Framing Our World Through Different Lenses

Hello Beautiful People,

https://www.instagram.com/p/CcwtBAtO_er/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

This week was an interesting experiment and a little challenging. I wanted to play with some photography techniques to add to the story I wrote. I worked with framing and hierarchy to add focus in different ways. This story was about remembering times in my childhood and I used my little cousin as my subject. This is the first time I used a full body in any of my photos to show in the stories, and it was an interesting choice on my part.

First, I played around with framing to see what I could get out of my photos. What I did was crop one of the photos so my little cousin took up most of the viewing space, with little background to surround him. As Lupton and Phillips wrote in their book "Graphic Design The New Basics", they discuss the reasoning behind cropping other than just cutting the picture. They claim that "by closing in on a detail, cropping can change the focus of a picture, giving it new meaning and emphasis," (103). I wanted the focus to be on him and have the background be completed by the viewer. I feel that the eye is drawn more to my cousin then they begin to travel to the edges as the rest can be filled in.

After I cropped the photo of my cousin on a swing

This is the original photo

Then, I played with hierarchy with the other two photos. The way I used hierarchy is a little unique as I used a living subject and inanimate objects to show the contrast. In one of the photos, my cousin's feet are in the foreground and little ways away was the slide where it looked smaller. In another photo, my cousin is standing in the foreground while the horse toy is smaller looking in the background. I played with the idea that my cousin is the center of attention so its like his presence is more important. The slide and horse are smaller and farther away to show that they are important to stand out, but not as much as my cousin. Lupton and Phillips explained how human presence compared to inanimate objects can matter in terms of using hierarchy. "Indeed, the ranking of order defines who we are as a culture," (116).

Feet dangling in front of the slide

Little cousin calling out to the horse

I believe this week helped me connect to something that I didn't think about much before. I was able to relive some fun childhood memories and compare to the present. Also, I got to play with different techniques to make my story more interesting visually. Since this is the first time I used a full bodied subject, it gives more of a face to my work. Instead of it always being about nature with little to no human representation, I added people. I like how they turned out so I am planning on playing with this design for my future posts.

Thank you for listening to me ramble about my work and I hope you enjoyed this week's post!

With lots of love,

Libby