captions seem to make the visual of the photograph much different than visual alone. It makes one see resemblance between the idea of pollution an death. The caption about coniferous forests disappearing being paired with the picture of open land with no plant life, only signs, brings different meaning and interpretation to the picture itself.

• The vastness of the problem would not be emphasised as much if the pictures were not shown in panoramic. This brings out more of the large are affected and the big problem caused.

• Using black and white seems to bring out the aspect of coal and pollution. If he had used color one might see a blue sky and thus defeat the purpose of exposing pollution.

• The depth and angle these photographs were taken in seem to bring the viewer into them. They are so large and so engulfing that the viewer can't help but feel like a part of the atmosphere, like they are there, rather than feel like a passerby.

Analyzing Documentary Photography-2

These photographs seem to show how mothers love and value thier children. This is only an assumption based on my own personal experiences. Others who have different experiences may see a different message. Also, the mothers expression seems to tell a story. One might be that the mother adores her child and will protect it to any extent, another of a mother that will always be there but will still have her own space, the final one might show a mother that feels as though her child is a burden. However, these are judgements that one should be careful to make because of differences of culture, time, and place.

Analyzing Documentary Photography-1

• This photograph was probably taken in the 1950's in the late fall or early winter. It was most likely taken in a large city, possible New York, Paris, or Atlanta.
  
  
• The individuals in the photograph are most likely husband, wife, and mother or mother-in-law.
  
  
• These people are probably of higher class and live without financial concerns. The man seems to be outgoing and a jokester. The older woman might be more profound and opinionated, while the younger woman is more of a go with the flow type.
  
  
• This photograph was probably taken for the purpose of family memories.
  
  
• The clothes are fashionable and flashy. They style and black and white of the photograph infers its age. Knowing the approximate age leads one to believe that the furs the women are wearing are not synthetic which would make them more expensive. The individuals facial expression show a bit of their personality.

Arrangement-Haas's Elephant

Choose http://www.ernst-haas.com/introduction3.html and then choose color, next choose creation. Scroll through to the picture titled "Elephant Kenya, 1970." This picture does an excellent job of comparing the land and the sky. It shows the importance of land by adding the simplest detail of an elephant. The sky's importance is shown through the clouds. The crispness of the colors, the perfect lighting, and the wonderful horizontal division accents these two wonders. They are both shown to be important to survival of life, but their differences are also noticeable. The usage of big to small is also seen here. Haas takes the entire idea of the entire world, the land and sky, and emphasises its importance in a single portrait.

Arrangement-Does it speak to you?

Taken in Montgomery, Alabama in 1958, Martin Luther King addresses an audience about the undeniable need for peaceful protests from the pulpit of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church. Here the main character, King, is the largest single portion seen by the audience. However, the majority of the picture is taken up by King's audience. This uses the idea of "small to big" by showing the people as small although we know that their impact was definitely a big one. While it is true that Martin Luther King lead the people, movements would not have come to pass if the people did not follow through with their passion to be equal. Another strategy used in Moore's arrangement is repetition. The seating of the listeners and their repeating faces emphasises once again their extreme importance to the many movements set forth by King.

Dorothea Lange

May 26, 1895 – October 11, 1965

I chose to do a bit of brief research on this particular photographer greatly due to her strive to bring the truth to the public. Dorothea Lange had the desire to photograph scenes that showed how the world really was. Her most famous photograph, titled “Migrant Mother” (pictured above) was taken in March 1936. It depicts a woman and her two children awaiting the return of her husband and older children at the Pea-Pickers camp. I was drawn initially by her ability to capture these moments with so much dignity, yet the meaning is still profound.

Dorothea Lange, named Dorothea Margarette Nutzhorn at birth, lived her life to the fullest extent although suffering from polio which she was diagnosed with at the age of 7. She began her family in San Francisco where she ran a photography studio. However, with the onset of the Great Depression, Dorothea felt a greater need, and turned her focus towards the economy and the people rather than the studio. This is where the majority of her work comes from. She photographed the unemployed and the homeless, which helped her to attain a job with the federal Resettlement Administration. This guided her to exposing the truth about sharecroppers, displaced farm families, and migrant workers to the public without charge through newspapers.

She is probably most famous for her work towards exposing the forced evacuation of Japanese-Americans to relocation camps post Pearl Harbor. She captured this tragedy with over 800 photographs which were impounded by the Army. However, these photographs are available now in the National Archives.

Dorothea co-founded Aperture, a distinguished photographic magazine, in 1952.

This information was taken from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorothea_Lange where you can also find additional information about Dorothea Lange and view her photographs.

Ernst Haas

Ernst Haas is an excellent and well-known photographer. Famous for his many pictures of celebrities and other famous people, he also did a great deal of Black and White photography. Ernst was a genius in that he could find a brilliant photograph in anything, even a dirty sock. There is a particular portrait in the B & W gallery that intrigues my interest. It is titled "Torn Poster NYC 1966" and can be viewed at http://www.ernst-haas.com/introduction3.html along with his many other wonderful pieces of art.

