Dennis Dunleavy

Digital Days: Day 38

 

This is Bob Pennell, the photo editor of the Medford Mail Tribune speaking to my photojournalism class today. Bob talked about were some of the recent trends in the news industry and how pretty much anyone with a camera and a computer can generate content. In many ways, this trend appears to be devaluing what journalists so best -- cover the news. The question of whether or not people will pay for news content should be settled soon -- news organizations have never been able to work for free. The issue is how much do people really care about what is happening in the world and are they willing to pay for it?  Bob mentioned that a city council meeting will only get a few hundred hits on the newspaper's Web site, while a story about orphan Chihuahuas will get 40,000 hits. Does this mean people care less about what goes on in their city and more about dogs? Is it possible to generalize what people value in society more -- information or entertainment? 

 

These folks are great -- sort of like the groundhog seeing its shadow in the spring. As soon as tax time rolls around up pops these people in Statue of Liberty dresses listening to their MP3 players and waving their arms around to attract business for a tax services firm. I admire these men and women, because they are doing what they have to do to make a living.

 
  I think I'll call this one McLight.

 
Okay.. So which one of these things should I do first?

 
Apartment building with and without air conditioners.

 
Moon-roof-scape.

 
Pokemon tournament.

 
Wooden forms for a cement housing foundation.

Digital Days Project: First Month

I have just self-published my first book of digital images made with my iPhone.

The experience began during the first of the year, and I have been calling the project my book of Digital Days, since I make several images wherever I am during the day. There is no particular design or intention to making the images. I see something that appears interesting or different, perhaps it is just something I have seen a thousand times before, and I make a picture. I started thinking about this project while considering the purchase of Canon's hot new 5D camera. Great camera, but it doesn't afford the creative-in-the-moment feeling I have these days. I can live with less quality if I am expressing what I feel from moment to moment.

All of this builds on the idea I have been living with for more than a decade now -- we live in the age of instant -- instant gratification, instant messaging, instant coffee (yuck! how 60s), and anything fast -- fast food on the fast track. Our lives are mediated through the electronic gadgets of our times, including those we perceive the world with.

When I look at these images my comprehension of what "art" means is totally turned on its head. Here is a sampling of my first month on the project.

January 7, 2010

 
Big Screen TV

 

Starting out a new year with day after day of rainy bleakness.

January 9, 2010

  

I am not a fan of laundromats, but have had to get used to them. The best I can think of about having to do your laundry is that you have time to walk about with the camera phone and look for things. My two favorite places to make digital day photos is the pet shop and the Dollar Store.

  

Ferrets asleep in the pet shop. I love the quality of this image -- it's like some strange blend between trance and taxidermy. Frederick Franck observed, "Onlookers we are, spectators...Subjects we are, that look at objects. 

 
Lizards always appear to be more mineral than organic for some odd reason.

  

Dried flowers on display at the Dollar Store. I can't get enough of this store visually. The amount of color all packed into a small space is overwhelming. I can't imagine what the clerks must think of me walking through the aisles with my iPhone. They probably think I am some sort of auditor. Nobody has ever asked but I am always prepared to tell them that I capturing the world the way I see.

January 12, 2010

  

Nice One!

 

We find someone's voice in almost everything we see, on walls, on street signs, bumpers, and even on our bodies. Tirelessly, we attempt to communicate our fears, desires, needs, and directives toward one another in anyway we can.

  

I am not sure why this message would be posted on a bathroom stall, but it caught my eye.

January 14, 2010

 

This is all that remains of a really good pear and custard pie.

  

This is work.

 

There is either a leak in the roof or someone has figured out a cool way of drying out their umbrella in the newsroom of the Ashland Daily Tidings.

  

I find myself spending a lot of time looking down at things now. The world is opening up. Everything becomes a picture framed, frozen and fixed in time. Yet the moments move from one scene to the next, one day to the next. Everything is discovered and rediscovered in this space of time.

  

The image doesn't have to mean anything.

  

When I consider the presence of a great Spirit or Creator or God, I think of light. Light envelops us, but what we actually see is such a small portion of the spectrum.

 
I shot it this way.

  

January 18, 2010

  

The dream lives on.

