LAB IS ON TODAY

This week's lab, Monday Oct 29 runs as normal today.

THIS WEEK'S MAS110 MONDAY OCT. 15 LAB IS POSTPONED

Hi all,

Sorry, I'm still not recovered and would only deliver a less than best tutorial for you tomorrow, which I don't want to do, not to mention risk your health, which I don't want to do either.  I hope all went well for your photo essays and I look forward to seeing you again, instead, the following Monday, Oct 22, same time, same place for the first of our computer game design workshops.  By then you'll have enjoyed the first lecture introducing the topic, so should hopefully already have some ideas about how to approach the next project.  It's a good one.

See you then.

sincere regards,

Bronwin

MAS110 Photo Essay: Zoe Nicholson & Jesse Field

Our group decided that the terrace houses of Glebe would make a good sub theme for our Urban scene theme. We expected this would provide some great shots as well as a glimpse of the interesting contrast of both life in the days of early European migrant culture engraved in Australia with the modern urban scene that has developed around the area today. 

It was very interesting to see the significant difference in style, shape and colour of the terrace houses on our walk through the heart of Glebe. But what we found more interesting was the way some of the houses in their own way defined the people living in them. As an example in one of the photos in the photo essay, a bicycle is visible on a verandah of one of the terrace houses. It appears to be in good condition without rust or spiderwebs so we can assume that someone in this house rides a bicycle frequently. Other houses displayed various arrays of pot plants, wind chimes, fairy lights all in an attempt at some individuality in the seemingly perpetual lanes of terraces.

In retrospect, we had a great time taking the shots and putting the movie together and we managed to get a fairly decent range of photos to choose from for the movie. We were quite satisfied with the end result and were inspired by the theme to learn more about 19th century culture in Australia.

References:

Murray, S 2008 'Digital Images, Photo-Sharing, and Our Shifting Notions of Everyday Aesthetics', Journal of Visual Culture, vol 7, no. 2.

Music: "Dewdrops" by MAC OS X Garageband

Photo Essay: Kathryn Mansour and Brianna Burkett

As outlined by Murray, photography "whether professional or amateur" (Murray, S 2008)  is a platform for expression and interpretation. The eye has the ability to look past the mundane aesthetics of the everyday, in search of deeper, redefined forms of beauty. Thus, a common everyday theme of leaves, specifically fallen leaves are common aesthetics that hold potential for alternative and inspiring textures, colours and patterns. Furthermore, the typically mundane, forgotten, stepped-on fallen leaves are mediums for the redefinition of beauty in the everyday.

The theme for our photo essay is Leaves, with the sub theme Fallen Leaves. We have captured our photos using a Canon D6500, and have photographed our subject in Sydney's Inner Western suburbs.
By means of iPhoto, we have saturated our images in order to resonate warmth and the turn over from Autumn to Spring. This, we believe is an illustration of the ways mundane leaves are given further meaning and beauty. Our 30 second movie clip was created using iMovie. We have chosen the song Orange Crush by composer George L Smyth. This song comes from the soundtrack Sounds of Ambiance, and resonates warmth and natural tranquility. We believe this will reveal to the audience the natural, textured beauty of fallen leaves despite the neglect they face as everyday aesthetics.

References:

Murray, S 2008 'Digital Images, Photo-Sharing, and Our Shifting Notions of Everyday Aesthetics', Journal of Visual Culture, vol 7, no. 2.

Music: Song - Sounds Of Ambience Show #28 - Orange Crush
Composer - George L Smyth
Collection - Rory Tory/Netlabels
NonCommercial - Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0

Photo Essay - The Rusted Decay - Nicholas Aria, Crystal Kim & Leticia Villalba

Nicholas Aria, Crystal Kim & Leticia Villalba

Photography, “whether professional or amateur” is a powerful medium which allows for one to express their emotions and feelings. In everyday digital photography, there is an implicit acknowledgement that rests upon old versions of the self as well as collections of objects and experiences encountered in everyday life. The theme of our photo essay, ‘Urban Jungle’ and the sub-theme, ‘The Rusted Decay’, explore the urban eye and it’s ongoing decay into nothingness. Through our photos and edits we attempt to locate the beauty and ‘everyday aesthetics’ of everyday mundane and forgotten run-down infrastructure. This is why the style of our photos resemble the new category of photography, ‘ephemera’, which seems to speak to a new aesthetic and function.
 We have saturated the colours of our photo in order to convert feelings of sadness and loss and shift them into a new idea of liveness and beauty which highlight the confluence of digital technology.

