Thursday 6 September 2012

iPhone 5 "promo" video

Here's a hilarious parody video about the soon-to-be-released iPhone 5. Definitely supports the idea that people use image sharing to construct a version of themselves that could be very different from reality.


Wednesday 5 September 2012

Meme wha-?


MEMES. 
What's the deal with memes??




So in case you are still not familiar with the concept of a "meme", it's pretty much a picture with a witty caption used to construct or add to a cultural paradigm. In this case, it's Big Brother. Ever since the meme generation burst through our social-media doors, even television reality shows like BB have their own Facebook pages, Instagram sites, just posting memes. In short, memes are a new adaptation in visual media.

Now I chose the above example, because I think it perfectly exemplifies the purpose of a meme. Obviously the picture is poking fun at a Big Brother contestant, saying she looks like a hooker. As I explained in my last post, much of the power of a photo comes from its polysemic nature. It can be interpreted in a million and one ways... And our generation is very clever. Using digital technology and social networking distribution, we have capitalised on this interpretive nature of photos, and have used words to give them meaning. And to sway the opinions of our audience. So rather than letting a picture speak for itself, the power is now in captions.

That in mind, I wonder: Is the visual web as powerful as we think it to be? What is a photo without words? What are words without a photo? Which has greater weight?

xx Nicola

Instagramation Part 3


Whatsup Bloggers?




So I had an epiphany. An Instagram epiphany. An Instiphany, if you will.
YES we use visual media as a way of constructing ourselves, as a way of constructing a representation of ourselves, in the minds of our "perceivers". But what if our photos are saying something we don't want them to say?

Today, I was looking through my sister's Instagram, and through my best friend's Instagram, two people that I have known pretty much my whole life. And I realised that this is something which we haven't really touched on in group research. I realised this limitation.

 My best friend was posting pictures of her trip to Hawaii earlier this year, and a lot of the photos were the very abstract-deep-and-meaningful-picture-of-a-cocktail-by-the-Waikiki-surf kind of thing. I know why she was posting those photos, because they were a representation of her deepest passion: to travel. Preferably to places that have a little ocean :P. But the comments that followed didn't mimick her intentions... in particular, a photo of her in a glamorous rooftop hotel pool had people tagging her as "rich rich b*tch" and "If only my dad could afford to send me to those places".... All meant as jokes, of course, but not the image she wanted to portray.

It's all well and good to want to communicate your own, constructed self-identity over the web. But the limitation of visual media is a lack of words. A lack of explanation. Isn't that crucial to constructing an image?

What if we're all just getting the wrong idea?

xx Nicola

Birth to 10. A photo a day.

This is a video of parents who took regular photos of their daughter growing up from birth to 10.
I wonder what the original goal was in taking a photo each day, and then the decision to post in a video. Now that it's on YouTube and on the internet, what impact does it have on the girl featured? Is it something we should be concerned with?


How iPhoto works and has become more accessible

Hey guys, 

This is my final post for now. Just a couple of cool articles that give some great insight into why iPhoto is so accessible and how it is really not difficult to use at all. 

Anyone can present their personal memories in their own way if they want to. 

New York Times on "ambitious photo tools".

iPhoto is also accessible for people that only own iPad and not a MacBook product, and this form of iPhoto may be even easier to use and shape a different perception of memories and culture with than ever before...

Check out a review of how it works here

Paul x




Tuesday 4 September 2012

Project Management Pitch and Reflection

Hey everyone, 

Just thought I would share with you the section of the pitch that I primarily worked on and reflect on it a little.


Our way of seeing project management: 


As we are all co-existing as a team, we have decided that everyone should and must help each other with their specific roles, and obviously the roles will overlap, but we have assigned a “main” role for all group members based on their individual interests and strengths. So:

-      Mel’s main focus will be the video content. We plan to film several of our interviews, so Mel will be in charge of this and will oversee the creation of other videos, such as an introductory video to the topic, which we plan to use on our feature.

-      Although everyone will be writing, Paul will be the writing editor who will ensure that all our content fits together well, stays focused on our angle, and makes sense.

-      Ash will focus on photography and graphics, a significant part of our feature.

