Sontag on Photography

This reading displays one of the key reasons that I love photography, that it is timeless. A photograph takes a second in time and makes that one moment last forever. I think that this concept of having a picture that deals with time already and then create a collage that depicts the time aspect in a completely different way. In my collage I am catching that one moment when the cars go by but at the same time I am catching the progression of cars that drive on that street at the different moments and turned all of the single moments into one moment. There was another point that Sontag made in her writing and that is that not only can photographs capture time but also places. For many people who cannot afford to travel the world to see all of amazing sites there are photographs that can capture the magnificence of these sites. Even though I love this aspect of photography I don’t know how that exactly relates to the project, because this is a place around campus that everyone in our class has already seen and with my collage I am exploring the idea a time not as much about the space or area. Overall I love the concepts that Sontag presents in this reading and I agree with the points that she makes. 

Final Collage Process

This is the beginning of my final collage and so far it is looking good but I still have a lot of work to do. First I am going to go back ad fill in the gaps that I am seeing during the day time and hopefully be able to bring in some different colors so that it is not so grey. Next I am going to go at sunset and try to capture the sunset that is going to be on the right hand side of the collage, this will add to the time lapse and the bring in some color. Then finally I am going to go back at night and expand the pictures that I have already taken at night. Right now I am thinking that I will use the white foam core because the top of the collage is already black and I am afraid that if I choose black, the top of the collage is going to blend too much into the foam core. Oh and the tape will be gone and it will be glued together

Updated Collage

After deciding to go with this collage I decided to play around with the outer area to help with finding space. After a critique I decided that space is still an issue in this collage so I am going to go back out and shoot this scene again but capture the bridge that I am standing on but also the cars that are directly below me. I still have to work on the time aspect for this collage so when I go out and reshoot this scene I am going to capture it at different times so that there is a lapse of time from one part of the collage to the other and hopefully it will fully capture the idea of time and space.

A Photographers Eye

A photographers Eye by Szarkowski brings up the idea the many people over time have said that photography is not actually an art form and instead it just presents what the real world shows. This however is not accurate according to Szarkowski who say that photography is an art form because it is all about the prospective of the person behind the camera. The invention of photography gave people who could not afford expensive paintings a chance to be a part of the art world. With photography people were able purchase a camera, take and print pictures of whatever they wanted for a very cheap price compared to paintings. This then added to the idea that anyone can be a photographer and it is not a real form of art. To contradict this there is a lot more to photography then just looking through a lens and pressing a button, photographers that are really good at what they do know how catch detail of the scene around them (which can not be done to the same extent in painting) pick a subject that is interesting and then place themselves in a position that catches the picture like the normal eye would not see it. Even after this though people would say that anyone can do that, and this is true but many people do not know how to capture the scene in a way that the human eye would not normally see the scene.  Photography is unlike any form of artwork, it has given a view of the world but at the same time it gave people ho are not artists a chance to be involved in the art world. Then of course it gave people the ability to capture a moment in time that will never happen again and that itself is priceless.

Bryon Darby Critique

During our Thursday class Bryon Darby came to visit and give a critique of collages and the progress that they have made. What I took away from his critique it that there is a lot of interesting subjects to take pictures of, but mostly it is the prospective of the photographer that makes the picture interesting. I realized that when looking at my collage there is not exactly a sense of the space that I am standing in, so I decided that if I bring the bridge that I am standing on, into the collage, the space will be captured more accurately. Another aspect that I took away from the critique with Bryon is that the ones that really capture space and time correctly are the ones that his eye automatically went to. My collage, as of now, is not representing time and space, however if I bring in the element of time with having the pictures progress through the day then there will be a better description of the time element. There was a lot that I realized when listening to Bryon and many of his ideas I will be able to take away and use through my career as a photographer.

Test Collage's

 This is half of my first collage, what I thought was that if I looked at the tree from a new point of view then the space of the tree might look very interesting. What I found it that it was interesting but very ordinary and I did not like it as much as I thought that I would.

This collage is really interesting to look at because the street changes as the car continues to move. One of the main reasons that I like this one is because of how pure the color is and I think that it catches the eye really well. Unfortunately there isn't  much more I can do to get more pictures so it is just going to have to stay little and hang on my wall :)

This one by far is my favorite collage that I created. The reason is because there is so much potential with what it can be. There are so many ideas for me to try to make it perfect. Also I like how it shows both space, with Iowa Street, and time, with the cars moving. What I would really like to do is be able to create this collage by taking the pictures at different times of the day and then putting them together to make it look like time is progressing as the collage goes farther into the distance. I think that this will be a fun one to experiment with!

Errol Morris Video Response

This video comes to the question of what is truthful photography? Watching Errol Morris explain his take on what is truthful photography to him and to the rest of the photography world, really made me think about what I thought about photography and how I see photography. Some of the ideas that he mentioned in the video that I liked the most were about photography not being about posing a picture, but it is about what is observed at a distance and what the photographer can catch with their eye and camera. He goes on to talk about the fact that no matter what the subject of a photograph is it is always going to be posed no matter what, even if the photographer did not touch the subject. So if all the other photographers say that posing a picture makes it not truthful, then every picture ever taken is going to be false.

What makes a photograph truthful is about the story that is behind the photograph and why the photographer decided to take that picture. So many times when people view pictures they just think “oh that is pretty” and then they move on, but what people really should be thinking is what is the motivation or meaning behind the picture and what is the story. Once the story becomes clear it is easier for the viewer to truly enjoy what is in front of them. In the end the question is not how truthful is the photograph but how truthful is the world that is in the picture?

Ways of Seeing Response

I found this video very interesting even though it was quit long and the quality of the video was very low. The main concept of the video was about how paintings are seen and all the different ways that viewing these paintings can change the meaning of the piece. The narrator gave many examples to how the meaning can change, and the one that stuck out to me the most was when he talked about seeing the paintings through photography. The reason that I felt most connected to this example is because I am a photographer and many of the ideas and examples that the narrator gave were reasons that I love photography. For instance the portability of a 4x6 photograph compared to a 15-foot painting. But the problem about it being portable is that it looses the context of its original location, like an icon in a church. Another example that resonated with me was that when the image is shown through television the viewer can looses the meaning of the image because only parts of it can be seen close up through the screen and the creator of the video can choose to only show parts of the image which doesn’t give the viewer the whole image and thus the story of the image. Through all of the examples that were given there was always one outcome and that was no matter what context a painting is seen in the meaning will always be different.