TIc-tock

Time went past so quickly as it was so similar to the development of information and technology. All these blog postings have brought me to a in-depth virtual tour throughout the blogging world.

By discussing blogging issues and features have somehow enlighten me as being one of the daily blogger myself, it lead me to a more critical analysis thought towards the changes i experience everyday in this virtual society.

As for the other issues on photojournalism, have made a great knowledge boost for me. Especially when I aimed to be one of the photojournalists in future, those ethical matters has somehow educate and remind me to be a responsible media person.

Nevertheless,I am glad i could relate to some of the theories I studied in class to this assignment. This has prove that those theories are applicable in real life. As for a blogger myself, it is vital for me to be responsible in using the correct phrase and words in the process of communication, or in short, rethorically accurate. Meanwhile, attributing to the sources is relatively important.

In a nutshell, this was a mind refreshing and educational cyberspace journey.

More to expect

Photography has just emerged to a ‘higher’ platform to become one of the politics’ methods to mislead each other.

In a recent Israel news from Herald Sun, dated on 11th July 2008. The incident where the photographs were sent out from their authority were been proven doctored.

Here are the photos,

AFP-JAMEJAM ONLINE-SEPAH NEWS

Initially, the real photograph was the one with only 3 missiles but the Israel counterpart wanted to prove their military strengths and manipulated the photo to add in the remaining failed to launch missile.

"The whole purpose of this testing was to send a signal so Iran both exaggerated the capabilities of the missile in their prose and apparently doctored the photos as well.'' commented from one of the photography expert in AFP.

All these incident has bring out a trend of photo manipulation, it was a fact where all the photos we seen today are somehow being edited and is losing its’ originality. (Parrish, 2002) We as the viewer, have to practice our critical eye to not just trust what you really see which seems to be so true. They might be misleading. It also reflects that we are all seeking for the perfection and the ideal ideology but real life does not consist all of it.

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Reference:

Herald Sun, 2008, Iran 'Photoshops' more missiles in war games photo, retrieved on 11 November,2008,
URL; http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,,24003517-5012748,00.html

Parrish. F., 2002, Photojournalism An introduction, Wadsworth,United Kingdom

Eye test

Relating to the previous post about war photography, another article by Patrick Barkham, Spot the difference has given a different perspective towards the authenticity of some war photos.

He pointed out some of the valid examples to controversies like Hajj doctored photographs as below:

The top photo is the original, while the below is the manipulated.

This two before and after photos has made a great influence to the credibility to all fellow photographers and also Reuters as the wired service provider who bought this particular photo. Adnan Hajj, the photographer who was involves in the case, is a Lebanese freelance photographer, have been working with Reuters for almost a decade was charged and fired from alliance with Reuters ( Marlantes, 2006). This particular manipulated photo was actually spotted by a blogger Charles Johnson.

Photoshop is not only the tool to manipulate photos, there is also staged cases like the Qana incident where photos shot in the same scene but the time stamping vary from other agency which was suspected as the later photos are staged and not real.

Undeniable, photographers do not only have to stick to his/her principles, they also need to obey to their respective agencies’ agenda from time to time. In the dark side of the photography line, there are also photos proven that the subjects have been re-arranged to create a greater impact.(Barkham,2008) Ethics issue once again juggling in the person behind the lens’ mind. What is more important to present nothing than the real truth? It is a terrifying fact in some sense, where you can not trust your bare eyes to view photos nowadays. It is indeed a threat to photography world, media, and the society.

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Reference
Barkham P., 2008, Spot the difference, The Guardian UK, retrieved on 11 November 2008,
URL: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2006/aug/14/mondaymediasection.israel

Marlantes L., 2006, “Doctored war photos ignite controversy, ABC news online, retrieved on 12 November 2008,
URL: http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=2288892&page=1

Photos with soul

Wars going on and off have numbed our senses. How long have we stop and look at each and single people dying photographs on the other side of the world? What we see could be just a small part of the whole story. War could be the saddest incident happening in the world, but having it to continue is a more depressing fact.

According to the transcript from media report from http://www.abc.net.au/, Sonja Heizman, 2008 stated a point where there is a war gallery situated in the heart of Croatia’s war spot, Dubrovnik. The War Photo Limited Gallery has been set up in the place not long ago. To many survivors or the victim’s family, they are trying hard to forget how war had changed their life. However, setting up this gallery does not entirely lead to negative flash back, but creating a platform for war photography.

Ethical issues arise where photographs of victims should not be published as it is could be a sensitive issue to the victim’s family. Yes, undeniable, it can be very tough for many local people in there, but it will eventually gives a deeper understanding to what had happen and how painful is that to us human kind.

Once again, the power of photograph are very much stronger than words ( Schiver,1997 ), you could read a thousand words about the war, but it create a rather different image in everybody’s mind. Unlike photographs, it will be only ONE image showing the nearest to the incident.

A tribute to war zone photographers;
A tribute to those who survived.

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Reference:

Heizman.S, 2008, The power of the photograph, ABC Media Report, retrieved on 10 November 2008,
URL: http://www.abc.net.au/rn/mediareport/stories/2007/2051819.htm

Schriver K. A, 1997, Dynamics in document design : creating texts for readers, Chapter 6 The interplay of words and pictures

Photoshop or Photojournalism?