Through programs such as iPhoto and iMovie, we edited the style and look of these images, increasing saturation, definition, position, contrast, fading of music etc. Furthermore, we only used two transitions throughout the entire video to allow for a smooth flow in between each image. The music also complements the video creating a feeling of longing in relationship to the temporal in urban aesthetics. We used the track ‘Sandstorms’ from the band Thunderthief, we obtained copyright permission through Nick asking the band member/friend Nicholas Johnson if we could use the song (this conversation can be seen below).

References

Murray, S 2008, 'Digital images, Photo-Sharing and Our Shifting Notions of Everyday Aesthetics', Journal of Visual Culture, vol. 7, no. 2, pp. 131-146.

Music: ‘Sandstorms’ by Thunderthief, purchased/downloaded from: http://thunderthiefofficial.bandcamp.com/

Permission from Thunderthief member:

Photo Essay, Water, Luke Amasi 42848229

For the video I made, for the photo essay on 'Everyday Aesthetics' described by Murray in Digital Images, 'Photo-Sharing, and Our Shifting Notions of Everyday Aesthetics', helped me come to grips with the ideal of using everyday items and having the ability to document them via the use of a camera or photographic device, and being able to produce and show them in a way of self expression and visualisation of something so mundane as water into something of a deeper and more spiritual level.

I chose water as my singular ideal of an everyday aesthetic because it plays an integral role in life on earth, i chose many of the natural scenes of water which i had taken on trips to Bali and New Zealand over past holidays because i found the different shades of water due to chemicals in the water quite unique. Also the different ways in which people use water to survive, entertainment and spiritual purposes it has. The photos of the different shapes of waves in the sink i used these photos and others to represent the mystical properties that many cultures view water as having. The supposed healing qualities and the natural 'magic' that many people believe water has, i have tried to represent in this film. 

Water plays an integral part of human life and although it can be manipulated in many forms and used for unnatural purposes like industrial uses, i have tried to give the film a very natural but tribal feel to it with the use of mostly natural photos. But with my editing i did try to add a magical appeal with the coloured photos. Also the use of bright lighting in some photos was used, as i was trying to attempt to give a spiritual appeal to the video.

The music i chose was a natural water sound off Imovie and a bell sound also on Imovie. I also edited the photos and the film on Iphoto and Imovie respectively on an Apple PC.

  
References:

Murray, S 2008 'Digital Images, Photo-Sharing, and Our Shifting Notions of Everyday Aesthetics', Journal of Visual Culture, vol 7, no. 2.

Music: - Imovie sound Water Lake

           - Imovie sound Bell Buoy

Photo Essay - Sporting Equipment: Stirling Coates and Elliot Mills-Connolly

Sporting Equipment

By Stirling Coates and Elliot Mills-Connolly

For our photo essay Stirling and I decided to focus on sporting equipment as both our theme and sub theme. sporting equipment was chosen due to the “everyday aesthetic” (Murray, 2008, pg. 147) of sport, particularly the importance of sport on day to day life in Australia. We see sporting equipment as part of day to day life in Australia that is generally overlooked, thus feeling that we should use this as a perfect example of Harmon’s view that "The nature of photography now is it’s in motion. It doesn’t stop time anymore, and maybe that’s a loss. But there’s a kind of beauty to it" (Harmon, 2005, pg. 1).  Sport is a theme we both feel is a great topic due to the fast paced 'blink and you will miss it' nature of photography while being something that can be captured by the ‘amateur’ due to its accessibility and day to day presence in todays society.

In editing this photo essay through iMovie and iPhoto, we decided that it was best to use filters for the photos as it helped even out the quality of the photos by making them similar through slightly distorting both the higher resolution photos and lower resolution photos to make them feel more balanced. We took the photos outside and around Sydney too show the equipment used in natural setting and also give some variety in environments and lighting. Transitions where also used to help with the flow of the presentation and ultimately bring the presentation together in a nice complete package. 

