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Cropping

The very act of cropping alters and changes the suggested meaning and perceived context of the subject of a photograph.
Journalism photography and documentary photography specializes in presenting information in a non-mediated and un-biased fashion but the all photographs we see on TV and in newspapers are completely mediated. In fact, the very act of taking a photograph is an act of mediation as the photographer we put around his own frame and select how much background he wishes to show
Even further, the photographer may crop the image to change the meaning completely. There are sometimes tell-tale warnings that a photograph has been deliberately cropped in a particular way to convey a certain meaning as we may sometimes see it being de-pixelated and the image is not a true documentary photograph.
Here are some images that I myself have deliberately cropped in ordere to demonstrate how drastically cropping may alter the meaning of an image.


Here we see a young Jewish boy looking up at the Wailing Wall, portrayed as young, innocent and devout

Here we see the full image which undoubtedly means that our first impression must be modified as the boy is dressed as a soldier - undoubtedly from the Israeli Army. He is represented as being dominant and aggressive due to all the weapons of war which he is carryinging about his person.


Here we see a holiday snapshot with young girls sunbathing and appearing to be very peacefulness

Here we see the entire image revealing that in the background the enemy is invading their shores and disrupting their peaceful way of life. The U.S, soldiers are represented as being clumsy and aggressive.

Here we see a devout Moslem at prayer

Here we see the full image of a scene of conflict and we may interpret inferences it as a conflagration caused by the Moslem terrorist who is praying to his God to thank him for the destruction of the evil Western powers

In this photograph we can see a happy young boy standing in the summer sunshine. He is portrayed a carefree and innocent

In this photograph, showing the boy's surroundings, we can understand the true situation being portrayed - a boy left homeless after the Blitz wiuth his family in the background

In this shot we can see what we may perceive as a group of tourists visiting the Brandenburg

In this photo of the Berlin Wall, this is a clear and precise demonstration of how we see photographs for what they are. What is denoted here is the struggle between East and West at the time of the fall of the Berlin Wall. We can see how the photographer has tried to create a very dramatic shot in which completely contrasting moods are portrayed in the same photograph. Whereas down below there is panic and disorder


The first image shows a US soldier being attacked by an Iraqi

A few seconds later, another photo showing the scene in its entirety makes it clear that the Iraqi is in fact embracing the US soldier in order to thank him for his liberation. This is an example of how time-cropping can alter the meaning of an image. This is furthermore a clear example of Cartier Bresson's "the decisive moment" showing how a photograph relies on a fraction of a second to achieve clarity of meaning. These two photographs are completely different as they indicate totally contrasting meanings and objectives.

Shown here is a foreign homeless person in despair and the pohotograph conveys his helplessness and loneliness. I took this photograph on the streets of London outside the Victoria and Albert Museum.

The second photograph shows the homeless man with all his surroundings made visible, so the viewer may see he is not in fact completely alone: there is a couple walking by, ignoring his plight, and his hand is covering his face - not just as a gesture of despair, but in order to hide his face due to his shame when confronted by the stares of the affluent passersby. The contrast between rich and poor in UK society is thus graphically illustrated.

Depicted here is a caring mother and child in an urban environment.

The full image reveals a gang of youths -the much stereotyped so-called asbo gang with hoodies and a young man. The signs also suggest certain connotations. For instance, "Red Route" may be suggesting a blood-stained path. Also, the bill board entitled "Lost Children" could refer to the young boys who are suffering from "lost childhood" as they have no one to care for them and they are forced to grow up on the streets

Most images are cropped down and this can change the entire meaning of an image and its effect upon the target audience.
Example - A photograph taken on 9/11. The image depicted in the first photograph is quite mundane as it appears to show an ordinary wealthy Western businessman reading his newspaper on a dirty street. Maybe the fact that the man is wearing a business suit connotes his position in society contrasted with the squalid street. The next photograph shows the entire disaster scene all around him. The debris of all the newspapers destroyed in the 9/11 catastrophe was one of the most iconic images created at the time. Symbolically, millions of sheets of burnt newspapers floated down from the windows of the twin towers. The new meaning of the photograph is the frailty of Western civilization as the Western business man is dwarfed by the chaos around him so he appears weak and helpless despite his power dressing. This is a startling contrast to the meaning of the first photograph.

For this photo I got the idea from a series of photos used for a Go-Lite BVackpack campaign which depicted a predators eye with the prey within the iris of the eye and this created a very dramatic effect. The audience views the image until they can work out what is actually going on in the photo and this is of course a surprize.

