Williamsburg Bridge, half lit up, half in the dark, a real photo via The Gothamist
Before I introduce our next Discussion Topic I want to say that I hope you and your families are safe and recovering from the storm. As we work to return to ‘normal’ and classes resume at CityTech, please take extra time to get to campus since many bus and subway lines are disrupted. CityTech’s home page is a good place to start with links to the MTA, financial aid, etc. Please feel free to email me with any questions or concerns.
Those with power during the storm and its aftermath were inundated with overwhelming and often horrific images. An interesting tangent was how quickly fake photographs of Hurricane Sandy permeated the media. These photographs went viral on social media, via forum such as Twitter or Facebook. Read the following articles about faked photographs and watch the short clip by ABC News. The Washington Post reports on how the ‘shark’ photograph even made its way to China. For this Discussion Topic, please post your opinion of the visual coverage of Hurricane Sandy. You can also post any image that you found compelling, fake or real, or one that you took yourself. Please feel free to share you storm stories here.
ABCNews Hurricane Sandy: Fake Pictures, Memes, Social Media
Washington Post article on fake Hurricane Sandy photo
Because of the disruption caused by Hurricane Sandy to the University’s class schedule, I have decided to forego a deadline for the remainder of the Discussion Topics this semester. Please make sure you contribute the minimum of 10 blog posts to the course by the last week of class. It is an easy way to add 10 points to your final grade average.
Since I can’t post any blogs… I would like to share my experience from Hurricane Sandy in the comment section.
When there were news regarding the hurricane, I couldn’t help but not to take the whole thing seriously, because I remember how the media over exaggerated the Hurricane Irene incident last year, while it wasn’t really that much of a big deal. So ,when the hurricane started, I went outside to see if anything special was happening, and just as I thought… nothing “special” happened, at least in my neighborhood. Unfortunately, on the exact same night, I lost one of my precious parakeets, and we (me and my sister) couldn’t care less about the hurricane anymore…specially me, because I didn’t wanted to see my sister suffer seeing my beautiful birdie, lifeless in our room. So I took the soulless parakeet outside, to have some talk with it before saying goodbye to it forever. It was a tough night… specially because we’re an animal- loving family and would do anything to keep them happy. The day after, me and my sister were attacked with several phone calls in the morning from friends and relatives in here and the ones back in my country. They were all terrified and kept on asking us if we were okay. Me and my sister were shocked because we didn’t know why they were panicking while we were sitting down, all relaxed, and doing nothing. We asked them what’s wrong? Are they okay? Why are they all scared? and as soon as they heard our indifferent voices, they told us to turn on the TV and watch the news and that was when it hit us. Almost every neighborhood in New York was damaged because of the incident that occurred the night before, while we were shedding tears for our loss. We called our parents back and informed them that they shouldn’t worry about us. The fortunate luck that we had was the fact that our neighborhood was on the high point of New York and the water couldn’t really reach that area. Everyone we’re happy that we were okay and told us to not go outside until the situation was clear and fixed. As of now, our apartment is gathering different materials, such as foods, clothes, etc from its residents so that they could help those who were effected by the hurricane.
So that’s my experience… Boring… I know… and I’m sorry….
Hurricane sandy gave New York City a hard time on last week. I am the lucky of few that nothing much happened in my area. But, it totally destroys the MTA system in the city. Most of the subway stations are flooded during the hurricane Sandy (also the D train and N train station in my area). It caused me unable to go to school and work. So, I spend my whole week at home and keep checking the news about hurricane Sandy. I saw many fake pictures are showing around on the Internet. And most of them are interesting and some of them give a very strong image n feeling of hurricane Sandy. The most interesting picture I have seen was a diver swimming in the 42nd Times Square subway station. Even though this picture is fake, it shows the creative way that people create this picture. And I think this picture also send people a massage about how strong the hurricane Sandy can destroys the subway system in New York City.
http://tonireavis.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/hurricane-sandy-hits-new-york-city.jpg?w=300&h=236
http://www.slate.com/content/dam/slate/blogs/future_tense/2012/10/30/false_hurricane_sandy_rumors_police_scanner_fools_twitter_into_spreading/1351613566743.png.CROP.rectangle3-large.png
I feel the same as they do. no matter the picture is fake or not! it still give a feeling of how Sandy effect our community, our life. some people lost their car, house! and some people lost their life! I don’t think anybody will care the picture is fake or not in this situation！
Hurricane Sandy had caused many trouble for everyone. I think fake photos posted on social networks is not something new. In fact this has been going on forever. Even though these photos are fake this might still considered as art. I think these images is up to that person is think it is real or not.