We chose the song “Starflex” by StatueOfDiveo due to the fast beat and tempo, as we feel that it accurately portrays the heart pounding intensity of sport as a whole while fitting the 30 second time frame that we are limited to. this is combined with the editing to create a quick and concise way to demonstrate the photos we have taken, while being engaging to the audience.

References:

Murray, S 2008 'Digital Images, Photo-Sharing, and Our Shifting Notions of Everyday Aesthetics', Journal of Visual Culture, vol 7, no. 2.

Harmon, Amy (2005) ‘Stop Them Before They Shoot Again’, New York Times, 5th May: Section G, Column 4, pg 1.


Music - “Starflex” by StatueOfDiveo (2011) Creative Commons: Attribution Share-Alike http:/www.jamendo.com/en/track/832955/starflex

PLEASE NOTE

- Your lab tutor Bronwin Patrickson is sick with Bronchitis and may need to postpone next week's lab, Monday Oct 15 to Monday Oct 22.  Confirmation emails one way, or another will be sent out and notice will be uploaded to this blog by 6pm Sunday.  Please let your partner know and check back at that time.

Photo Essay: Teacups Hannah Moore & Melissa Bahrum

 

MAS110 PHOTO ESSAY: TEACUPS

 

Hannah Moore & Melissa Bahrum

 

 

Rationale

 



The theme of cups and the secondary theme of teacups were chosen as a result of their relation to Murray's conceptualisation of the “everyday aesthetic”(Murray, 2008, 147). Teacups capture the “new aesthetic” (Murray, 2008, 155) one focused upon an “ability to locate beauty in the mundane” (Murray, 2008, 155). The emphasis upon a relatively unnoticed everyday object such as teacups works to reiterate the amateur photography trend of expediency or “ephemera” (Murray, 2008, 155) that Murray discusses. Such a choice of theme encapsulates the idea behind social photo-sharing sites such as Flickr that photography works to build a narrative and an acknowledgement of temporality in digital photography.

 

The approach that was taken during the editing process involved alterations to brightness, contrast and exposure in order to highlight often neglected structural and stylistic elements, such as colour and pattern, of the mundane object of the teacup. Highlighting elements such as these is pivotal to the representation of the ' everyday aesthetic'. The aim was to augment the natural beauty of the objects in question. Therefore, it was essential that the photos were not over-edited or stylised. The same aim was addressed when creating the video. Panning, zooming and simple cutaways and transitions were used to highlight, again, the structural and stylistic components of teacups whilst remaining engaging and interesting to the viewer.

 

The music selected for the video essay is an instrumental guitar track; ‘A Quiet Night’ by Roberto Diana was accessed through the Creative Commons search portal. This particular piece of music was selected as a result of the mood and atmosphere it evokes. The song connotes a sense of mystery as well as an atmosphere of serenity. A song such as this, despite its simplicity, helps to lift the concept of teacups outside of a mundane, everyday context, instead, it provides an interesting edge to these objects in an engaging manner.

 

REFERENCES 

 

 

Murray, S 2008, 'Digital Images, Photo-Sharing, and Other Shifting Notions of Everyday Aesthetics', Journal of Visual Culture, vol. 7 issue 2, pp. 147-163

Australian Research Council Centre for Creative Industries and Innovation, 'What is Creative Commons', Pooling Ideas

 

 

Music

 

Roberto Diana (2012), 'A Quiet Night' from: http://www.jamendo.com/en#/en/track/888919/a-quiet-night.   Accessed under an "Attribution-Share-Alike 3.0 Unported" license" http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

 



Photo Essay - Street Art - Olivia Kierdal and Dianna Lainson

Art is the most natural form of expression. It allows one to share one’s feelings, ideas and opinions and is a reflection of identity of an individual or group. Expressing oneself is a part of everyday life, an ‘everyday aesthetic’. An art form which allows public expression is street art, also known as graffiti. Graffiti is a form of communication through words or pictures. While it is sometimes referred to as vandalism, it can also be decorative – often with a unique meaning and purpose behind it.