-      We’ll all be uploading our content on Word Press, but Nicola will be our head “tech girl”
-      And I’m the project manager, basically controlling everything…haha jokes, but I’ll make sure we’re all on target with our tasks, and be mainly responsible for things like setting up interviews.

As well as this, we’ll all be individually working on our own “journeys”, and we’ll divide up the more investigative articles between us so everyone has one article as their main focus, although we’ll aim to have at least two or three of us present at each interview.

From here, next week we will continue researching and finalising ideas for specific parts of the feature, as well as forming a list of people to approach for interviews. 

We’ll then approach them and try to set up interviews over the next few weeks. 

We’re going to focus mainly on information gathering and writing for the next three weeks, and the three weeks after that will focus on web design, upload and editing. 

Reflection:

In retrospect our plan is not as "broken down" as some other group's plans were for the pitch, but that is primarily because we didn't want to confuse everyone. We are definitely on target to complete our goals on time, and have since come up with a more detailed project management scheme that is probably a little too long-winded for posting here. :) 

Paul

Monday 3 September 2012

iPhotoing Part 3: Seasons and Time

Hey again everyone!

So I just wanted to share some more edits that are a little more extreme!

To show how you can completely change the season and time period that you are representing through your edited iPhoto photo, through dramatic shifts in the "Adjust" functions and "Effects".


Here I've dramatically adjusted the exposure, contrast, saturation, highlights, shadows, temperature etc of the image to make the colours extremely vibrant. 

Now it looks like it's a hot summer's day, because to be honest it was so cold, I think I would have preferred to go in summer...Now it looks like I am rather silly wearing all those layers, doesn't it look like it's at least 30c? 

So the way this image was edited is a reflection of my direct memories of my freezing (but amazing) holiday and how the seasons have shaped the way I represented it. 


Here I was thinking about New York at the turn of the 20th century...

So I toned down the colour and vibrancy of the image with a series of functions again, and gave the impression of an old camera having taken the photo through the "Vignette" function. 

So what I have tried to show you all through this journey, is that editing isn't just for the sake of pretending to be more aesthetically polished.


iPhoto can truly give strong insights into your personal interests and how you can convey them pictorially. 

Paul 

Saturday 1 September 2012

Content Development

Hey bloggers <3


Thought I would quickly upload the content development side of our feature, which we covered in our pitch.

Our feature will focus on both the internal sense of self, and the external way we are perceived by others. To address the internal process of self-construction we will interview academics in the sociology and cultural studies departments. We will also explore this issue through personal reflection, where each of us will embark on a “visual media journey” and investigate how the practice of image sharing relates to self identity. We will each journey into a particular visual platform – Nicola will be looking at Instagram, Mel will be looking at Facebook (focusing on the profile and cover pictures, as well as controlling photo tagging), Anna will be looking at Tumblr, Paul will be looking at photo editing in iPhoto before posting online, and I’ll be looking at Pinterest.



To address the way image sharing shapes the way we are perceived by others, we will focus on various implications of image sharing. We haven’t fully decided on everything we’ll focus on in this section yet, but our main ideas at the moment are:

  • Firstly, how many kids who grow up today will have their whole lives online, and some with be very widely known courtesy of popular mummy bloggers. How will this affect the way they are perceived by others as they grow up? For this, we’ll try to interview some mummy bloggers and maybe a child psychologist
  • And secondly, how photos you put up on facebook can have a negative impact if seen by the wrong person e.g. your boss, or if you are a high profile person, for example, the fallout from the “gun photo” of Australian Olympic swimmers Nick D’Arcy and Kenrick Monk. For this, we aim to interview some careers advisors and people who have been negatively impacted by photos they’ve posted online.
  • Thirdly, we’d like to look at how images that go viral impact the people in them, such as people commonly featured in internet memes.

For this feature, we aim to use the online medium in innovative ways by playing with the internal self versus external self juxtaposition. We were thinking of having an opening page with doors or windows, one looking inside and another looking outside. When users click on the inside facing one, they would be led to our personal journeys and stories about self-construction, and when they click on the outside facing one, they will be led to the articles about how image sharing impacts the way others see us.

