NM3223 – Cel’s Photography Blog

Here’s the photo that Jasmine and I analyzed. Beware, much controversy involved. Negative connotations also included in ad. Perhaps you could leave some comments and tell me what you see in this picture. Are you annoyed by it? Do you feel as if Absolut Vodka is poking fun at Singapore? Do you love that this ad features Singapore? Feel free to comment.

Click on absolut presentation to view our powerpoint slides.

SELF-ASSESSMENT (99/100)

For this particular assignment, I feel that our presentation sparked quite a conspiracy. The classmates were commenting more on the advertisement itself rather than the presentation by Jas n I. It looks like Singaporeans can be quite patriotic at times. hehe. All in all, I feel that our presentation was quite in-depth, given the short presentation time of 7 minutes. Since we managed to create a stir in the class, in terms of emotions running high and much analysis being passed to and fro, this assignment deserves 99/100. The 1 mark lost is because intitially, we failed to analyse the negative connotations of the image. Take for example Paul’s and Mei Mei’s presentation, they had a section on cartography that showed the negative aspects of certain cards and the positive meanings of others. After the presentation, Jas and I added in a section on “negative connotations”. Now we’re complete. =)

PEER EVALUATION:

Under construction

For this assignment, I thought about how redundance and neglect creep over things as they age. When we stroll in a park, we hardly take note of the nature around us. We notice that there are greenery all around us, but how often do we stop to take a closer look? So, with no further ado… I dedicate this assignment to an old, but hopefully not forgotten, tree.

Standing tall and alone, no one really bothers to take a 2nd glance at the tree. Yes it makes the park nice and green, but what use is it to you and me? It’s slowly creeping towards redundance and negligence as it ages. The first picture shows the tree in all its glory, standing tall and proud. This is my take on realism(straightforward “transparent” view of the world). Moving on, my idea on formalism(limited view of the world) is to portray the tree in its essence. I feel that the bark is symbolic of a tree as it tells how old the tree could possibly be. It’s really nice how the texture of the tree bark turned out in my 2nd picture as well. Last but not least, I thought of a little twist to convey how a tree can be useful to us. This one i call expressionism because I wanted to show that when a tree ages, it could actually be more than just a visual component. This would also mean that a tree is not as redundant as it seems. yay! To end off, the 3rd picture shows a man meditating under the tree, which I feel expresses the usefulness of the tree. In fact, any other actions can be carried out under the shade of a tree (please don’t think dirty, heh).

Realism: A tree, just a tree.

Formalism: The bark depicts the age of a tree.

Expressionism: Putting a tree to more use than just to spruce up a park.

SELF-ASSESSMENT: (TOTAL = 8.4/10)

Hmmm, it seems my concept was too straightforward. Either that or my classmates were too tired to comment after a long critique session. Sin Guan commented in class that my piece on ‘Expressionism’ is obvious. That’s a good sign I guess. Actually I had another idea which I wanted to explore. When i find the time(if i do), I shall take the photos and upload it here. Alright, for this assignment, I give myself 8/10 for effort and 8.8/10 for creativity. Total of 8.4/10. There’s lotsa lotsa room for improvement for this assignment.

PEER EVALUATION

For this assignment, I feel that Jasmine’s idea on pipes creeping around was interesting. The cropping of her photos also shows that much thought has been given to each picture. I particularly like the yellow pipe in which she was attempting to depict formalism. For creativity, I give her 9/10 and for effort, 9/10 as well. That gives a total of 9/10. Keep it up Jas!

I like Stephanie’s concept of creep. Both her presentation and photographs were full of emotions. It was further amplified by the fact that for her, it was a personal experience that her family’s estate got taken away by the government.  I especially like her photograph of the signage that says “State Land..”. Click on the link to check out her blog.

Another piece of work I like is by Jillyn. I like the way she took pictures of the snail and showed the fence as if it were a pathway. The use of a snail and fence as a pathway really fits the theme of ‘creep’ well. The consistency in colours also shows clarity of thought throughout the 3 pictures. I give her a perfect 10 for this assignment.

Hmm.. I began this assignment with a vision… one that made me take a picture where a path leads into lush greenery. That place was the beach. The path was Bedok Jetty. That took 2 days of shots to fill up the missing pieces and 5 hours of hard work to piece together 400++ layers of photos. As it turns out though, this piece is going to the dumps.

Attempt 1: East Coast Park

And so the story goes: One day I’m in Europe and the day after, I’m back on sunny island Singapore(with its limited attractions and pale blue skies). The feeling of wanting to be back in Europe strikes me hard as I walk past Chijmes one day. I could not help but notice how it resonated with gothic and neoclassical European architecture. I call this, “A little slice of Europe in Singapore”. How i miss Europe. In order to capture the entire front portion of Chijmes, I stood in one place and took close to 200 shots(up, down, left, right) to get the fish-eye effect. Raffles City got in the way of this shot, so Photoshop to the rescue! If you notice, I gave Chijmes a golden glow to signify surreality(The question of “This is Singapore, isn’t it?”). All this was done using plays on shadows and highlights. This is my mind’s view, and I thought I’d let you in on it. The sky is also given a stronger dose of blue to resemble European skies(which is almost always bright bright bright blue). Comments please………………

Chosen for presentation: “This is Singapore, isn’t it?”

SELF-ASSESSMENT(Total: 9.5/10):

For this assignment, I went to many places to try out different angles of shots of various places and also played around a lot with Photoshop – to take away unwanted buildings/people from the image. The Chijmes photomontage is my best piece yet and I succeeded in making people think that it was a shot not taken in Singapore. I rate myself 9.4/10 for creativity and 9.6/10 for effort. (Total = 9.5/10).

Mark feels my work should be rated 8.5/10, as the discoloring of CHIJmes to a yellowish hue was not to his liking. To me, the discoloration was intentionally done to create a golden hue to the building and hence bring out the ‘Europe-ish’ feel.

PEER EVALUATION:

I like Paul’s photomontage of the lone man sitting under a tree. The picture looks silent, which brings out the theme of “The Day After”. The only thing I disagree with is the overpowering green colour of his entire image. With that, I rate his work 8.5/10.

I feel that Michelle’s idea on creating movement is interesting. She created overlapping squares where the man’s hands are portrayed as doing different actions. Also, I notice that most if not all of the squares in her montage are focused. This was what Prof Reddy was looking for in our photomontage. I give her 8/10 for creativity and 8.8/10 for effort. (Total = 8.4/10)

My favourite piece is by Jialin. It was really refreshing to see a change of perspective and use of colours. The next time I take a walk down Pagoda Street, I’m sure to remember Jialin’s photomontage. I give her a perfect 10!