Serious Writing Process

It is interesting to read realize all the information  I thought about photography is the same as writing. In commercial/fine art photography, the post-production is to know who are your audiences, how to shot ideal product to make people want to buy them , and how do you achieve your audience. 

Break into little pieces. 

Commercial photography usually goes straightforward to the point. Art directors and photographers have a clear-targeted audience and they also have strategies to sell the products. See the pictures below, these are the shots for a medicine that inform us to use it when our knees hurt or some sore like that. And their main targeted audience is older people. Just like writing, you should know whom are you writing to. What will audience already knew about the information you are putting on? And if readers do not get it, how much time should they dedicate to understand your point? Should you include a quote, an article, an essay or a news to explain your point? Is your purpose of every piece of writing clear- to educate, to entertain, to persuade, to raise awareness for call to action- which means you know you are writing for your audience. Audience and purpose analysis are just as important as having the right ingredients for baking. 

Next comes to building credibility through rhetorical analysis- the most important element in a series of writing. To show respect to your audiences. Before achieving that, you should put efforts onto writing itself.

Rhetorical analysis is a big range of information that we should consider while writing. I could only example few of them so I will try to explain well. Firstly, identifying all separate arguments and examine the relationships among them. Do they solidly link? Are they consistently?  

After that, looking for the quality of the information you are working on. What kind of data is preferred as evidence? How are such data gathered and presented? Evidence from books in library are more accurate and creditable than online websites. On the other hand, evidences could also be searched by Advanced research on Google Scholar. Just be sure that you know what you are looking for. And, make sure how accurate the information are. You could also have interview with related person to get one-hand, non-manipulated information. 

We are almost there.

Last thing about rhetorical analysis that I could think about is the writing style, which could bring the stance between writer and audience closer and closer. A writer’s style could be sentence length, alliteration, parallelism and the look of the writing can support the message that it carries. 

After all, a well-done writing should translate ideas clearly, effectively and nicely. A good series of photo should tell stories and let people to experience with it.  

Images via Arik Almas 

http://www.erikalmas.com/

Crafting Message For Electronic Media

The development of technology has been helped each of us to get assignments done in an efficient way. This chapter specifically demonstrates how to craft message through blog and email to achieve different targets. Doing a consistently blog activity needs patience and insistence. Therefore, do not blog without a clear plan. A plan about the purpose of this blog; who are being targeted as audience. After set up mind to start blogging to the world, there are some points which should be paid attention to.  First of all, create specific, clear, informative and compelling headlines. This means you’d better avoid clever wordplay headlines which people may not understand your word. Writing something that the search engine could easily target to find your voice.  Secondly, even if you are writing online, do not forget to write carefully. Only because your audience could only know about you through your writing. If you get sloppy and always create half-baked sentence, no credibility will be built between you and your readers. Being honest and transparent is also a vital character to stick on.  Here comes to the most important thing which should be checked before you type anything. Define your audience. Have a clear purpose. Be scope. We will talk about these elements in the next blog. 

Draft Email to Olivia Parker

Hi Olivia, There is nothing better than writing to your favorite artist in the world. Hi Olivia, this is Yixuan Liu. I am a photography student at Brooks Institute where has been a photography school since 1945. Studying in the photography program introduces me a way into the field, and my English class provides me this opportunity to write an email to you. Currently, I am learning Lighting Studio, which is a photography core class designed to learn how to use 4x5 large format Mamiya camera to shot tabletop products. During the learning process, I am consequently thinking about how to make a tabletop shooting worthy to shot and share. Stopping by your website, looking at every picture and thinking about the lighting, setting and concept. Your works fascinated me. To me, your pictures are simple but to the point. I appreciate artists who have the ability to pursue their own spirits through art works and everyday life. The very end of your interview questions asked about what do you do in your free time. You answered “what free time” cracked me up. Duh, what free time? Photography is our way of life and that’s what we do all day!
 I honestly like your photography and if I would have the chance to talk with you about art, I would understand more about your works, and your way of life.