We want to use as much visual content as possible, seeing as our feature is about the visual web. We’re also looking at making the site interactive, through enabling comments and allowing users to submit photos, maybe in gallery series such as ‘Edited or Not?’, where people have to guess whether the photo is edited, or ‘Before and after’, where people post photos before and after editing or filtering, or where people get to post captions for photos. The feature will also have a page on Facebook that we’ll regularly update, providing another chance for users to interact with our site.

xx Nicola

Handout from the pitch

Thursday 30 August 2012

Completing the feedback loop.

Great presentation today.

I was taking some notes on the pitch, particularly during the feedback session.

  • Publication: The Verge
    • An American based publication creates some challenges with cultural nuances. For example, the Kendrick Monk/Nick Darcy scandal would be unfamiliar to primarily American audience. 
    • I have some experience with American society and American publications after living in the US in 2011. 
    • "The Verge seems very tech-based"I agree, however i argue the home page is particularly tech-based at the moment. When you look through past features, there have been more cultural features that comment on trends in society.
  • Content:
    • The content of the feature is relevant and interesting. The rise of visual media on the Internet was agreed to be current and noticeable.
    • The feature is newsworthy and an opportunity to document reflections on the impact of our current times. 
  • Logistics:
    • Some questions were raised about the access to 'mummy bloggers' and the impact on their children. We will need to talk about this.
    • A question was asked about who we could speak to about the impact of the visual web on social construction and online identity. I know we had some rough names of USYD academics, we should do a bit more research. 
    • How are we going to control the web profile being current. 
  • Suggestions:
    • A how-to guide: I don't this was the angle we were going for. It's more recording the change and the impact of the change.
That's what i took. Add comments or thoughts you had.

Thanks Ash and Anna for presenting the pitch.

Tuesday 28 August 2012

Research: some articles

We've been doing some research/thinking about different aspects of the feature so I thought I'd blog about it now so my thoughts are in one place.

Thinking about the idea of kids that have been adversely affected by the image-sharing practices of their parents, I saw this article on Pedestrian.TV about a boy-now-man (used on this cover of a Placebo album) who is suing the band for their unlicensed use of his photo which caused him trauma and bullying at school.


The article points out that a similar fate of playground-torture will probably occur for this kid, featured on a controversial cover of TIME magazine earlier this year.


Could the same thing happen to kids whose images have been posted on blogs and seen by thousands of people? Obviously it's too earlier to tell yet, but we can speculate that they could have that affect. Here's a photo of one of Eden Riley's kids she's posted on her super popular blog Edenland


Another story we've been thinking about is how photos uploaded to social networking sites such as Facebook can have really negative impacts if seen by the wrong people. Think this photo of Nick D'Arcy and Kenrick Monk, posing with guns in the U.S. Here's an article detailing what happened, and another about their punishment.


Something else that I find really interesting, which we may be able to cover in our feature, is how people are affected by images of them going viral on the internet, for example, memes. Here's an interview with Zeddie Little aka 'Ridiculously Photogenic Guy' about his experience.

Instagramation Part 2.5

Following on from my rant about appealing to cultural genes, just posted the following photo from Instagram on Facebook........... and with the caption "it's about to get loud."


So tell me bloggers, what does this photo say about me? That I'm musical, artistic, shows a few cables in the background so I must be "in" with the digital. But what most of you don't realise is that this will be the first time I am picking up an electric guitar. Also, despite having taught myself acoustic, I failed music in high school. And the cables in the background are mostly connected to heaters, chargers, nothing toooo fancy. So that's me in the flesh...

But Who. Am. I. Online?

xx Nicola

Monday 27 August 2012

iPhotoing Part 2: What story are you trying to tell?

Like I said briefly at the end of my last post...I strongly believe everyone is inspired by different time periods and seasons when they are editing their photos. 


iPhoto has a series of in-built editing functions that make it easy to choose the mood, time period or season you want to use to "inspire" your photo and change the memory of the event you are representing. 


For the image above - I simply applied some "Antique" and "Fade Colour" effects and suddenly it looks like I am presenting New York in a film noir context.

Now thinking about it...this choice of editing in my photo, reflects my deep interest in the culture of New York from that 1940s/1950s time period, and how I am attempting to represent that through this photo as a homage to Hollywood films of the time. The history of this photo has been re-written to show how I would have loved to experience the region in a different context. 

