Save The Children

Fabrizio Di Marco

Photography II

Save the Children (Advertising)

Diary Entry

This was a very long process project because I personally felt we had to do two things at once. One was take pictures for the competition and second, we had to research about advertising and their strategies. That pictures are pretty hard to take because we are mostly dealing with small children and it is pretty hard to get them to do what you want you picture to look like, the other thing is that you don’t want to force the picture too much to what you have in your head because it then takes something away from the children, something spontaneous which is something I think is important when it comes to taking photographs of children.

Final Prints

Theory Notes

Nike (brand)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tc3PZ3Im5aQ

For a brand I have chosen Nike because it is a very good example of company that has had their ups and downs. Nike has being criticized for hiring workers in third world countries for the manufacturing of their products, this is because they try to take advantage of the poor working conditions and exploitation. They have also been criticized about advertisements which try to increases the confidence by “empowering” women in the United States and all of this because Nike was involved in practices in East Asian factories which felt that it “disempowered” women. Child labor has also been a major issue for Nike in Cambodian factory used by Nike. It was uncovered in a BBC documentary and it was about 6 girls that worked 7 days a week and about 16 hours a day. Besides their downs, Nike also tries to contribute to the world and this can be seen by their campaign called “Red” which focuses on fighting HIV/AIDS through the initiatives of education and medication. A percentage of the profit is given to the Global Fund. This campaign has also been criticized by saying that they are using diseases as a marketing vehicle for profit, since not all the money goes to the fund but just a certain percent. Nike sells RED laces for a price of around 5 Euros, and also during the friendly games to prepare for the FIFA World Cup, all players wore the red laces and also a product RED ball to spread the knowledge of this campaign. An example of the product can be seen here:

http://www.kitbag.com/stores/kitbag_4_5/footwear/bootroom/product_details.aspx?pid=71403&cid=6985

Apple’s iPod (product)

The iPod is an mp3 device, which is able to display videos, music, photos and many other things available. They come in different styles depending on what the user prefers, for jogging the user can choose the iPod shuffle which is really small and doesn’t require much effort to interact with it since it doesn’t have a display screen. Different users may enjoy interactions and looking for some quality video display can go for the iPod Touch which includes a big touch screen and also has internet access through Wi-Fi. One of the methods that Apple uses to sell their iPods is the storage capacity, in term of memory (gigabytes). Each product comes with different memory options, for example, the iPod Nano can come with 8 gigabytes or 16 gigabytes and the price depends on how much storage it has. Besides the iPod been a very popular product, it has been criticized a lot with battery life problems, reliability, durability, and allegations of worker exploitation. When the iPod is bought, the user can see their performance written on the product, for example the battery life. Apple has been criticized because they say that the advertise battery life is not achievable in real life conditions and that the battery actually lasts very short time.

Invisible Children (Social)

The Invisible Children orgnization started out as a group of three young American film makers went to Africa in search for a story and it ended up becoming a documentary that inspired many people into contributing to help children that are abducted in Africa and used as child soldiers. They have many strategies to get people involved in this movement. A good example would be the lock-in they had in the American School of The Hague. Members from the organization came from the States and talked to the students about what is going on in Africa and what the student can do to help. The purpose of the lock-in was to simulate what it would be like to sleep not under your own roof but with a lot of other people around you and basically on the floor, even though it doesn't even come close to what the children in Africa have to go through everyday. They also showed their movie/documentary to the students so that they can get some inspiration.

Image Bank

This is a photograph taken by Abbie Trayler Smith. Born in 1977 and grew up in Wales, she began taking photographs for the student newspaper while she was in college studying for her law degree. She taught herself how to take photographs and how to take advantage of the camera, and then started working for the “Daily Telegraph” after graduating. She then resigned from her contract with the “Daily Telegraph” so she could freelance for many clients and work more with her personal projects. I chose this photograph because personally it was the one that I most liked, most of her pictures have a weird style, which are pretty gore. In this photograph you simply see a child which brings a lot of happiness to the picture, and that’s why I chose it from the others.

This is an ad photograph taken by Jeffrey Van Houtte. He is a photographer that specializes in advertising for many famous companies. He was born in Antwerp, Belgium and got a diploma as a professional photographer. At the age of 21 he opened a studio in Brussels where he mostly did work on food photography for a while. I chose this photograph because it involves McDonalds which is very famous for advertising their food.

This is a work from Ray Massey. Although I could not find much information about this artist, I was fascinated and impressed about his work. The way he created the images through excellent computer manipulation was the main reason why I decided to talk about it. All of his images have something special or magnificent about it and I really liked that, it is something that could make a viewer stop and actually stared at the photograph and see all the details.

This image was taken by photographer Romain Laurent, he is a very talented photographer from France and has worked with some of the biggest advertising agencies in the world, and he also has great retouching skills. I chose this photograph because of the effect on the viewer, when I looked at it, me head actually tilted to the side because the picture has an effect that makes look like thinks are really inclined, it actually looks like the kid is pushing to the other way so he won’t fall down.