The video produced was an attempt to showcase a few of the most striking and unique pieces in the inner Sydney suburbs. Its aim was to capture one’s everyday encounter with graffiti as this particular art form relates with each Sydney-sider due to its common nature and popularity. Graffiti is a daily part of contemporary culture. Murray (2008) describes this concept as an everyday aesthetic in the journal ‘Digital Images, Photo-Sharing, and Our Shifting Notions of Everyday Aesthetics’, the everyday image becoming something that amateurs can create. The production of the video includes the use of a Nikon D-3100 Digital SLR, iPhoto and iMovie. The soundtrack supporting the video is Sam Santana’s ‘Mok to Love’, licensed under Creative Commons: Non-Commercial Sampling Plus 2.0, and accessible through Jamendo.com.

References:

Murray, S 2008, 'Digital images, photo-sharing and our shifting notions of everyday aesthetics', Journal of Visual Culture, vol. 7, no. 2, pp. 147-163.

Music: ‘Mok to Love’ by Sam Santana: available at Jamendo, published under Creative Commons: Non-Commercial Sampling Plus 2.0

Photo Essay: Urban Decay

By Georgia Spencer and Hayley Vesperman

We chose to depict the concept of 'Urban Decay' in our video. The main themes this video portrays are isolation and abandonment. Each picture evokes a sense of loneliness and decay within the audience. 

During the process of capturing each image, we considered camera angles, texture and contrasting colours that would assist in enriching these themes. For example, close-ups of rust and graffiti evokes a sense of degeneration and neglect. 

When capturing images we also chose to focus on certain prominent features in order to create a sense of isolation and singularity. 

We each took 24 photos over the space of two weeks in several separate locations using a Canon 50D digital SLR. Locations included the suburbs of: Terrigal, NSW; North Avoca, NSW; Riverstone, NSW; Kenthurst, NSW; Schofields, NSW. We chose these locations in the exercise of differentiating each photo from one another so that we were able to choose from a wide variety of images for our final photo set of 24. 

We utilised the iPhoto software to edit the images, focussing on increasing saturation, definition and enhancing the shadows of each image to give the image set a cohesive personality. 

iMovie was used to collaborate the 24 images in a way that allowed a consistent flow through the use of the 'Ken Burns' effect. A panning effect was added to the clips in order to focus on a prominent aspect of the image that reflects the themes of the video. We also utilized the 'Cross Dissolve' effect to add to this cohesion. 

We used the website: www.jamendo.com to download a piece of music to complement the images in the video. We used the song 'Games' by the artist: The Windy City. This song is available through Creative Commons and has a Attribution-Share Alike (BY-SA) license. We chose this song as the repetitive lyrics 'by myself' create a lonely atmosphere, alluding to our main themes. This song can be found at: http://www.jamendo.com/en/track/767990/games .

We used the article Digital Images, Photo-Sharing, and Our Shifting Notions of Everyday Aesthetics as the basis for our themes and the way in which our photos were taken. 

This video can be found at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bO_yoS8rero

REFERENCES:

Murray, Susan. (2008) Journal of Visual Culture, Digital Images, Photo-Sharing, and Our Shifting Notions of Everyday Aesthetics; SAGE, pp.132-148.

Article in MAS110 Reader: What is Creative Commons in Pooling Ideas. (2009) Published by the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation. pp.151-168. 

Online Media: 'Games' by The Windy City, downloaded from http://www.jamendo.com/en/track/767990/games. Site accessed: 11/10/2012.

MAS110 PHOTO ESSAY RATIONALE: ALLEYWAYS

MAS110 PHOTO ESSAY RATIONALE: ALLEYWAYS

By: Morgan Loveday and Rosemarie Cruz

In the present society, our cultural adaptation of the quick, immediate and temporal capture of reality is understood as the shortcuts of the "everyday" life. The representation of that "shortcut" to a destination grasps this idea of recognising an alleyway's purpose in creating pathways for the everyday person to arrive at a destination in a short period of time. All around the world these passageways appear unnoticed and unappreciated for its purpose thus grasping the essence of the "everyday" aesthetic. As a sub-theme we thought alongside this concept of alleyways, the idea of journeys for an individual to walk or in this case, run through life not noticing the surrounding environment to get to a certain destination which these alleyways allow them to get to rapidly. Murray (2008) emphasises this understanding of the "everyday" culture of photography as being organised around ephemeral themes and collections. By doing so, this concept of "ephemeral themes" demonstrates alleyways to be a temporary sense of noticeable and appreciated passageways in the everyday life. 

