Joint Lesson - Faking Photography

In this lesson we learnt about how photos can be changed and change past history. For example, Abraham Lincon's head was taken and placed on someone elses picture. And a picture of Mussolini on a horse, the person holding the horse was removed. The reason for this is to make Mussolini seem powerful and in charge of the horse when really he isn't at all. This is how history can be changed and lots of the younger generation today would be none the wiser.

In groups, we then looked at a picture that had been cropped from an event that could have occured at any time within the past few years as we had no information about the picture, we just had to denotate and conotate the picture. The picture showed an aftermath of buldings, some with debry at the bottom and leaning over to one side. This would be the denotations as we are desribing what we see. The cause of the event in this picture could be a number of things, from gang war, to a hurricane, and these were what we wrote down for the connotations.

Introduction to Photography

In lesson we watched a documentary which explained the many different types of photography from years ago when photography was progressing.

Light is a very serious matter in photography. We learned about how the very little light has a large aperture, and lots of light has a small aperture, which is the opening of the camera lens and how it replicates the iris of the human eye. It controls the amount of light that hits the film. Also when the room is completely dark, with just one small hole allowing light to enter the room makes the image from outside show inside the room upside down.

We created a timeline of the years when different camera were being introduced, most of which go back to 1800’s. Also we chose some artists work to place onto the timeline.

Photography is very imaginative and people can have different views on what we think the meaning of the picture represents.

Towards the end of the lesson we learned about semiotics and representation and the terms signifier and signified when we see an image. Semiotics is the way that we process images.