So the way photos are edited isn't simply for the purposes of looking more GLAMOUROUS or POLISHED, it reflects people's deeper cultural interests.  

So if you weren't thinking it already, yes I was a little inspired by this famous scene in An Affair To Remember. =P



Found this here, good to know someone else still loves the classics.




Okay so maybe what I was thinking with this second edit using the "Adjust" tool was that I just didn't want people to know how cold and cloudy it was...


It's natural that sometimes image edits can be for vanity purposes, but normally there's a deeper cultural message behind it. 


Paul 

What will our web feature be about?

The central focus of our web feature is how online image sharing is shaping our sense of self; both the internal self that we construct, and the external self that the world sees.

The issue we are raising is that the web is becoming increasingly visual. New online platforms are being set up to facilitate image sharing, and existing social networking platforms such as Facebook are tailoring their layout to suit a more visual user-group.

We will approach this issue by exploring the implications of the shift towards more visual modes of communication. We will investigate these implications from two angles. On one hand, we will look at how others perceive us through the images we share, and on the other hand, how we construct ourselves through these same images.

The issue we are addressing is newsworthy, largely because we are living in the age of the visual web. 2011 and 2012 saw the rise of new image sharing platforms, and Pinterest has been termed "the fastest growing site in history."

There are several academic papers and publications which deal with the ways that social networking, blogging and online forums shape an individual's identity and sense of self. McCullagh in her paper, 'Blogging: Presentation and Privacy', investigates the ability of an individual to present multiple 'selves' on the web. Other theorists have explored the ways that the Internet allows us to mask certain aspects of ourselves. Few publications deal exclusively with the image, and most existing papers are targeted at academic audiences. We want to introduce the issue to the ordinary citizen.

The purpose of our feature is both to document the shift towards a more visual web, and to educate audiences on our findings.

Since online image sharing is only a recent trend, there is little out there on its power and prominence. We will speak to sociologists, conduct interviews with avid users of these new platforms, and take personal journeys into the world of image sharing by personally engaging with a particular platform over the designated weeks. Our approach will combine academic research with personal experience.

We aim to use the online medium in innovative ways by playing with the internal self versus external self juxtaposition, and representing this on the site using the theme of doors. The inside of the doors will look at how we shape ourselves internally through image sharing, and the outside of the doors will look at how image sharing plays out in the real world.


Sunday 26 August 2012

Instagramation Part 2

Howdy bloggers


Just thought I'd share this Facebook post that came up on my news feed a few minutes ago, which made me reflect on my Instagram journey so far...


Keeping that comment in mind, here was my first Instagram capture for last week:

 NB: Yes. Those are in fact cheesecake strawberries. 


It's funny isn't it? We embark on a social media journey- one minute Facebook, another minute Instagram- always setting out to either create, nurture or change our social identity. But what is often overlooked is this need to appeal to our cultural genes, the need to show the world how fabulous and cultured we are by using "the visual web" to tell the story of our lives. I'll tell you now, I definitely do not eat cheesecake strawberries every day, nor can I afford to always visit the kind of places that would serve them. But I purposely and selectively included this photo to tell my story. Why? 'cause it makes me look interesting. 

So... there's my answer to the Facebook post. Ba-da-bing ba-da-boom.

xx Nicola

The Facebook Profile Pic.

This video sums it up what i've said below in my posts.


What are the images that make up my online identity?

Today, I took a journey through my Facebook. What photos have i chosen to represent myself online? Which photos construct my online identity?


The profile photo: This photo is 16 months old. It was taken at my Aunt's engagement party, i've cropped my cousins to my left out. It remains my profile photo because i like it. My face is clear of blemishes, i look happy and relaxed. 

The cover photo: This photo was taken during the winter break while road tripping in New Zealand. Where my other cover photos have featured US monuments while on exchange there, or of The Great Hall set up in exam mode many decades ago while i was studying for my exams, this photo is just fun. I chose it to be my cover photo because its fun and happy. 

