To photograph is to record one’s life. In the digital era, people can easily access to camera where in the words of Joanna Zylinska, “In the age of the camera phone and wireless communication, we are all photographers now.” (Zylinska 2016) With camera phone, we can capture every moment at anytime we want and we are not just photographer but also distributors, archivists, and curators. Internet is like a medium that allows us to share our photographs immediately and social media is like a platform where we share and receive the photographs.

In “the uses of photography” I have learnt that photographs are not just photographs themselves, they speak the words, they tell stories and they participate in events. Photography can be seen as a cut in the flow of mediation where life is a sequence of photomediations.  Zylinska has said that “There is life in photograph, but also that life itself is photographic.”(Zylinska 2016) Photography shows how we experience the life and capture the very moment in the picture. I have realised that photography has a boarder meaning when I produced Project Brief 3 – Strangers & Stories. In PB3, I have learnt how to communicate with viewers through the photographs. Like the classic narrative structure in film or television, photography does have its own narrative structure that helps the viewers understand the story in an emotional way. On the other hand, I also learned how to read and feel the emotion in photographs through the practices in “the uses of photography”.

The other key concept from the reading is that photography is all about light. As Jai McKenzie argues, ‘regardless of technological change, light is a constant defining characteristic of photomedia intrinsically coupled with space and time to form explicit light-based structures and experiences’ (2014: 1). This reflected on my Project Brief 4 where I am going to produce a photobook on Light and Shadow. Light is a basic resource that required in photography where a shadow can be changed and twisted by manipulating the angle of light. It is interesting to play on light and shadow in photography and the results are always amazing. Here are some examples that I took during my trip on Easter break.

Reference

Zylinska, J 2016, ‘Photomediations: An Introduction’, in Kuc, K & Zylinska, J (eds), Photomediations: A Reader, 1st edn, Open Humanities Press, London, pp. 7-17.