Yixuan Liu
English 201
Zack De Piero
Aug. 6 2015
How Audience and Purpose Influence Thinking Process
“Do you think a photographer needs a philosophy to take pictures?” I asked Chuck Place during the beginning of the interview, who is an editorial food photographer in Santa Barbara. He believes that “having a belief in making pictures will not only help photographer to know what they are doing, will also help their audiences to know what they are looking at”. A philosophy acts as an artist’s statement that speaks for the artist. It is usually created after thoughtful thinking and countless experiments. The reason of asking this question is because all the professionals tend to have their purpose to complete an idea with some specific information. Visual and verbal works are produced for people to think. In order to evoke reader’s emotional response, a quality pre-production should be done with the analysis of one’s targeted audience and purpose. Therefore, having a clear understanding of targeted audience and specific purpose for work- thinking, idea building, accomplishing project and final presentation -will result in making people think in first order thinking, which is a quicker and more simple way of thinking to understand the idea. On the other hand, same question has been asked to Olivia Parker, a fine art still life photographer in Boston. She believes that “people have their own circle of meaning when they are studying my work”. In this case, Olivia allows her audience to have their own interpretation instead of telling them what is her pictures really about. Therefore, Olivia’s style of making art affect people to think in the second order thinking which is a more complicated and thoughtful thinking. Therefore, the different result in thinking order may influenced by whether the photographer has her/him targeted audience and specific purpose or not before they take the pictures.
Every choices we made are either being all-around thinking or spontaneous. There are two thinking processes that function in two completely different ways to make people think. According to Elbow, “first order thinking is a fast, non strive for conscious or control and a relax vigilance”(Elbow). This is how Chuck Place’s editorial food photography about- tasty food and beautiful restaurants, along with food culture and travel photos. Clearly, Chuck thinks about his purpose and audience when producing his work- to present a good-looking food picture of a plate of chef’s special with a Martini in a well decorated restaurant environment, or a simple clean dish of a desert on a color contrast table cloth. These pictures will be published in Bon Appetit Magazine to attract readers to go and serve at that restaurant.
Effectively understanding the purpose and audience will sufficiently improve the quality of one’s work. Before Chuck goes to a restaurant to shot food, he has the responsibility to study the environment, lighting, and the dishes they have in order to produce appropriate final image. Chuck produces specific work for publications and clients that allow them to include pictures in the article or in a magazine. According to Dirk, “Picking up a text, readers not only classify it and expect a certain form, but also make assumptions about the text’s purposes, its subject matter, it’s writer, and it's expected reader” (Devitt, Writing 12). In real life, how many seconds do you stop on a picture in a magazine? Rarely longer than 3 second. Therefore, when the readers are flipping through a magazine, they look at the wonderful food pictures and do not even need to read the article to get the idea what kind of food this restaurant is serving. Chuck Place’s clear photographs make the reader think without effort- think in first order thinking- they just want the food to be in front of them. This is one of the reasons how he had made several publications about tourist books and thousands of food related pictures.
Chuck claims that [he] also blogs to keep people updated about who [he is] and what [does he does]. According to <Crafting Messages for Electronic Media>, “identify an audience that is broad enough to justify the efforts and narrow enough to have common interests. Therefore, audience [will] relate to their fresh approach and often build closer emotional bonds with the blogger as a result” (Ch7). Expressing the blogger’s personal feeling in a blog may bring reader into the atmosphere you created. Chuck expresses that, “I tried to keep my blogs easy to understand. I put my experience of eating the food that I just photographed and how I was being treated in the restaurant. I think this not only builds a reputation of the restaurant but also my pictures”. In this case, Chuck uses his own writing skills to help people further understand the fact behind the pictures- allowing the audience to think in first order thinking without conscious. For example, Chuck further explains in his blog <Granada Bistro> mentions about a recent shot in a restaurant, “as far as I’m concerned, however, a good meal is much more than fuel for our bodies. It’s relaxing, it’s interesting and it’s an adventure. The cost is actually reasonable when you consider that you are sampling a particular chef’s creative expression” (Granada Bistro). A simple journal of a shooting experience may evoke the desire of having the food from his audience.
However, second order thinking do exist in marketing in photography. As Chuck proclaims that “Photography is not only about taking picture, there is a significant part takes place in marketing when you could sell your work in a better price- writing a treatment”. According to <Rhetorical Anlysis>, “most arguments are composed with specific audiences in mind, and their success depens, in part on how well their strategies, content, tone, and language meet the expectations of that audience” (Everything’s). In this case, Writing a treatment to explain your intention in the creation of the photo with regard to concept and communication will be the best example. A treatment involves details of what you will create the image, and more importantly, why you are creating this image. You also need to include the concept description and purpose in the treatment along with detail of the emotional response you want to achieve from the audience. A treatment is where audience, purpose, first order thinking and second order thinking all occur both in reading and writing. This is a strong relationship between having a clear picture of what you are doing and how well it will be. In this way, Chuck makes his own photography business goes smoothly and successfully as he clearly understand who he is presenting to and why is it significant to present.