January 19, 2010

  

 
  

  

  

What are we looking at? What are we looking for? Today, the digital camera, especially the camera phone, has become a part of our "WYSIWYG" or What You See Is What You Get culture. Millions of images are made every day. What do they all mean? This shutter culture inhabits us -- a surrogate memory -- an alter-consciousness. What if we didn't make the picture and the moment just silently slipped by?  Rhetorical question? Yes, another would soon replace the first.

  

Windstorm aftermath.

  

Wanted for questioning.

 
Lines in the sand.

 
People who ride their bikes in the rain have strong hearts.

  

Despite the limitations of quality available in most camera phones, there is a wonderful sense of freedom of not taking myself so seriously with the camera. Why would I ever make a more formal image of such a scene? I am not sure. No audience for the image would be my guest. I've always felt obligated to meet the expectations of others as a photographer, not simply make pictures for the pleasure of making pictures.

  

In the middle of a conversation with a colleague I stopped, looked down at the table we were standing near, and pulled out my phone. Excuse me, I have to make this picture. Why do some things shout at me?

 
Sometimes the only way I wish people could hear me is through the pictures I make. I think they might understand me better. Words cannot often say what an image can.

January 29, 2010

  

 
Why does everything have to make sense. Most of life doesn't.

 

  

  

What does it mean to re-present the likeness of another? In a digital age aren't all just pixels, 0s and 1s, the copy without the original perhaps.

February 6, 2010

  

This was a double take. The kids and I coming down a muddy lane. Did you see that? What?

That... and so we did.

What makes a good picture?

So many beginning photographers have difficulty accepting the fact that not every image they make is "good."  More than anything else it all seems to come down to taste and personal preferences.  Every image is loaded with cultural, ideological, moral values. Values define taste -- what someone likes or dislikes.

When I look at a student's photojournalism work I use the same criteria to determine the effectiveness of the image. I usually never use the word "good" because if you are looking at an image that shows a person in pain or even in death, how could anyone say it is "good."  Instead, it is a matter of how effective the image communicates a story intellectually and emotionally.

I have written about this before but it's worth repeating: Every picture bears a certain weight aesthetically, culturally, sociologically, and ideologically in the big scheme of things. To think that images do not have a social function beyond the capacity to entertain or inform is a mistake.

The social function of news images is grounded in the rhetoric of persuasion. Just as a lawyer may seek to sway a jury to his or her side of an argument, a picture, through its variety of visual cues, establishes a context of understanding that shapes perception and constructs a sense of reality.

To be a "good picture" the image must communicate a message effectively that can be understood by more than one viewer. Basically, the image must be clear and have content that people get -- more or less. However, there are images that people make intentionally that do completely the opposite -- that aren't clear and they don't make sense on a universal level. These folks, today's Picassos, must have had to pay their dues before their work was accepted aesthetically. For most us, the best rule of thumb is that content -- the storytelling stuff in the picture -- is key. A "good" picture, for me, has to tell a story.

Tiger Woods: A Reasonable Expectation of Privacy

Tiger Woods: A Reasonable Expectation of Privacy

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Working across platforms

Trying to juggle both still photography and video can be challenging. It seems as though decisions on which format to use and when compromises the outcome and quality of the end content. Many photojournalists are presented with this dilemma, because of the transition from print journalism to the World Wide Web. Nevertheless, the ability to produce content across various platforms appears to be the reality. And here's the thing, it's not journalists who want to shift necessarily. Audiences are moving to the Web in increasing numbers. Print media has responded, but often times begrudgingly. Lots of photojournalists appreciate the power of the still image over the sandwiching of pictures and video for the web. Making fancy slideshow videos on Youtube takes time. Having been presented with few choices the so-called "new media" world can be problematic for many smaller news outlets that lack the funds and the time to really produce high-end video. At the same time, there are many newspapers who have committed themselves to both platform, and they produce incredible content.

Here are some still pictures from the same event. Big difference for me because I like the idea of framing and fixing a moment in time. Video is more about sequencing scenes to align with one another -- it's more about layers of moments across time.

  

Susan Sartain and Ellen Flory

  

Eva Cooley

  

The determination of a princess.

 
Halloween is quite the scene in Ashland, Oregon.

 

Celebrating the Mexican tradition of the Day of the Dead.