Sources:

http://abbietraylersmith.com/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Product_Red#Criticism

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nike,_Inc#Human_rights_concerns

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ipod#Criticism

http://www.jeffreyvanhoutte.be/

http://www.shotaddict.com/tips/article_Jeffrey+Vanhoutte.+Famous+Commercial+Photographer.html

http://raymassey.dreamhosters.com/

http://cyanatrendland.com/2009/02/25/romain-laurent-photography/

http://www.romain-laurent.com/?page=main

Traditional Regalia

Diary Entry

Since we haven’t been working on the dark room, I will not be talking about my experiences in the dark room. For this project we had to take individual photographs of subjects that represented different cultures including my own. It was a hard thing to decided which culture to include but at the end it came out fine. Since I do not have any type of clothing or accessories to represent my country (Venezuela) I had to go to my other culture which is Italy and it seemed to work out fine since I knew Italian people in the school. The first pictures that I took were not that good because I couldn’t get to make them look right, and one of the subjects looked too serious in the picture which didn’t fit into the international day theme. For this project I chose 3 different cultures including my one of my own, Italy(mine) and two others of my choice which were Israel and the United States.

Printing Compositions

this photograph did not make it to a final photograph because it came out very blurry. After I changed the settings on the camera I was able to fix it.

Even though I liked this picture, it can't be used for a final picture because it doesn't quite fit in with the international day mood, the subject has an serious and maybe mad look on his face. Also, it is recommended that the photographs like these shouldn't have the subject looking straight into the camera, a three quarters would look much better.

Final Prints

This is a picture of my sister Laura representing the United States wearing clothe and accessories from the state of texas. The reason why I chose texas specifically if because I feel they are very proud of their state and really show it.

This is a picture of Saverio Calderoni and he is from italy. He is wearing an italian football shirt which says "world champions 4 times". When I asked him what would he wear for this picture, he quickly responded jeans and football jersey. This picture is supposed to represent my own culture since I am half Venezuelan and half Italian.

This is a picture of Nir Benlulu from Israel. When I chose this culture I quickly knew that I was going to include the kippa and David's Star, and this are the accessories that are seen in this photograph.

Theory Notes

Classical Paintings

This is a classical painting and one of the most famous by Leonardo da Vinci. This painting is a good representation of a classical painting, the use of colors makes the painting look like a real photograph, and I believe that was one of the goals when it came to classical painting. The pose in this painting has a meaning that the painter was trying to portray to the viewer, a very interesting fact about her pose is that from whatever angle you look at her, she is always staring you in the eyes. In classical painting the poses typically represent a calm pose, the subjects seem relax and usually their pose has a meaning, something that they represent or are trying to do, sometimes related to historical facts and religious beliefs.

Contemporary Photographs

This picture shows an example of what a contemporary picture of today could look like. This picture represents a wedding moment, and the poses are supposed to be very calm and intimate, the picture should show the happiness of the wedding couple and this done by physical attraction between them. Also, the wedding picture includes the wedding dress and the suit to bring in the joy of the wedding.

Image Bank

This is an “Omaha” man in traditional clothing and Peter Turnley took this regalia photograph. Peter worked for magazines such as Newsweek Magazine and has covered a lot of very significant moments in international history for the past 20 years. He has also won a lot of international awards which include the “Overseas Press Club Award”, “Best Photographic Reporting” and many others. I chose this picture because it clearly relates to our regalia project, the Indian is wearing clothes and accessories that go back to his culture and way of living.

http://digitaljournalist.org/credits.php

This is a picture of a Japanese Geisha, and was taken by photographer Frantisek Staud. Frantisek was born in Policka, Czech Republic and started developing in photography from an early age. He has worked in places including Japan and United Kingdom, and today he resides in Czech Republic but still makes trips around the world to take pictures for different popular magazines. I chose this picture because a Geisha is a very good example of Regalia, geishas were started as Japanese prostitutes and always had to wear the same kind of make up and clothe, besides the way they looked, the way they acted around others was very important and practiced a lot.

http://www.phototravels.net/frantisek-staud-photographer.html

This picture is probably of someone from the American Navy, I could not find the information about who took this picture and this is probably because there is people that work with this kind of pictures and aren’t really considered professional photographers. The reason why I chose the picture even though I could not find the person who took it is because when I think of regalia, one of the first images that come to my head is military people, how they have to wear their medals, uniform, etc..

http://www.starledger.com/morris/mil_news.asp

This painting was done by William Hogarth. William was born in London, England and he was a painter and cartoonist who has been given the credit for pioneering western sequential art. I chose this painting by him because it thought it most related to the project since it shows how people dressed in a certain time period, the women wore the hoods around their head.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Hogarth

This is a photograph by Annie Leibovitz. Annie was children to an air force lieutenant and a modern dance instructor along with other 5 children. She enrolled in San Francisco Art Institute where she started studying painting and then moved on to developing a passion for photography. I chose this photograph because I liked how each subject in it is wearing their own style of clothing, they are all different from the other.

http://www.biography.com/articles/Annie-Leibovitz-9542372

http://www.artnet.com/artwork/424420277/117084/annie-leibovitz-untitled-a-mad-tea-party.html