Friday, April 3, 2015

Photojournalism and Bias

Photojournalism and Bias
photo by Ed Clark
Subjects expression: The subject of this photo appears to be saddened and teary eyed while the remaining subjects in the photo seem saddened but not as much he is.
obvious main subject: The main subject takes up most of the left side of the image,  the right side of the image is a group of women that appear to be grieving as well. The subject appears to be on theouter portion of the photo.
what feelings does the image create: This image creates sorrow, just looking at this image made me feel for the subject, and how he felt at that moment.

      In this image I see a black man in a naval uniform tearfully playing the accordion, and appears to be looking at something. Their are also a group of women gathered near him, which also appear to be grieving for some reason. This image mad me sad and I felt sorry for the subject because he seemed to be distraught. Professor Nordell said "yellow journalism, brought in big photographs and big articles to sell more papers" I believe this happens all the time especially with magazines such as Peoples or The National Enquirer. They wanna show a story that will sell money. How many people would have bought this magazine with that photo posted on the cover? It would've sparked a lot of curiosity.


TRUTH:
photo by John Kolesidis
keep it simple: The image just has the police officer and rioter as the main subjects, the background is almost blurred out and you're unable to really focus on anything else but the 2 subjects.
use of shadows: The image shows glare on the police officers face shield so you are unable to identity who the officer is, clever if you don't want to reveal the identity of the police officer, but wouldn't that be the point?
texture: This image just creates a very scary feeling, when you look at it over and over again. The image has blood pooling from the victims face and the officers arms, the blood is bright red and shines against the subjects body in the photograph.

       I feel as if the police have gotten a bad rap lately with the news broadcasting several police shootings and beatings. I believe this is the truth because its happened police brutality is out there especially at riots. This specific riot occurred in Athens during the Greece economic crisis in 2011. Some police have abused their powers and many cases have risen in police brutality, so I know that this can not be a doctored image. I also found the quote by Vanya which said "Technique is integral to image-making (obviously), but it should service the story first and foremost; the type of image being produced should never dictate the story." After reading that quote I took another look at this image and thought did image really do what the photographer wanted it to show or is it just making the police  look bad? What did that man do in order to be apprehended like that. Then i cam across another quote of Vanya that said: "A technically proficient image may trick the viewer into thinking he or she is seeing something of substance, of what is commonly referred to as truthful."


NOT THE TRUTH:
photo by unknown
abstraction: this photo is a doctored image of Oprah in the body of a famous actress. She is seen as this thin and beautiful woman sitting on a pile of fortune,when in fact that body does not belong to her.
exposure time: A slower exposure might have been used so that the diamonds and sparkles on Oprah's dress would shine in the photograph. Even her eyes are bright and shiny.
quality of light: The amount of light on this image makes Oprah seem remarkable, she is glowing while sitting on top of that pile of money.
      I chose to write about this image because of what I mentioned above about the magazines and how they thrive to catch a story that will sell. Professor Nordell said " what might be the real truth of the situation" I don't believe that image is the truth because to me it looks very altered. In fact after doing some research I found out that this image in fact had been doctored with Oprah's' head. The original image is of a actress, Oprah's' head was doctored into it. Professor Nordell said "that they began to discover that  photo's of non criminals would be of legitate news interest"

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