 
Paying homage to the modernist painter Magritte.

Seeing Things

 

It's Halloween and I am starting to see things a bit differently. Not far from my apartment, on the way to the grocery store, is a tree that has been staring at me for sometime. It's a strange sensation to feel like a tree can speak to something inside me. Somehow, it does this. I turn toward the tree raise my camera and there is what I think looks like an eye. I know it is not an eye, but my brain says otherwise. My brain says, there is shape, there is contrast, there is line and form, there is an eye. I have never been keen on finding abstractions in such a concrete "real" world. However, there really are two world -- one of the conscious mind, and one of the imagination. To succeed in one world, it is necessary to recognize and appreciate the other world -- a world of symbols and figurative meanings. The human brain works at both levels, and not just when we are sleeping. Photography gets its power from bridging these worlds as it appeals both to the intellect as well as emotions. Photography can convey what we think of as real or concrete, as well as help us move beyond reality.

Ouch!

 

Photographing anything at night is a challenge, but high school football... well, that's a completely different story. Sometimes the light is so low it feels like making pictures of a moving train with just the headlights of a couple of cars. In all of the year's covering high school sports, this has got to be one of the more surreal moments as one player's foot just misses another player's face. Fortunately, no one was injured. The biggest challenge with the lighting is timing the flash to coincide with a decisive moment. Not only do the setting have to be right, the action has to be there.

Things we take for granted

Recently I was conducting some research about the history of Southern Oregon in the 1800's. Many people have forgotten about the Modoc Indian Wars in the 1870s. The wars were to be the last between the government and the native peoples in the region situated along what is now the California - Oregon border. It was a terrible time for the tribes and bands of the Klamath Indians as treaty after treaty were broken and families forcibly removed from their lands. During my research I came across a curious sketch that eventually revealed a great deal about the relationship between the Whites and the Indians of that time.

 
I find this drawing especially moving because it shows how the Indians were force to conform to the bureaucratic conformity of the so-called "civilized" society. My interpretation of this document indicates a mean of counting and controlling native resources. The drawing is census of one band of Klamath Indians. It was completed by the chief of the tribe with sketches at the top provided by the U.S. Army's Indian Agent, a man name Olivier Cromwell Applegate. There are sketches of men, women, boys, girls, horses, houses, axes, and boats. From a semiotic perspective, the relationship with the icon, index and symbol are fairly clear. As an icon, the picture shows a formal acceptance of counting with crossed lines to indicate number. Secondly, as an index the piece seems to point toward the nature of authority and control whites maintain over the Indians in the region. The drawing documents the native community as both artifact and resource. Finally, the symbolism in the piece comes from the textual/pictorial system of representative here. The (so-called) primitive illustration served a function beyond the realm of aesthetics. The pictures illustrate a form of communication that is pre-literate.

Life is Complicated

 
This wonderful example of line and representation is the work of Hugh McLeod. As a cartoonist McLeod creates complex relationships between words and images. A lot can be gained from looking at this piece over and over again.

Digital Dilemma

I have been considering the impact of electronic imaging on the burden of visual truth. When a photographer uses layers of two identical images that are exposed differently to make a new image would this constitute digital manipulation?  Years ago in the darkroom we would call this technique sandwiching. You would take two negatives with different exposure values to make a correction. Granted this practice was not widely in use, but it did exist. Today, thanks to digital technology, the latitude for producing images with different exposures, one light and one dark, is easily done. The question is whether this practice is unethical? It all depends. The scene is the same. I am not really adding or removing elements. I am just placing one exposure on top of another--darker on top of lighter.

Here's an example. Note that the final version is very sloppy, but with more care it could be a seamless transition between light and dark.

Composition 1
8th of a second at f/22

Composition 2
8th of second at f/8

 

Composite

I can see where ethics come into play here. It may be perceived that the manipulation actually alters the viewer's interpretation of the scene by controlling the exposures.Now if I were working for a news organization I would avoid controversy by simply using just one negative and then making the appropriate corrections in levels and not through layers. At the same time, if the picture were to be used in a gallery and represent a form of artistic expression then that would be just fine. The problem is that many younger photographers who have grown up manipulating images in Photoshop, might not understand the difference. In this way a digital dilemma occurs.