Congrats and Happy New Years!

Victorian New Year CardIf you have not noticed, your grades have been uploaded to Blackboard, as well as CUNYFirst. Your group presentations have also been uploaded on the same page as your egg poetry. Thank you all for a wonderful semester and I wish you a relaxing winter break and Happy New Years!

Here is the grade scale from CityTech’s student handbook:

A 93-100

A- 90-92.9

B+ 87-89.9

B 83-86.9

B- 80-82.9

C+ 77-79.9

C 70-76.9

D 60-69.9

F 59 and below

Week 11: The New American Dustbowl: Documenting California’s Drought

First of all, U.S is a huge country. It’s hard to know exactly what is going on if you’re not in California. Even people in southern California does not know much about things happening in northern California. Drought in California is becoming more serious as time goes by and the state government is doing their best to solve the problem. For a long time, people were not aware, or at least did not care about the drought, but these days, they started to recognize the reality and try to solve the problem too. The Drought will have a huge impact on agricultural supply because the water is the key element for grains to grow.

Week 10 Discussion Topic: Robert Capa and the Greatest War Photograph

From my perspective, Capa’s photograph seems to be staged and it should be a problem if it was published. The most important role of the media is to deliver the facts to the public. It may worked for Capa to deliver the message to public regarding the cruelty of wars. However, when the photos that published are staged, the press is lying to the public by creating a story. When you stage a scene, no matter how hard a photographer tries, his own perspective adds in to the scene somehow, and it could deliver the wrong message to the public.

Week 9 Rock Star Food Behind the Scenes

The stories of unusual requests made by musicians are pretty well known to the public. The Items are varies from Billy Idol’s chocolate to Busta Rhyme’s condoms. Before the concerts, artists may feel extremely nervous because the concerts are where their hard works are going to be evaluated by thousands or audiences, and they might want something that can soothe themselves so they can give the best performance to the audience. And the items that were requested were not that hard to get. Except Maria Carey’s Dom Perignon.

Week 8 Photography and Special Effects in Early Film

From my perspective, the biggest difference between the photography and special effects are “movements.” Photography usually captures and shows the still moment of an object or a scene, and that is why it may be harder for photographers to imply their perspective into their works. On the other hand, special effects focuses on the movement of a subject. It may be more effective in terms of delivering the messages to the public.

week 7

IMG01275-20140707-2006

my first fruit salad. this may not be much to others but this is the first time I was able to do it without buying it or having my mom doing it for me and it was amazing. there is watermelon, pineapple, cantaloupe, kiwi, pears, green grapes,and small strawberry. this was really good with whip cream on top.

WK 9

I am not surprised by the bizarre requests made by the celebrities that Henry Hargreaves chose to photograph. Before this topic was posted as a discussion topic I was not even aware that photography such as this was present, it is definitely fascinating to look at and read about. Hargreaves job as a photographer for such strange requests seems to be entertaining. Everyday is a new experience which keeps the job appealing. For example the photo of Sinatra’s request specifying such an odd number of 24 chilled shrimp. The strangest one was the one of cornstarch, the requests are so random but yet so real. These unusual requests can be somewhat of a new found routine in the beginning of each celebrities career that they carried on with them for many years probably symbolizing “luck” or “ease” for a performance or for personal preference.

WK 12

Being able to actually see the events occurring in Ferguson are both overwhelming but at the same time eye opening. I believe the photographs are evidence of the day to day situations occurring in Ferguson , there is much more to it then what the new channels have lead us to believe. The photo of the children with their hands in the air and looking dead on into the camera creates the serial thought of “this is real” although as Olson said more than likely the children are just mocking what they see or they could actually be aware of the meaning behind such the powerful hand gesture. I feel the Kent photograph and the photographs taken at Ferguson differ because in the Kent photograph you can see the look of sorrow and disbelief in the face of the individual standing over the lifeless body while in the photographs taken at Ferguson you see a community not focusing on what is going on around them at each given moment they protest but the positive message they want to convey buy raising a hand and shouting “please don’t shoot”.

WK 10

Photography in a general sense will always be questioned when it comes to the authenticity of a photography and the artists methods of capturing that one amazing photo. Capa is not the only artist who has caught themselves in the middle of a controversial battle dealing with staged photographs. But the picture specially taken by Capa, Death of a Loyalist Solider, has been at the center of doubt for quite a while. There are two sides to every argument and I feel I have to take sides with Capa on this one. Capa is an amazing artist not to mention brave, to go out in the middle of a war and being able to produce such a remarkable photo in such dangerous circumstances is something I know I wouldn’t have been brave enough to do. Cameras back in the day weren’t of the best quality so I can understand why someone can argue the photo not being of the best quality or being out of focus. But we have to keep in mind that Capa was taking photos on a sunny Sunday morning on a daily walk around the town, he was faced with danger from every angle. I believe the photo just happened; it is possible that even Capa himself wasn’t aware that the famous photograph that we know of now was captured until he reviewed the photos from his camera footage.