The album cover photo: This is the only photo i haven't selected, it's been selected for me (ie. the most recently added photo of me). The photo is of a few pieces of furniture - odd? Very. But what very few people could be able to tell from the photo is of the story behind it. When i was packing up my apartment last year upon nearing the end of my semester exchange in North Carolina, i gave my housemate my black lamp. Boring right? This photo, however, is of my housemate's new apartment and she's tagged me to show that she's still using my lamp. Yay!

So they're the 3 photos people come across when they look at my Facebook profile. Are they representative of me? Sort of. They show that i've been travelling - a Giant Kiwifruit one could assume is a tourist attraction. My profile photo shows a happy and relaxed self. Is that me? Currently no. At the moment i'm tired, stressed and my skin's not terribly clear. Why haven't i taken a photo of myself of that? Because i don't want people to see me like that, or think of me as grumbling. I don't want to grumble, although tired and stressed i know it will soon pass and why drag down the mood of an online identity that shows me happy and enjoying myself. 

But I wonder why we do this? Why do we only choose the pretty photos of us, the one's we show us as happy. I know you asked this Anna in your post. I wonder if this is something we should explore? On what grounds do we choose our profile photos? Perhaps how do we construct our online selves in relations to photos? I'm sure this can be put together in nicer words, but it's a good question. 

Friday 24 August 2012

A constructed version of the self - I've been thinking about this in response to my post about photos creating authenticity.

Yes, photos do create a sense of authenticity, but what role does our ability to regulate the photos we're tagged in play.

As i mentioned in my last post, I went to a Hen's Party last weekend. The bride's mother had a camera and was 'recording' the event, she snapped photos of us at the sophisticated high tea in the afternoon, in front of the Stretch Hummer, having drinks on our way to the city inside the Hummer, while waiting outside the dance studio for our lesson, during the lesson, at the bar after the lesson etc. You get the idea, throughout the night, photos were taken. 

But fast-forward to Monday morning when i was on my way to uni and the notification came up "Kirsty Smith added 22 photos of you." Suddenly i was anxious. What were the photos of? Were they of me respectably sipping champagne at the high tea or slightly tipsy with a leg looped around a pole at the pole dancing class? I was on edge as my train entered a tunnel and i was unable to view the photographs now contributing to my online identity. I wasn't ashamed of my involvement in the pole dancing class, but i still didn't want all my Facebook friends thinking that was an accurate representation of me. 

My day progressed, back-to-back classes and meetings and before i knew it i was at home and had been unable to regulate my online profile. As i sat down on Facebook in the early hours of the morning to see which photos had been taken, a notification came up.

A church friend had seen the photos and commented. I immediately took down the photo which presented me playfully lifting the tip of my dress up. Then the same friend posted on my wall. 


I had regulated my photos, i had removed a tag from the photo to disallow my Facebook friends to see the photo. I had effectively, altered a version of my self. In reality i was enjoying myself, having a laugh with friends at a pole dancing studio, but online i had removed the record of that. 

My Facebook photos are a representation of who i am. I removed the tag of a photo that i thought lowered my sense of self. I was constructing my identity. 

I wonder how often people do this, i wonder how often i do this without realising. Removing photos of me looking awkward, removing photos of me in social situations that others could perceive me as something other than where i want to be seen. Where once we didn't remove a photo from the developers envelope and frame it, now we remove any record of it, or just any ability for people we care about seeing it. 

Thursday 23 August 2012

The humble photograph: Creating authenticitity.

The internet has created a new realm of identity, in the same way that one would limit how much they share in a social setting, an online presence now enables individuals to regulate how much they share or even what they share. In addition, social networking sites with the ability to create a profile page, select profile photos and share interests, mark their visits to physical locations, share their thoughts through 'status updates' etc. all contribute to this constructed version of self. But what role do those photos have? 

Anna, i love that quote: "We don't trust words because they're words, but we trust pictures because they're pictures. That's crazy," because it's totally true. I file through Twitter and Facebook reading status updates or even see the attendance marked on events, i don't trust it. The human word can be broken. Nothing says "Sally Mitchem is now in a relationship with David Carlton" more than a photo of them lip locked at a recent party. Similarly nothing says, "Jennifer Pennington is now engaged to Jeremy Ponsonby" more than a photo of Jen's engagement ring. We trust photos, it gives tangibility to a scene or a situation. 


