This is a photograph that, like the reading for this week, shows the specific elements of the art of photography.  In McCloud's comic, he uses many different techniques that are unique to that specific artistry such as different shapes, sizes and rotation of the strip.  He also takes advantage of his ability to do surreal things do his cartoons such as taking them out into outer space.  In the same way, this photograph accurately captures many of photography's elements that are unique to this specific medium.  One example of these elements is space and focus.   Because this particular shot was taken with the lens extremely close to the subject, I was able to put the closest foreground object out of focus, thus drawing the eye of the viewer to the battery in the back instead.  This juxtaposition of our eye being drawn to something further away rather than something right there in front through the use of focus is unique to art which uses a camera.  Lighting is used in photography often to play with shadows that are created by the objects.  In this photograph, the element of lighting is used for this purpose.  I placed the batteries in a location where their shadow would naturally fall into the same line as the actual batteries themselves.  I wanted the viewers' eye to be drawn to the batteries in the background even by the shadow who's lines were parallel with the angle of the battery location. The space is also utilized by spacing the batteries an equal distance apart so that they gradually appear to get smaller as one's eye travels to the background.  It appears that the batteries curve to the right, as the camera is angled in such a way to make them get smaller from left to right.  Because of these elements of photography, we as an audience are able to tell that the batteries shown in the picture actually are spaced apart.  We can tell that these is a real, 3-dimensional space that has height, width, and depth.  Although there are other mediums that can mimic the illusion of space, such as drawing and painting, they don't have the elements such as macro settings on cameras and the use of real light.  These technical elements are unique to the use of a camera, whereas painting and drawing simply must "fake" these appearances.  This photograph reminds me much of minimalist photography, which focuses on shape and size in order to create a very simple patterns.  Showing objects getting "bigger" or "smaller" based on how far away they are from the camera is common in this style.  Having very basic color is also a characteristic of this type of photography, which is why I chose to place these objects against a neutral background, both with the color of the muted yellow table and the gray wall.  These blank negative spaces of neutral color allows us to focus our eye on the subjects:the batteries.  This photograph works in a way that celebrates the elements that make photography unique and creative in its own way.

Yael and Courtney

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B-slsB64MzrwLUdRNEEzY1pIcTQ

Artist’s Statement

The main character of our script is Courtney’s ancestor, Henry. We could write a full script for a feature-length film telling all of his story. Dramatic from start to finish, his life was interesting enough of a story for his descendants to tell over and over again through the years so that it finally reached us today.  As the legend in the family goes, he was a ranger determined to catch and outlaw and was eventually successful, but was shot on a train station platform by an assassin hired by the outlaw’s family.  It is not hard to believe that, as the re-telling of history often causes, this glorified Henry was created from this storytelling to replace the original.  In our readings, Neufeld’s “After the Deluge” showed the events of Hurricane Katrina in a very specific way to show how some may have viewed or remembered the traumatic event.  It showcases history in a brief flash of pictures instead of explaining every historical detail.  In a similar way, every time that some facts from Henry’s story are omitted and others are exaggerated over time, “Henry 1” and “Henry 2” get further and further apart from each other. The original Henry was more likely a local authority with his own faults and defects as well as a healthy amount of values. The second, a Texas Ranger that did heroic feats, always defeated his enemies, and his only fault was to be too good for his own good. And then there is, perhaps, a third Henry, created by us for this assignment: one with a thick Texan accent, witty remarks, a hat, and a dislike for stale bread. Still, because of the curse of the passing of time and our inability to move through it, we cannot know for sure if the original Henry wasn’t what we made him to be, or if in fact, if we did not even do justice to the grandeur of his original character.

           We attempted to tell this portion of Henry’s story while also including the mood of modern Westerns such as The Magnificent Seven, which include humorous banter along with action and adventure.  In order to do this, we had to research information about Texas Rangers at this time: their responsibilities, line of command, and duties to the state of Texas.  We also made sure to use vernacular that was both familiar to a modern audience and accurate to this specific setting.  Instead of including all of the events in Henry’s life that are often told by family members, we chose to focus on the moment where Henry shoots an unarmed outlaw and is arrested for it.  By showing this particular part of Henry’s story, we hoped to show his struggle with attempting to protect the laws of the state whilst being accused of abusing his position.

Link to our audio:

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/eq2awijx987hlcs/AADmRCwzphPU_HC57Vqd_L0Pa?dl=0

 For starters, we spent a little time Brainstorming what subject we should choose for this project. When Courtney offered up the idea of asking her friend Jarom about his song-writing process, Marcelle eagerly agreed that it would be a fun idea for this task. We both love music and thought it would be fun to hear about the process of creating these sweet sounds from someone who does it for commercial purposes. So on we went into the preparation part of the process by scheduling a time to meet with Jarom and trying to think of questions to offer him as a prompt. We were both excited to talk to him and to hear what he had to offer on the subject of song-writing. We quickly found that this shy, timid-voiced young man could be rather excitable when given a topic he was passionate about. As we sat in that tiny little room in an old church building, we both considered the value and importance of having an interesting subject and enough material to show it to be so. Jarom most certainly provided us with both of these things. I thought back to some of the examples I had seen of Process videos in class. They catch your eye (or in this case, ear) quickly, showing you something that is intriguing to any and every kind of audience. They peak your curiosity, they make you want to know more about the subject at hand. I don’t think I’ve ever met a person in my life who didn’t like some kind of music, even if they weren’t entirely inclined in the production of it themselves, they usually still found it interesting to hear the fun facts about what went into making their favorite songs. Getting to listen to Jarom was like this in a way. To see and hear his excitement about all the different things that go into his personal song-writing process was immensely fun and informative. After getting more than enough sound footage from Jarom, both of him talking and playing, we made a game plan for how we wanted our final sound snippet to turn out and what other elements we would need to add to it in order to accomplish our vision. We met up again, a few days later in the Media Lab and put together all the different sound bits we had until we had the final result we were hoping for. Going through the process of learning about and putting together a piece of informative audio about someone else’s artistic process was an eye-opening and introspective opportunity that we both really enjoyed.