Lecture 4 - pictures!

I really enjoyed this lecture! It was about telling stories with the use of pictures. It is definitely a kind of journalism that has become more predominant in our society thanks to digital imaging and the internet.

In the lecture, Bruce talked about the origins of pictures and the importance of picture stories in history. Things such as Aboriginal cave drawings, which have existed for thousands of years and contribute to building a clearer picture of our country's history. It makes me think - are people going to look back in hundreds of years time and look in awe at the pictures that we took? (Thinking about some people's Facebook profile pictures, probably not)

Another amazing this now is how instant photos are. A news story can be created within minutes and include pictures and video straight away thanks to digital media. However, with this idea of digital imaging come issues such as digital manipulation. Photo shopping photos not only creates an inaccurate depiction of events that have occurred, but is harmful to impressionable teenagers when they manipulate photos of female celebrities to make their beauty seem even more unattainable. I think digital manipulation to the extent of fundamentally changing the whole look of a photo is wrong and there should be laws in place to stop this happening.

Another thing that new technology has brought to the media is digital publishing - so being able to download magazines on your iPad for example. It is such an easy way of creating media, and means that simple things like newspapers and magazines are now interactive. As you are 'flipping' through your magazine ads can pop up, you can click on certain words you don't understand and find the definition for it, you can click on something in a magazine that you would like to buy and it will take you to a website where you can do this. It really is amazing and very visually aesthetic.

However, with all the fantastic things that come with digital imaging and publishing, there seems to be a lack of good quality photos in the news. I'm glad that Bruce talked about what makes a good photo in our lecture. This including things such as: framing, focus, the angle and point of view, exposure (light), timing (shutter speed), and being able to "capture the moment". The last one is the 'rule of thirds', which I had actually heard about previously here (and which she then discussed on her blog yesterday). I hadn't really considered the other aspects though, and have since been trying to incorporate them into my photo taking to improve the quality of them. Similar principles apply to moving pictures, which is something I want to experiment a bit more with. So all in all, I found this lecture to be really engaging and had so many practical principles that I am going to make use of!