The first two images that I used were changed dramatically to produce the final image and one may see how the use of colour level contrasts and highlights has caused these changes, making the final photograph more visually pleasing.
Stage One. - Upload the two photographs onto each other which creates one layer on top of another. Next -
Step two. - Scale down one photograph so it may fit within the other - exactly within the pupilof the subject's eye. By photographing the image on a black background, this made it easier to blend one photograph in with the pupil of the eye. Make sure that the photo required on top is in fact in the top layer.
Step three. - I removed any of the background which I did not consider necessary using the Eraser and changing the opacity to blend the two photographs together in the most satisfactory manner.

A series of images of photographs created by photoshop using layers and backgrounds to completely change the original image and its meanings and connotations. In the International Pool scene one may see how the building and the colours have been changed but only slightly. I did this again but instead of changing the colours I placed a background behind the building to create a post apocalyptic view of urban architectcture.
Production.
Step one.
Select the sky behind the building using Magic Eraser set at 50. Once this has been done create a new layer of the background photo and place this behind the first layer so the first layer is on top. Next, remove any blemishes of lines on the sky as this will spoil the finished result.

An example of some panoramic shots a I created in photoshop CS3 in Panorama Picture
Panoramic shots are very visually pleasing as landscape photography for it is not physically possible to see so much in one view with the naked eye. Thus, through photography one is able to see the true world in which we live as a vast area can be viewed and deconstructed
Step one. Set up the tripod and set the camera to the right aperture and shutter speed.
Step two. Take a series of photos by moving the tripod slowly around - it must not be moved too fast or this would create a gap. If one of the shots is underexposed or overexposed it is best to change the shutter speed rather than the aperture as when the aperture is changed, so is the depth of field and this may make one photo look completely different when this is not the effect desired.
Once taken, use photoshop under the file "Photomerge" and this will render all the photographs into one
Improvements.
In this photograph one may spot my shadow and that of the tripod and this could have been avoided if I had been more careful in the positioning of myself and my equipment.
I used an 18ml wide angled lens when I should have used a fish eye lens to create a better effect.
I did use a fish eye a day later but I should have produced a landscape shot rather than a portrait one as this would have been more effective.
I could have used a higher aperture to get a better depth of field maybe up to 32 but this could have caused problems of exposure.

Amnesty International - It's Not Happening Here But It's Happening Now

Archive VOl 2-2006 An example of a similar campaign which gets the audience interacting and actively involved with the advertisement campaign and even causes them to become part of the campaign itself. Companies and advertizing firms are becoming more and more concerned that catching the audience's attention is getting increasingly difficult as the public is getting so used to advertizing material being thrust upon them that they do not react to it as they used to since their palates are becoming jaded.






Amnesty International in Switzerland broke a new outdoor campaign May 29th that was created by Walker Werbeagentur Zuerich. The campaign uses the tagline "It's not happening here but it's happening now", in various languages, from French to German. Using the transparent billboards, the campaign aims to show people what is going on in the world, even if it's not happening in front of them at the bus stop. The ads portray issues in countries like Iraq, China, and Sudan.

HDR

HDR

In computer graphics and photography, high dynamic range imaging (HDRI) is a set of techniques that allows a greater dynamic range of exposures (the range of values between light and dark areas) than normal digital imaging techniques. The intention of HDRI is to accurately represent the wide range of intensity levels found in real scenes ranging from direct sunlight to shadows.
HDRI was originally developed for use with purely computer-generated images. Later, methods were developed to produce a high dynamic range image from a set of photographs taken with a range of exposures. With the rising popularity of digital cameras and easy-to-use desktop software, the term "HDR" is now popularly used[1] to refer to the process of tone mapping together with bracketed exposures of normal digital images, giving the end result a high, often exaggerated dynamic range. This composite technique is different from, and generally of lower quality than, the production of an image from a single exposure of a sensor that has a native high dynamic range. Tone mapping is also used to display HDR images on devices with a low native dynamic range, such as a computer screen.

Three exposures of the same image
Here the dynamic range of the image is demonstrated by adjusting the "exposure" when tone-mapping the HDR image into an LDR one for display. The above sequence uses an image rendered with Radiance using Paul Debevec's light probe of the Uffizi gallery. The rendering software produces a high dynamic range image. When making the JPEG images one sees, a part of that range is selected for display. This is similar to how a conventional camera captures only a portion of the dynamic range of a real physical scene.
The middle exposure is the desired exposure and is likely how this scene would normally be presented. The exposure to the left is 4 EV darker, showing some detail in the bright clouds in the sky. The exposure to the right is 3 EV lighter, showing some detail in the darker parts of the scene. This shows why compositing is desirable; a composite image can retain the interesting details from all three exposure settings.

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