For example, a quick scroll through my Facebook page can tell the audience a few things: 

  •  I'm organising a Christian conference. 




  • I love Instagram.






  • I went to a Hen's Party last weekend. 






The reason why i think this is interesting is because a profile page creates an identity - it's a record of who i am, what i do and what i think. Without photos, is any of that legitimate?

I could post a status saying i'm at the front of a moshpit starring right into the eyes of my favourite artist OR i could post a photo taken on my phone showing that i'm actually right there. Which one would you trust more? Me? The photo, for sure. 

Photos have this sense of authenticitity to them. 

Wednesday 22 August 2012

A tumblr rampage

Yesterday, I went on a tumblr rampage. 


Sick of my current blog, I decided to create an entirely new one, to create a new online persona for myself. I picked a title, chose a profile picture, selected a theme, and began a half-hour of frantic tag-searching, cool-blog-finding, uploading and reblogging of pictures and graphics that I liked. This was the result (actually, this is just the first page. As I said, I went on a rampage. You can view the whole blog here):




What can people tell about me from this tumblr, I wondered? I came up with the following things:

  • I like the song 'Good Feeling' by Flo Rida, and enjoy making witty titles and URLs of blogs from song lyrics. 
  • I think that posing in front of a web cam pulling my hair back and tilting my head makes for a super hot profile pic. 
  • I like cute animals (note the chimpanzee & tiger, and kitten & converse pics).
  • Colourful jewellery is my style, as are homemade rainbow iceblocks.
  • I've been outdoor iceskating (check out my Facebook album 'New York Winter 2012 YAY' - hope this isn't hypocritical considering the other post I made here), and at some point I've been lying on a hammock in Costa Rica.
  • I like pretty photos of trees in autumn. 
  • I like taking indie polaroid photos of sunsets, parties, and fun times with friends, or siblings, or kids in Costa Rica. 
  • My hair is to thin to hold curls (#devastated).
  • Lord of the Rings is one of my favourite film series.  

Are these things an accurate reflection of who I am? Or are they a selective construction of who I want to be? (Cue: suspenseful music and dramatic look).

Monday 20 August 2012

iPhoto-ing Part 1

iPhoto pretty much changed my life...as cheesy as that sounds when it graced my photos with its presence in 2010, as I purchased my first Macbook and crossed over into "Apple lover" territory.

iPhoto is a really simple but special application because it changes the memory of past events, you can make a scene or a moment in time have any mood you would like it to. 

iPhoto is therefore a way of moving past your every day life and context! 

You can transcend the limitations of today, to present a different time period or season. I will show you how through some examples in editing the following photo to create different moods, time periods, and seasons. 




This is the original copy of the photo that will compose the majority of this initial iPhoto journey, and was taken at the top of the Empire State Building in Manhattan, NY, in December 2011 on a freezing and misty winter's day.


And so the journey to re-writing history and memories begins, to make my travel experiences more glossy and exciting. 

The aim of my iPhoto journey is to help other young people understand that they can't always trust the photo they see on their respective social media website. 


Everyone is trying to deliberately tell a unique story through the photos they post. 

:) 

Paul

Instagramation Part 1


Well, I did it.


Yes, bloggers. As of 5:55PM on Monday 20 August 2012, the oh so graphically challenged, shakey-on-the-handy-cam Miss Nicola Zarimis has INSTAGRAM!!



And so my journey begins, to investigate the process by which photo becomes phact (see what I did there...?)-- the exploration of the self to "selfie" and perhaps even along the way, bring a life to my Instagram confidant, "Photonomous".

Stay tuned...! xx Nicola

Saturday 18 August 2012

Trusting pictures because they're pictures

Every day, in my Facebook news feed, I'll see countless photos: from Instagrammed shots of mouth-watering dinners, to new profile and cover pictures, and of course, multiple albums posted by friends seemingly just to make me jealous (hint to my Facebook friends: stop uploading albums entitled 'Europe Summer 2012 YAY!' and posting them to all your Aussie friends in the middle of winter.) 