Thanks, 

Yixuan Liu

    

One Thing Troubles Me with the Blogger...

Oh my… It is so difficult to keep all the type and size of the text the same every time… I kept mess up…

Belief of My World

Things happened for reason. That is what my friend Susanan says all the time. This is what she believes and from now on, I started to notice the influence of these words. There is a reason why my parents support me on the education of photography that they are not even confident if I could make a living with. There is a reason why I am here at Brooks and writing about my own words for myself. 

For now, I am trying to create in a really simple but effect way to express the feeling and emotion through the pictures. And, also to make people ask questions, like “WHY”. Just like Eugene Richards says, world issues are too complex for a single hard-and-fast viewpoint. I only want my pictures to make people feel a certain way because I believe feeling is the very essence of life, art, and photography. 

Saying is way simpler than doing. To expect reaction from people of different culture, viewpoints and belief is hard, but it’s not impossible. I have seen pictures that were stunning and powerful. So I have faith that I could achieve my goal of having feeling and emotion in my pictures in the future.

Navigating Grocery List to Genre

Couple weeks ago, I was still confusing about the definition of genre. I always think it is a really big word that you could not simply define it. However, after reading Navigating Genres, I realized everything we know in our daily life is all under different genres.            

Writing requires response. I highly agree with this point as I read to the paragraph which talks about how Bitzer thought about writing. In his opinion, someone must create the first response when a new thing is being created. This makes me think about the truly purpose of every kind of writing is to get a respond. It also solves the question of why certain books could be sold in millions of prints and in different translation, like the Kite Runner.  "Different grocery stores make for different grocery lists", Devitt points out. This is so true when I go to Trader Joes I buy all those organic vegetables and healthy food. But when you go to Vons, you tend to buy nice wines and drinks. ( I never bought them, just for reference here.) Every grocery store is like a big genre, you could find a certain things there and they are also targeted to a particular people.                     

Making decision of what to write is like making grocery lists for each of the stores. At the end of the day, you pay what you get and you get what you pay. In the or their words, if you are writing in properly genre to a targeted audience, you will get you expected response from them.            

 I am still trying to experience more genres writing as well as identify the genres in my daily life. Being aware of different kinds of genres and how it composes is certainly more essential then learning how to write particular genres. I guess I know how to make a "grocery list" now. 

I Wish Someday People Will Quote My Words

What do you do when you do not have a car during the spring break? I read. I read about five books during last spring break and one of them was called <Image Makers Image Takers>, by Anne-Celine Jaeger. It is a really educational book as the style of it is doing interview of those photographers in different fields, including in commercial, portrait, documentary, fashion and even editor and gallery curator. Here is what I found fantastic of this book.
 Kathy Ryan, the editor of the New York Times Magazine, says “Photographers need to have a sense of what matters most to them and a driving force that gets them up in the morning. What are they after? What are they looking to do? They have to be able to reflect on what’s meaningful to them and what isn’t and have the discipline to pursue the meaningful. Invariably the best photographers are trying to say something about the world. They have the mission that goes beyond the aesthetic”(Jeager). The reason I love her words is because I found my pictures lacking of meaning.  But I am still looking for a way to find myself in photography. 

There are people who think photography could not make a living. However, Sebastiao Salgado, a Brazilian social documentary photojournalist says that "photography is so integrated in his life, it has become a way of life". As I am studying photography now, I wholeheartedly agree with him. Taking pictures is fun. Learning to take pictures is even more fun because all you are doing is to amaze yourself with your own pictures. Isn't it crazy!? This makes me think about my Lighting Studio course. By learning how to "driving" the large formate digital camera (it's all manual), we get the chance to take super spot on photo which you could even see the fuzz on the gray card. Anyway, I realize that I should stop complaining about all the hours I have to spend on each assignment, but to calm down and truly applying what I learnt form classes and practices to future shooting. 

I wish I could talk more about my favorite quotes in this book. I will try to include some in my next blogs. And I believe this book will help you find a clue of what you are trying to find for your own photography and even for your own life. I won't tell you it is available in the school library :)