Krisi Harvey

My name is Krisi Harvey and this page was created for VAP 200_Su15.

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Assignment 7 - Before and After

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Assignment 6

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Assignment 5 VAP 200

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Shore, Mental Modeling

When taking a picture, I try to mentally plan the space within my photo before I take it (if I have time).  I know I have the tendency to like taking close up pictures and emphasizing small details, but there are also photos that when you step back and see a subject and it’s surroundings, it lets the viewer’s eyes travel within the photograph and look at different things rather than one point. In terms of a light source, I would consider what kind of light I am working with and what direction is it coming from.  The most simple example of this is when you are taking a simple picture of a friend and how you set them up for the picture.  Usually, you don’t want to have them facing the sun because they are more likely to squint their eyes and be over exposed.

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Assignment 4 - Krisi Harvey

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Shore, The Mental Level

When we look at a photograph, there are many things that affect how we perceive the image.  For example, if there is simply a picture of an apple with a white background, and that’s it, the focus is simply on the apple.  On the other hand, if we look at a busy landscape picture of downtown New York City, there would be more to take in and absorb, giving the eyes more areas to wander.  When initially looking at a photo, we tend to first look at what is in focus, but we don’t instantly think about the attributes we read about in Shore’s chapter about the depictive level.  Mentally, I feel like I tend to look for a subject first (but not on purpose), The photograph focuses our eyes to a particular area or possibly nothing specific.  I would be curious to know if there is psychological study about how we mentally break down an image.

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Assignment 3

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Shore: The Depictive Level and Szarkowski: The Photographer’s Eye

When reading the Shore text, four specific attributes of photographs are listed: flatness, frame, time, and focus.  The author explains that these four attributes are what define the picture’s depictive content and structure (38).  Paying attention to these attributes can make wonderful photographs and create a moment that isn’t seen in real time.  This isn’t so much a “chance” kind of photo; the photographer makes a decision and plans. Szarkowski describes several elements of photographs including the thing itself, the detail, the frame, time, and vantage point.  He discusses how people viewed photography has changed.  People used to say that photographs “couldn’t lie”, but now people can change an edit what they see, such as temperature and white balance. The author shows that these attributes create a photo, rather than the subject of the photo taking all the credit.

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A little graphic to help you understand depth of field and aperture, shutter speed and motion, and ISO and digital noise. 

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Intent

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Chance

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Shore, The Physical Level

I had never really thought about the medium of which a photograph is printed.  We create an image that is flat - but the image gives us a perception of depth.  Photography is quite a science, actually.  The chemical composition of a photograph can consist of different things, but that’s not what we see the physical photograph as.  As a non-photography major, I feel like I haven’t been exposed to the physical photograph process since everything for my generation has pretty much been digital.  It’s not as common to print out photos.

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Shore, The Nature of Photographs

One of the interesting concepts of photography is how the image captured may appear different than what the photographer sees with their own eyes.  Even if the picture isn't retouched, it can still look different.  While some may find this as a disadvantage. we can use this to manipulate photos in ways we couldn't do on our own.  We can bring focus to different subjects and change the appearance of colors, brightness, contrast, and more to change the mood and message the photograph presents.  Some people can view this as enhancing an image, or “lying” to the eyes. Would you rather see a photograph as it appears to the human eye or see a more quality-based photograph?

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Assignment 1 VAP 200 Su15

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Assignment 1: VAP 200 Su15