Hurricane Sandy caused many disasters for many New Yorkers but if posting fake photos to to help them cope and try to show a light hearted view of Sandy than it shouldn’t be such a big issue. However, if those that posted the fake photos are trying to get money or donations from people in other states or countries all over the world, should be punished by removing their posts of photos and warning people every were about it. I did find the Sandy photo with the sharks humorous and artistc.
Living in the Rockaways during hurricane Irene was somewhat of a bitter-sweet moment. Sweet because I’ve never been through a major storm and at that moment… it’s somewhat exciting and exhilarating. The bitter part settled in the next morning when I saw the aftermath and devastation. I was stuck in the Rockaways for about 8 days; I could not get off the peninsula because the storm destroyed my car, no public transportation, and there was so much sand that I did not want a family member to come and pick me up and get stuck in the sand. During this time I was able to shoot many pictures of the devastation. I cannot say much about the media coverage of the hurricane; I still have no power, thus I had no T.V. nor internet. However, I was able to view some of these photographs after temporarily relocating to Brooklyn, and I’m not sure how I feel about these fake photos. I guess they serve a purpose…to bring humor into an otherwise somber and sad event. Using humor to help deal and cope with these situations is very common. However, is this art? I don’t think so. Staging a photo is one thing; but completely making up a photo by taking or stealing images from other photos and combining them is very creative, but does not rise to the level of art.
Hurricane Sandy cost millions of dollars lost and it was chaotic with the MTA and the gas issue. Whether the pictures are fake or not, the artist had a unique creativity that made us think if the picture is real or not and made us what happened if that actually was the case? It gives us an insight of what people have in mind.
On my end nothing was serious or damaging. It sure gave us an experience that we have never experienced. Some of us might even though that the hurricane was nothing serious or to worry about.
Hurricane sandy left a lot of people homeless. House’s were destroy, and also tress were down. People around zone A,B,C were the one who felt the impact more. Water coming inside people house rising to a distance they never seen before a hurricane had done. I did not get affected by the hurricane. where i live is nowhere near dangerous areas. A couple block down from my building, a lot of trees were down, and the tree came out with side walk.The fake picture that were showing around the internet seen to be interesting, but it wasn’t the right time to these picture. People lost their live in this hurricane sandy storm and its very foolish to this type of pictures. While watching the news, i knew what photograph was real and fake.
this storm was a wakeup call for the whole city because of how bad it turned out to be. i had to sit through the storm with my brother and we were basically stuck inside of our house for 3 days. just us and the dog. it was weird knowing that we couldn’t leave the house and if we were even going to have power or not. thankfully we were not that affected by the storm .
Even though I am late on replying to this post, there are still people who are affected by Hurricane Sandy. A lot of people are still homeless and some business are still closed due to it. I remember seeing a lot of peoples floating around the internet; some were fake but believable, while others were seriously fake. I remember seeing a shark photo similar to the one in the article and at first, I thought it was real because it was quite believable being that a lot of stuff was being wash up on shore. I later found out it was a fake through a friend. Other than the fake photos, I think the visual coverage of Hurricane Sandy was covered very well; majority of them were very shocking because I have never seen NYC so flooded before.
Luckily, on my end, I was safe and sound. I live a stop away from Coney Island but I was in Zone B so I didn’t have to evacuate. I was also very lucky to have water, heat, and electricity. The block behind mine as well as the block after mine, all had their electricity cut off. My block was the only block with glowing lights that week.
its sure is nice to hear things are getting back to normal and people are finally being able to catch up with their normal lives.
during the hurricane, it was announced for everyone to evacuate the costal areas and stay indoors for safety for every else. Without proper media coverage and nothing to do, it sure invited artistic designers to get a bit creative and imply their design skills to the current news instead of being bored at house. Images of the statue of liberty flooding, empire state building under water, sharks on the subway stations etc were few big hits of the designers creativity.