"Torn Poster" depicts a boy whose face you can only see from the nose down and his eyes are closed. Below him is essentially a torn poster. It also appears that there is a smaller figure of a person walking along the top of this poster. The wonder of this particular photograph is that I'm not quite sure it would work well if he had used color. The black and while aspects allow the imagination to work and to discover that of the torn poster.

"PeelingPaint-Profile, California, 1963" is one of Ernst's color photographs that I enjoy. His usage of color in the particular picture takes hold of the different angles of the paper and accents them so that the eye sees not merely peeling paint, but the face of a beautiful woman on the wall. While it might be interesting to see this picture in black and white, I don't think that the different layers and the idea of the face would be as prevelant.

Charles Moore

This is a powerful photograph taken by Charles Moore in Alabama, 1965. Although there is truth to the meaning of this picture, I would like to first express what is means to me on a personal level.

At first glance, it depicts a man of authority, probably a policeman, forcefully moving a seemingly harmless young man. It appears that he has essentially done nothing wrong, but obviously something that the man of authority did not agree with. The idea that this picture was taken over 40 years ago is somewhat strange because this same act still happens today. Many people are harassed by authority although they haven't done anything "wrong." The idea that our society doesn't seem to have made much progress towards the right treatment of individuals so that we are no longer persecuting the innocent.

Technology, Media, and War

The 21st century leads us into a place of technology. Its availability is quite certain as is the its ease of use. Sharing information globally has become simple and speedy. The Internet makes all things possible along with adding the sense for much needed litigation. Countries that once did not have the technological advances, now do, and thus are more capable of influencing the media.

Insurgents are using technology and the media to influence the people’s thoughts about war. The use of cameras, videos, cell phones, and the Internet along with music, speech, and lighting can create an incredibly persuasive visual. Newsweek Magazine published and article titled “We’re Losing the Infowar” which details this significant change quite well. It shows how the insurgents have become skilled in using the technology to their benefit. This is done not only through warfare, but most dramatically through the media. For instance, filming the sniper assassination of an enemy soldier, pairing it with dramatic music, visual lighting, and dialect that impresses its viewers can be overly persuasive. “The podium has lost its influence” is a powerful statement is noting that organizing as speech, presenting it, editing it, and then releasing it creates a loss of time, and very often leaves the viewers with outdated information. Essentially, we, the United States, need to step up and take a new approach to media and how it affects warfare. View this article at Newsweek by clicking on this link http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16497895/site/newsweek/from/ET/

There are several short videos available on the Internet that reflect upon this idea of media in warfare. Some simply show many sniper shooting, while others show shelling. This type of release to those not directly involved in war influences their thoughts and opinions about the situation. Essentially this type of media is propaganda which allows for certain members of warfare to gain support that they would not otherwise have. You can view these videos at http://www.youtube.com by searching “Baghdad Snipers,” be warned that the majority of these are very graphic.

9/11 Cartoon Reaction

Americans are still being affected by the tragic events of September 11, 2001. The strategically planned suicide crashing of many airplanes into significant political and economical buildings by terrorists is played out by the media in every since, everyday. This particular cartoon does an excellent job of displaying this aspect.

Today, 2007, September 11 is not the topic of everyday discussion nor is it something that the general public tends to think about as they go about thier daily lives. However, it seems that as much as we might not want to discuss or think about it, it is there, it is everywhere. The mass media is cashing in on a tragic situation and in doing so they are making certain that everyone remembers. The idea here is not that we should "forget" about it, but that the media should find a new focus. Those individuals who do not wish to relive those events should not be subject to doing so. This cartoon displays how an ordinary person living an ordinary life doesn't make it a point of bringing September 11 to mind, and why should they, the media does it for them. Basically, the idea of this cartoon is to say to the mass media "let it go."

Personal Intro

My name is Bekie Smith. I am the mother of three beautiful children; Garrett 6, Bailey 3, and Alyssa 9 months. Currently I am not working at the request of my wonderful husband so that I may continue my college education and obtain my degree in a much shorter time span that otherwise would happen if I were working. I am studying for a Bachelor in Business Marketing and also Business Economics, although my ultimate dream is to coach gymnastics and to have my own instructional studio. I studied gymnastics from the age of 2 until I was 16. I have also dabbled in coaching with the Special Olympics, though in the area there is not a great demand for their gymnastics program. I do however plan to complete the required programs to obtain my certification upon completion of my Bachelor Degrees. People always ask "what do you want to do with your degree," here it is; I would like to get into the printable marketing industry. This may include designing advertisements for magazines, newspapers, billboards, ect. Other areas such as internet advertising, web design, and company logo design also spark my interest.

Some other general information about myself:
I was born into a military family, therefore when I was only a few months old we moved to Frankfort, Germany where we lived until I was three years old. We then moved to Texas which is where I grew up. We lived there until my father retired when I was 13 years old, we then moved to Indiana where both of my parents are originally from. My father passed away in the later part of 2006 from an illness he contracted while serving in Desert Storm.