A picture..

The old Chinese proverb “A picture is worth a thousand words” has been one of the most influential sentences that I’ve learned while being an artist in photography. As a photographer, when your eye is behind the lens and your finger is on the shutter release, your mind is a tapestry of imagination and art. However, when it comes to taking a photo, you must first imagine the photo on someone’s wall.

Now take a step back from the wall, and pretend you aren’t the person who took the picture. You’re at a friend’s house walking around and are looking at pictures on the wall. When you’re standing back, what is the picture telling you? Is it making you sad? Is it making you happy? Is it stirring any emotion in your mind? If it isn’t, then it isn’t a real photo, it’s just a beautiful accident created by a camera. In order to take a good photo, you have to see the emotion in the lens, you have to create emotion from a single picture. This all is happening in your mind within milliseconds of your mind telling your index finger to push the button to record the image on your camera.

How does this all relate to our original topic of a picture being worth a thousand words? Well, the simple answer is that it’s emotion that creates all the words when your looking at a painting, a photo or any type of art that an artist has created. When we use emotion, we let the audience know exactly what words were on our mind when we were creating it. When doing this, it also translates to the audience upon viewing the artwork which emotions they feel.

Imagine looking at a Van Gough painting and feeling no emotion. You just stared at it and simply saw colors, which resembled shapes. If pictures didn’t describe a thousand words, this is what exactly would happen. Your mind is constantly telling you words when you look at a picture, which then creates the emotion. This is why indeed a picture does create a thousand words.

Blog Assignment #3

God. The word itself stirs up as much of an emotional response as it does the controversy that surrounds it. Everyday, people are living their lives with either the belief that a higher power is watching their every move and guiding them to their salvation or that they themselves are just specs of sand within an infinite desert. Although it may seem that the idea of trusting everything you do to a higher power is something relatively new, the essential idea has been around since man first learned to walk.

Through out our history of civilizations, people have always had the need to trust their lives, their desires and their hearts to something. Either to trust twelve gods, over a hundred deities, one god or simply to just believe in the higher power of the government, the firm belief in something that you can't physically hold in your hands has always remained.

Although we can look back on how we've always had something to believe in, the simple question still remains; Why do human beings believe in things that are not or cannot be proven? To answer this question requires a lot of "outside the box" thinking. On one hand, we can easily say that the reason we believe in non existent things is so that we can go to bed at night without living with the responsibility of the actions we've taken in our everyday lives. The simple notion that the reason we are physically capable of such destruction and cruelty could very well be chalked up to the simple belief that a higher power "made" us do it. This higher power can range from the Devil, the greek god Agdistis or even the flying spaghetti monster. It doesn't really matter. Essentially we sometimes just like to live guilt free of our actions.

On the other hand though, it can be argued that seeing is believing. We see a sunset and believe it's beautiful. This example sums up how seeing something can vary from person to person however, since beauty is in the eye of the beholder. When we see something, we either try to develop a reason as to why it exists and how it can exist, or we just accept it for being there. A good example is how we go about our lives accepting why people act a certain way towards us, but we rarely ask the person why they are acting a certain way. We just accept it and continue on our journey.

Figuring out why people believe in things that can't be proven, is like trying to figure out love. We know it exists, we can try to put a description on it but sometimes people just can't understand it until they accept it. It's in your mind, your heart, your soul and it gives you a reason everyday to wake up to.

References:

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

http://www.gospeltruth.net/1854OE/540607_living_by_faith.htm

Unit Two Response

When I was five years old, my mother and father had decided what was best in their lives was to get a divorce. My mother, deciding that she was being ignored, cheated on my father, which would eventually lead to such divorce. At the time, both of my parents had decided that it would be best if my father took my brother and I back to California, while my sister would stay in Illinois to grow up with my mother.

Years had gone by, and I grew up with my father and grandmother. My mom rarely would call me to say hello, maybe once a year to wish me a Merry Christmas or to say Happy Birthday. Though some years, she wouldn't call at all. I began to think that through the years, my mother had lost her love for me, and that I was not truly thought of as "her" child. I was ignored, and believed to be banished. Sensing that I was in despair my Grandmother would fill in as my mother, giving me love and advice where it was needed and protecting me when the world seemed to rough.

Eventually, I grew up as all young people do, and I joined the Navy. While in bootcamp, I received a letter from my mother letting me know that she would be coming to my graduation. Until this point, I hadn't heard from my mother a good five or six years. Graduation came and I saw my mother once again, along with my sister. I can tell you that it was one of the happiest moments of my life because I truly felt my mothers love. However, this moment would soon fade as after graduation I didn't hear from my mother again until I received a phone call three years later from my sister.

My sister had called to let me know that my mother had passed away due to kidney failure and that the funeral would be in four days. At the time I was stationed in San Diego so I flew up to Illinois to attend the funeral. The funeral was rough, it was a mix of emotions and tears, however out of the situation I learned that my mother had always loved me more then words could describe. She kept pictures of me by her bed, she wrote me letters that were never sent because she felt ashamed of her actions and thought that a life without her would be a better life lived.

I learned two very important things from this experience; one is to never truly believe someone hates you, or doesn't love you until you hear it from their own mouths. I had gone through fifteen of years of my life thinking one thing about my mother, when in reality, it was the wrong thought all along. The other important thing that I learned and live by is telling people every day how much you love them and care for them. Even if you had bad experiences between each other that have set a huge gap in your relationship, be the bigger person and call to just say you love them. For if you do this, you will never have to live with regret that the last words you said, weren't said in love.

Unit One

For unit one, I've decided to pick the question which asks "Choose one way in which technology has changed human society and explain the impact of that change, positive and/or negative.
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To answer the question, I believe there have been many major technology advancements that have been created over the last couple of centuries, however I think one of the biggest was made during World War II. The atomic bomb. Without the invention of the A-Bomb, World War II may have lasted years beyond it's stop date in which we released this beast unto Japan. I always think that while our knowledge and intellect expand, so does our need for destruction. The whole invention of the A-Bomb, can be argued in many ways whether or not it was a positive or negative technology. Had we not invented it, and some other country had invented it first, I'm sure the USA wouldn't be as strong as we are today. It helped saved the lives of many US soldiers because it brought the end of the war, so the USA didn't have to continue fighting in a war that seemed to be an endless amount of bloodshed and destruction. However, the negative it ended the lives of many Japanese citizens and caused radiation fallout that is still around to this day. Also, because the technology existed, it could be copied and replicated in other countries, which would now lead to the worry of the end of the world. We've also managed to create another war just by giving the idea that a country may very well have the capabilities of possessing these "weapons of mass destruction".

The A-Bombs impact on the world is huge. We're constantly in discussion about different countries testing, or possessing them. It's my firm belief that when one is released in todays era, it will cause the end of the world, as it seems every country now has one. When one is launched on a country, that country will then launch one, so on. Along with the invention of the A-bomb, it leads the way for other powerful bombs to be invented alongside it's powerful capability of destruction, like the hydrogen bomb.

I always liked the quote that President Truman said, which was, "The atom bomb was no great decision. It was merely another powerful weapon in the arsenal of righteousness." That pretty much sums up everyones idea of what the A-Bomb is. A weapon in the arsenal of righteousness, which leads to why most wars are started in the first place, religious righteousness.