I see these photos every day, but hardly ever do I stop to question them. Wow, that dinner looks amazing, I think to myself, cursing my dad's specialty of pasta-with-sauce-from-a-packet; but it doesn't often occur to me that without the Instagram filters, it probably wouldn't be that special. Wow, she looks like a model in that profile picture, I think to myself, vowing to increase my diet and exercise levels tenfold, and ignoring the clear influence of photoshop on the image. And although I know from personal experience that awesome holiday photos don't always accurately reflect how much you're enjoying a trip, it's easy to forget this when I'm huddled under four blankets scrolling through photos of my friends island hopping around the Mediterranean. 

"We don't trust words because they're words, but we trust pictures because they're pictures. That's crazy."

The tendency for people to view photographs as accurate representations of reality is discussed by Scott Rosenberg in this 2009 article. Rosenberg quotes documentary photographer Pedro Meyer, who says, "I think it's very important for people to realise that images are not a representation of reality."Why does he say this? Because images, just like words, can be manipulated. Images, just like words, are selective.  "We don't trust words because they're words," Meyer says, "but we trust pictures because they're pictures. That's crazy. It's our responsibility to investigate the truth, to approach images with care and caution."

I think this particularly rings true with the practice of image sharing across social networks. People share photos of their lives, or images of things they like, and this contributes to their online persona, a constructed version of the self. We don't post photos of ourselves when we're by ourselves, squashed on a train, upset after a long, hard day. We post photos of us having a great time with friends. We don't post pictures of our cluttered bedrooms or dirty streets. We post images of pretty objects and beautiful landscapes. Through images, we share certain things, and not others, to project a particular image of ourselves.

As a group, we're all really fascinated with this idea, and that's why, out of all our many ideas, we decided to narrow our project to this:


How is image sharing affecting/shaping/contributing to our sense of self? 

Through this blog, we're all going to go on individual image sharing journeys to explore this idea. Nicola is going to explore instagram; Mel will be exploring facebook and the profile pic, cover photo, and tagging; Paul will be looking at photo editing and sharing with iPhoto, Ash will be looking at mummy blogging and how many babies born today will have photos all over the internet of them at all ages by the time they're our age; and I'll be taking a little journey into the wonderful world of tumblr. But for now, goodnight! 

Monday 13 August 2012

Feature Ideas

So if Ash's post didn't make it clear, we've decided our overall topic will be exploring the idea of the visual web. This is a massive topic however, so we need to narrow it down into a feature question. So this is a post for us all to post some ideas for questions, and hopefully within a week we'll come up with an idea with a bit more direction! 

Ideas: 
  • How is the rise of the visual web giving a voice to the disadvantaged and marginalised? 
  • What are the privacy implications of a visual web? 
  • Is the visual web a result of a generation with decreasing attention spans? 
  • How does the visual web enable the creation of a legitimate online persona? 
  • How is image sharing shaping our online identities and overall sense of self? 

Sunday 12 August 2012

Exploring the Implications of The Visual Web

On the 30th April, 2012, Richard McManus, founder and editor-in-chief of ReadWriteWeb, said: “A noticeable trend this year is beautiful apps and websites. It's all part of a larger trend that I'm calling The Visual Web, meaning that images and video are becoming an increasingly important part of what we consume online.”

I'm writing this post somewhere on the road between Edmonton and Banff in Canada. In four days I'll be presenting at a conference at the University of Alberta about The Visual Web and the power of the image to give the disadvantaged a voice in the media.

There are several statistics that support the rise of The Visual Web. 70% of all likes, comments and shares on Facebook are now related to images, the image sharing platform, Pinterest, is the fastest growing website in history, and changes to the layout of Facebook are targeted at more visual users.

What are we supposed to do with these statistics? Is it simply an indication of our ever decreasing attention spans? Perhaps it is, but I am suggesting that the trend towards a more visual web has several implications. In my presentation in Canada I will be speaking about the positive aspects of this trend, and the fact that it no longer limits the global, online community to educated, literate citizens. Anyone, of any age, can tell a story through a photograph.

There are several implications of this trend, both positive and negative, that we could focus on in our feature. What are the privacy implications of a more visual web? Are we seeing more than we are entitled to? When mothers post their children's photographs on Facebook as soon as they are born, how will these children respond when they grow up and find that the web is saturated with their baby photos?

The notion of the visual web is a new concept, with a lot of unexplored territory.