Course Reflection

My initial feeling towards the course was uncertainty. I never took a service learning course and didn’t know what to expect. Likewise, I didn’t know much about aphasia and how the clients would behave. I must say that I was very surprise of how talented Bennett and mine client was at photography and her ability to perfectly frame the composition. The first photograph of the door and wreath was very impressive. I was also impressed by the other clients’ improvement in their photography and their ability to communicate with images. The last project about the narrative showed how they can really communicate with pictures quite successfully.

Overall, the course was a good experience and provided a different perspective towards photography. It is easy to overlook the simplest tasks that photography accomplishes. The course was also an eye opener for aphasia and taught me about a disorder that I knew nothing about before signing up for the course.

Independent Project

My project explores the relationship between text and the image (the written language and the visual language). Mainly, my project explores how we visually read text and how lighting, font and framing effects our reading. At the same time, the type of text, or font, totally changes our reading.

My first picture is a good example of how different types of text are read differently. The commercial text of Orlando Sentinel has such a firm placement, completely vertical in the composition and organized. On the other hand, the graffiti text along the Orlando Sentinel moves diagonally and appears more chaotic. Likewise, the graffiti text appears small next to the Orlando Sentinel and has a personal feel unlike the commercial text.

The second picture is a nice experiment with light and how lighting can totally change an image. For this picture, I put a newspaper over a window as the sunlight went through the newspaper. As a result, the newspaper has a transparent quality which allows for the text on the back to seep into the front. This transparency creates a chaotic feeling in which text overlaps other text and the viewer becomes oversaturated with all the information. This kind of portrayal connects with the subject matter of the newspaper in which people are flooded with news all the time. I feel the newspaper text helps enforce this connection.

The last picture is my personal favorite due to its subtlety. The picture is of an abandoned train in downtown. Yet, without me stating this, the viewer can at least tell the object is old due to the dust. What I like about the picture is the ghostly words written on the dust and the elegant motion of how they move along the train, fading away at times. The overcast lighting adds to this ghostly feeling that is created.

Beyond these three pictures, I wanted to create unity through design choices. The addition of red in all the pictures helped make the picture unite as a single series. I also sequence the pictures to move from warm colors to cool colors. The three pictures I chose have the same transition with the bright red of the first to the cool tones of the third picture.

Narrative

I chose the following three images because I found them to best tell a narrative. I had some other images that I personally preferred due to their aesthetics but their narrative was not as strong. Initially, I decided to have a picture of myself in bed and the clock to tell the narrative. I believed that the two images by themselves was able to tell the story. As a result, I had difficulties coming up with a third image that would fit in the narrative. I was exploring with photos of me getting out of bed, but I felt they did not fit with the style of the other two. In the end, I chose the window, because I felt that the light from the window would connect with the photo of myself. One of the concerns was whether the middle photo will fit with the other two. The middle one is the only photo with a person. However, I felt that the usage of the close-up and the prominence of the blue blanket over my face covered some of the human presence.