Photos in photojournalism have always been assumed as the most credible sources in the media line as they were taken by highly ethical photographers to present the truth to all the readers.

According to one of the article from The Guardian, ‘Photoshop is killing photojournalism’. Beechner stated that the journalism has becoming less credible compared to what it was in the past. Though there is evidence like the Stalin manipulated photo published in the newspaper way back before the editing soft wares are so common, doctoring photos are coming in as a ‘intruder’ to the photography’s authenticity aspect.

Stalin routinely air-brushed his enemies out of photographs. In this photograph a commissar (Nikolai Ivanovich Yezhov) was removed from the original photograph after falling out of favor with Stalin.

Photographs as the salience of every type of publishing material (Kress, 2006), they provide the first impression to the reader to what the news or message is about. If the photographs are manipulated, reader’s meaning-making process would be deceived from that point. Even so, there is now manipulating ‘guide book’ given by the editors to fellow photographers to lead them to a more ‘professional way’ of ‘changing the truth.

Photojournalism is a combination of photography and journalism where the visual reporting most of the truth. ( Parrish, 2002). Parrish also stated where photographs will be meaningless if it is not being seen by anyone. So, in the end of the day, is still the audience perceiving the meaning behind every picture.

Do we want to see the very artistic point of view to the photographs that make us distort from the sense of reality? Especially in newspaper or magazine, ethically, photographers and editors have the responsible to report what it was in a rather neutral way than playing with reader’s mind by using various tools. Photoshop could be a very useful and creative invention in the first place for us to put our imagination to a rather substantial way.( Parrish, 2002) However, using it to negative purpose or unethically, is pretty much not recommended.

For more manipulated photos

Click on the link below:

http://listverse.com/history/top-15-manipulated-photographs/

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Reference:

Beehner L., 2008, Photoshop is killing photojournalism, The Guardian UK, retrieved on 11 November 2008,
URL: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/jul/16/photography.iran

Kress, G. & van Leeuwen, T. 2006. Reading images. Chapter 6: The meaning of composition.

Parrish. F., 2002, Photojournalism An introduction, Wadsworth,United Kingdom

New media

We are now talking about two way communication, where people are seeking for two-way dialogue. (Gill, 2004) Blogs, forums, chat room are created based on that methodology.

Media convergence, are coming in from everywhere like phones, television, internet, etc. Every single communication tool has added in an important element, which is interactivity to form a new form of media.

Blog as one of the new types of media publishing has few main features that distinguished itself with the ‘old media’.

Principles of eCommunication,

• Blogs also became a platform for amateur journalist and a practical tool for students to communicate findings and share ideas.
  
• New media requires real time elements that keep pace to the rapid changes, as blogs could do that where proven many political campaigns used that as the new communication tool.
• Blogs has lead to a field where users are becoming the content producers, which means they are communicating actively as there is abundant of information can be found over the internet.
• Interactivity factor plays a big role in the new media, Leaving comments, polling, having hyperlinks to link to related information are all evidence of blogs leading the new path.

For more paradigms, click to 10 Paradigms of eCommunication

Anyhow, new media does not have to be replacing old media as they co-exist in the world of communication.

The new way of publishing requires someone who is capable to decodes every media available in the industry as it could be as useful in terms of creativity and breaking through the old style of media publishing.
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Reference

Gill, K, 2004, How can we measure the influence of blogsphere? Retrived on 13th November 2008
URL: http://faculty.washington.edu/kegill/pub/www2004_blogosphere_gill.pdf


Orihuela, 2004, Blogging and the eCommunication paradigms: 10 principles of the new media scenario, Comunicação e Sociedade, Vol. 5, 2004 retrieved on 13th November 2008
URL: http://ojs.portcom.intercom.org.br/index.php/cs_um/article/viewFile/4676/4395

Print Vs Online

The genre change with print based and online documents consist of similarities and differences. Print based documents are based on textual material, while the online one can be a multi-modal basis.

From the layout point of view, print documents has a more direct salience point where the readers usually start from the left of the text, till then end of the material. The reading path is very much restricted (Walsh, 2006). In the mean time, visuals add in is to create a better understanding so that the reader has a better ‘picture’ towards the whole story line. On the other hand, online media provides a non-linear or sequential reading path which gives the audience the opportunity to choose and interact (Walsh, 2006).

Ironically, this phenomenon brings out an issue where the audience could not focus on getting the main idea but rather distracted by various elements like prose or interactivity of the web page (Schiver, 1997). Therefore, designing for online requires more theme based materials, which put all the related information in chunks and separate them to different categories for easier browsing.

The placement of both prose and graphic in these two documents are quite different as the designer can put alone a photo or picture could stand alone in the online publishing. Meanwhile, designer would at least place a caption for the photo if it was going to be published on print media. Prose and graphics are usually used more in web compared to print documents because the trend of retrieving information has transform towards visual cues.

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Reference:

Schriver K. A, 1997, Dynamics in document design : creating texts for readers, Chapter 6 The interplay of words and pictures

Walsh, M. 2006, ‘Textual shift’: Examining the reading process with print, visual and multimodal texts, Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, vol.29, no.1, p.24-37.