Inspired by the film Touch of Evil, directed by Orson Welles (1958), the dark tones moulds into the flow of the narrative alongside the music composition. These characteristic between the dark saturation of the shadows with the bright tones of the open area, we composed to fit a dramatised theme and narrative of a journey within alleyways from one position to another. Accompanied by the music derivatives of ponopower, the emphasised beat in each transition of photographs creates this mysterious realm that befits the essence of the everyday aesthetics. As majority of the photographs are in motion, the journey throughout the alleyways and how this everyday aesthetic, becomes artistically represented as "shortcuts"to the destination, thus immersing the viewer in the journey that we composed together. By creating variations between motion and stationed photographs, this effect produces a balance within the narrative of the video and a sense of direction in the journey. The transitions between each photograph allows a sense of continuity in the flow of images but through simple transitions, we believed that the quality of the photographs should not be overpowered by the effects as the melancholic ambience is emphasised through iPhoto and iMovie. 

Photographers and Producers: Morgan Loveday and Rosemarie Cruz

Music Composer: ponopower - soft loop

References:

Murray, S 2008, 'Digital images, photo-sharing and our shifting notions of everyday aesthetics', Journal of Visual Culture, vol. 7, no. 2, pp. 147-163.

Music - "soft loop" courtesy of ponopower: Available at http://www.jamendo.com/en/track/909441/soft-loop, published under a Creative Commons Attribution, 3.0 Unported Licence, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0, accessed 9.10.12

Welles, O 1958, Touch of Evil, DVD, Universal Studios, France.

Music – “Runaway By The Past” courtesy of PeerGynt Lobogris: Available athttp://www.jamendo.com/en/track/596332/runaway-by-the-past, published under a Creative Commons Attribution, NonCommercial, ShareAlike 3.0 Unported Licence, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/, accessed 5.10.12


 n.b. If you use share alike media you have to publish share alike yourself

Mas110 Photo Assignment: Mailbox

MAS110 Photo Assignment Rationale

By Kathryn Camilleri & Andrew Gillin

Our choice of mailboxes as our theme for this photo assignment with a sub-theme of varied textures was influenced by Susan Murray's article in Journal of Visual Culture, as she explores the creation of photo blogging sites such as Flickr in which uploaders are not involved in distinctions between amateur and professional photographs, but rather in many online communities that seek to enhance the value of inanimate, everyday objects.

We chose mailboxes as our everyday object and set out to find a wide range with a definitive set of textures, evidently providing a varied perspective of existing mailboxes. We montaged them in ascending numerical order to give it a more linear storyline, thus making it more of an accessible viewing experience for the audience. We decided to capture the photos in the daytime, as receiving mail is primarily associated with midday. In terms of the framing and composition of our photos, we discovered that trying to capture the varying textures and shapes of the mailboxes through the employment of close up shots would prove most effective.

The musical piece used in collaboration with the photo montage is Last Night I Heard Everything In Slow Motion by Oliver Tank. The build-up of the music compliments the ascending order of numbers shown on the mailboxes, and evokes an emotionally reflective response for the viewer. The emotion that we aimed to evoke, by using the musical piece, is a sense of discomfort and not belonging. It gives the audience the feeling that they are looking into a perspective of homelessness (i.e from the mailboxes and address juxtaposed against the lyrics "...you said it will be alright, but i just don't know").

In terms of editing, using iMovie was a creatively enjoyable experience as it is user-friendly and are able to choose a personal aesthetic that was well suited to our chosen photographs, that we think we have positively achieved.

Photographers: Kathryn Camilleri and Andrew Gillin
Musical Composer: Oliver Tank

REFERENCES
Murray, S 2008 'Digital Images, Photo-Sharing, and Our Shifting Notions of Everyday Aesthetics', Journal of Visual Culture, vol 7, no. 2.

Original music track can be found at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ZnqxoGNoHo

Music – “Runaway By The Past” courtesy of PeerGynt Lobogris: Available athttp://www.jamendo.com/en/track/596332/runaway-by-the-past, published under a Creative Commons Attribution, NonCommercial, ShareAlike 3.0 Unported Licence, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/, accessed 5.10.12


 n.b. If you use share alike media you have to publish share alike yourself