Aesthetics Weekly

Only two years after completing her Photojournalism degree in 1976 Annie had her first assignment for National Geographic, then the youngest photographer working for the magazine at age 25. Since then she traveled to nearly 150 countries, published multiple books, founded a global story telling collective and had two kids. Kids that she’s taken on many of her adventures.

Annie’s goal is for photography to be put to good use helping the lucky and comfortable see the troubles and pain in the world, hopefully manifesting motivation for change. Particularly focusing on woman and their unrecognised efforts around the world. Using this ideal she went on to help co-found the image collective 'Ripple Effect Images.'  

Bibliography:

http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/art-and-design/star-photographer-never-loses-sight-of-bigger-picture-20121103-28qq8.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annie_Griffiths

Mobile phone photography is everywhere, almost everyone has a phone in their pocket, it’s easy to see why 42% of photos taken on Flickr are from an iPhone. Another amazing fact is that out of all the people that have taken photos 90% of them have never touched a traditional camera.

A massive factor in the rise of mobile photography other than its accessibility is the quality and ease of  sharing it provides. Instagram caters to our narcissistic need and love of being externally approved. Sharing our daily adventures and helping us shape/manipulate how our identities are perceived.

The new iPhone 7 Plus sports a duel lens set up: one 28mm, f/1.8 the other 56mm f/2.8. The addition of an integrated lens at prime portrait length completely changes the game. Especially when the light is captured on a 12MP sensor. The quality of cameras on mobiles is actually high enough for professionals- Michael Christopher Brown a photographer represented by Magnum Photos shot his photo book covering the Libyan Revolution all on an iPhone.

Although I do find Michael's photographs beautiful I don’t think mobile phones will take over traditional cameras in the industry. Mainly because of their lack of manual controls and focal length choice. There will however continue to be novel exceptions!

Bibliography:

https://photofocus.com/2013/11/10/90-of-people-have-only-taken-a-photo-with-a-camera-phone-in-their-lifetime/

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2012/nov/16/mobile-photography-richard-gray

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2012/nov/16/dan-chung-mobile-phone-photography

https://www.wired.com/2011/12/smartphone-photography-2011/

https://www.macrumors.com/2015/12/03/flickr-iphone-most-popular-camera-2015/

https://www.google.co.uk/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=iphone+7+camera+specs

Stuart Franklin is primarily a photojournalist but it would be wrong to tie him up with one term. He is well known for his photograph of the Tiananmen Square demonstrations where a single student stands in-front of a line of tanks. Stuart also won the World Press Photo Award, for the image, and was featured in Life magazines: 100 photos that changed the world.

Stuart had his education in photography at West Surrey College of Art and Design, he then went on to work for the Sunday Times and Sunday Telegraph Magazine. Afterwards he worked for the French photo agency Sygma where he was inspired by many photographers returning from their reports with many stories to tell. During his time with Sygma he covered, among others: the civil war in Lebanon, famine in Sudan and the Heysel Stadium Disaster. For his work on the famine in Sudan, Stuart was awarded the Tom Hopkinson Award for photojournalism and the Christian Aid Award for humanitarian photography.

In 1989, the same year that he covered the Tiananmen Square demonstrations, Stuart became a full member of Magnum Photos then became the elected President from 2006 - 2009.

Stuart has also produced many personal studies and photo documentaries. He presents them in exhibitions worldwide and with multiple published books. 

My favourite of his personal works is a document of the detached, corporate and luxurious world of the premium hotels in Africa. I enjoy this project as Stuart displays a magnificent use of natural and ambient light which I try to use in my own photography, aswell as the social commentary of the “global uniformity of international business culture” and its place in Africa.

A Digital Image Scanner is a piece of technology that creates a digital image of an object or image when it’s placed on the glass plate. A sensor passes over the object or image and creates a 2D digital image file on the linked computer. Scanning an image is commonly used to digitise a film negative/print or a document so that it can be stored or used in image manipulation software package. This type of editing will prevent the original physical image form being damaged by physical manipulation which cannot be undone. Editing digitally means edits can be made quickly and undone quickly aswell.

Scanning old deteriorating photographs can be an effective way of preserving them for longer as prints are more likely to get damaged by the outside world than a digital file. This can also save physical space as physical prints take up more storage than a hard drive and computer, depending on the volume of prints.

Some commercial photographers who like to use film scan in their un-edited prints to be edited digitally to speed up their process and get more precise results. Also useful for photographers who may be on a tight schedule.

Ralph Gibson is a California born American art photographer. He grew as a photographer, after becoming technically competent in the US Navy’s photography school, by assisting and learning from big names in the industry. A valuable lesson he learnt from Dorothea Lange was that “you must make every effort to be unique and not copy anyone”

He produced many collections of work, all his own and published by his own publishing house “Lustrum Press” Ralph steered away from commercial work for the majority of his career as he wanted to investigate himself and his ways of thinking through his photography. He is also very interested in the difference between his perception of the subject and the viewers perception

His style consist of high contrast, black and white, tightly cropped, mysterious landscapes in the form of photo-books.

I enjoy Ralph’s photography as it triggers something in your imagination taking you to a world partially created by Ralph but continued by you in your head. I also like his consistently dreamy style.

Here I raised the shutter speed so that light has less exposure time, this means that any motion (Ben jumping) will be frozen. Because Ben didn’t move very far in 1/4000th of a second he is still in the air. Due to the shutter speed being fast little light gets into the sensor, to compensate I raised the ISO and opened up the aperture (wide aperture caused the shallow depth of field, therefor blurry background)

Here I chose a slower shutter speed meaning the shutter was open for longer letting much more light in. Because Ben moved about 10 cm while the shutter was open he is blurred in the photograph. I didn't compensate for the long exposure in this photograph with ISO and aperture which explained the blown out photograph.

A disposable camera is a small film camera that looks similar to digital point and shoots. The disposable camera features a fixed focal-length lens which is made of a single or double plastic element to focus light onto the film. All of the exposure variables are fixed this means that when the camera is submitted for developing the exposure is pulled up or down to create the most even exposure possible, the effect of this is that quality will be much lower than most digital and film cameras.  The only way to change the exposure of the photo is to use the in-built flash which is either on or off, due to this the flash is normally extremely striking and can cause severe flash falloff (where the light from the flash doesn’t reach the background of the image before the shutter closes)

Cheap and simple to use, these cameras are very popular with people who do not own any other sort of camera and want to capture memories easily, normally prints from disposable cameras will end up in family photo albums and feature portraits of such family standing in-front of monuments and nice views.­­

Personally I like the idea of the camera taking all of the controls which would be fun to test my skills in composition, colour and lighting (the photographic eye) rather than concerning myself with exposing and focusing which can sometimes get in the way of taking photographs.

Bibliography:

http://www.popphoto.com/how-to/2011/12/how-to-flash-falloff

http://photo.stackexchange.com/questions/35720/what-is-the-shutter-speed-aperture-and-focal-length-of-the-kodak-funsaver-disp