On the other hand, “second order thinking is a slow, thoughtful and a controlled thinking process”, according to Elbow. We may think and consciously relate the story to ourselves when reading an article or looking at a picture. With a bachelor of History of Art in Wellesley College, Olivia has deeply been influenced with every piece of artwork in the past and even from different culture. Being as a Still Life Fine Art photographer, her photography towards to the aesthetic world which makes people pause, stop and think. “Art communicates with people differently”, this is how Olivia insists on making art for decades and decades. The most significant difference between Editorial Food Photography and Fine Art Still Life Photography is the involving of thinking process. A conceptual Fine Art masterpieces will be presented in a gallery for people to study and think- here is where second order thinking takes place.
In Fine Art Still Life Photography, when Olivia is producing her work, it is a different way than any other photographers who work with Art directors or clients and they already have their own ideas and shot list. Olivia notes, “while we are working on visual images occurs in the realm of visual thinking and it can’t necessarily be translated into the verbal. I tend to switch back and forth between a visual-intuitive mode and an editorial-verbal mode”. By this means, Olivia would walk around in her store room and poked around her collected objects. She would pick up one thing and then observed, first order thinking about how could [I] make this dull thing active. And then, second order thinking went to make a scratch, talked to herself , think about possible ways to make it alive. Further, she would think verbally and visually back and forth to get the essential idea. For Olivia, writing will be used after she has done with her work- to note down the idea and feeling that she had when produced this series of work. Then how is Olivia tells story with her pictures? I believe when Olivia is producing her works, there is a conceptual idea behind every series of her art. Olivia deeply understands how she is as an artists and how to express communication through her art. She is outstanding.
However, different from Chuck Place, Olivia is a vicarious watcher who is carefully observing her surrounding environment for a potential purpose. She is always ready to be inspired by letting her brain go free. One thing that Olivia does to help her think and create is by drawing. She has been taking painting and drawing classes; due to her childhood, her nanny always took her to museum and gallery. All the paintings in her memory built up a visual world to support her Fine Art Still Life Photography. During the interview, I had a mind blowing when Olivia tells me that she often work on her own and she produces art in the way she sees the object. This is unusual. So I carefully asked, “does this mean you are not intend to have your work communicate with people or to express your thoughts?” I found this question on her website and I asked her again in the interview. She clearly restates her thought from the essay she wrote once again.
“At first I thought that good work had to communicate my exact ideas to an audience. Wrong. I now know that every piece of art will communicate with each person in its audience in a different way. Each one of us has an accumulated frame of reference that I call a circle of meaning”, she paused and said, “My circle and your circle are not likely to overlap perfectly. Both of us will have private knowledge that remains outside the common area of overlap, as well as the overlapped area where communication takes place”, Olivia elaborates her belief in this answer. I strongly agree with her standpoint that folk looks at pictures differently. Actually, people may have a totally different interpretation of today’s news, a newly released movie and even a worldwide policy. Carrying all conscious, specific and directed thinking, Olivia embraces her belief into making Fine Art Photography where her works are being established in galleries for people to stop, observe, and think- this is also where second order thinking takes place. Even Olivia does not have a targeted audience, she has more freedom to make art which could have different meanings to different kinds of people. To her, it is a very interesting purpose to just hear people with opposite opinions on a single picture that she created. Does not having a targeted audience matters to Olivia? The answer is already stated.
As I mentioned before, Chuck spent most of his time dealing with clients but Olivia is dealing with galleries- two completely different thinking and writing process is involved lead a same way to today’s success. As an artist, Olivia Parker always believes that “the more you work, the more likely you will develop your own way of thinking, and own way of styling. So, keep photographing”. Same philosophy applies to every job in the world- persistence is victory. Even if a photographer tend to photograph without having a potential audience, there is chance that your works will communicate with the reader in their own way- the second order thinking. Or, like Chuck Place, understanding the importance of purpose and audience will decide the quality of your work and also influence the reader to think in the first order thinking.
Citation
Ch 7 - Crafting Messages for Electronic Media
Chuck Place Blog Website: https://chuckplacephotography.wordpress.com
Devitt, Amy J. “Generalizing About Genre: New Conceptions of an Old Concept.” College Composition and Communication 44.4 (1993): 573–86. Print.
Elbow, Peter. Embracing Contraries: Explorations in Learning and Teaching. New York: Oxford U Oress, 1986.
Eveything’s an Argument Ch6 - Rhetorical Anlysis
Granada Bistro, San Luis Obispo
Kerry, Dirk, Lowe Charles and, Pavel Zemliansky. Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing. Vol. 1. West Lafayette, IN: Parlor, 2010. Navigating Genres. Writing Spaces, 2010. Web. 6 Aug. 2015. http://writingspaces.org/sites/default/files/dirk--navigating-genres.pdf.
Interview with Chuck Place and Olivia Parker
Olivia Essay Website: http://oliviaparker.com/blog/?page_id=9
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