Janae Hall Design: November 2013

Sunday, November 10, 2013

Photo Ops

I have always found that the most interesting part of photography is the cameras ability to capture a moment or a detail that can be so easily overlooked in the way humans typically experience things, and I think this reading affirms this. I think it is common for people to turn to a camera, or look at a photo as a way of capturing a fleeting moment. That in itself is amazing. Being able to look back at something that is gone and will never appear in the exact same way again, and being able to look at a photo that shows that thing just as it was at that moment. This reason I think is why so many people turn to cameras to create memories, or preserve memories.

While I do think the idea of preserving memories is a cool feature of cameras and photos, I personally am much more interested in the idea of capturing a fleeting moment, and being able to look at the details of an image that can be overlooked when you don't have the endless time you have when looking at a photo. I find it much more interesting to use cameras to look at things in a way you wouldn't look at something otherwise. Because of my desire to use the camera to look at things in a way different than what you would see just looking at something with your eyes, the ideas of using movement, close up, and continuos mode really grabbed my attention. With movement you can capture an image that you either can't see at all with normal sight, or can capture an image of something that you do see, but for so short a time you don't process it. Movement in pictures has always created really incredible effects in photos I've looked at, and can produce some really cool and unique results when used along with light. Close up is something I like, because it draws you to look at the details of something, for much longer than you regularly would, and in doing this you really appreciate the intricacies of things that are usually forgotten. Continuos mode is a lot like movement to me, only instead of moving the camera your usually capturing a moving subject. I love this feature on cameras and sometimes don't think it is used enough as it can create such a cool effect of photos as it brings, movement and stillness to an image simultaneously and in a way also suggests time.

Parts of the Letter

It is amazing to me how many different parts there are that come together to form all of the different

letters of the alphabet, lowercase and uppercase. It makes complete sense when you think about

typography that every single piece, every stroke, every mark, that makes up a letter would need a name so that when you talk about a font

or how a letter is written you know which piece is being talked about, but before reading this piece I would have never thought to give a name to the ear on a lowercase g, or the barb on an uppercase C. The need for these names for each and every part of a letter becomes even more relevant when you examine and notice how utilizing or not utilizing certain parts of a letter in certain fonts changes the feel of the font overall. In many cases certain parts of the letters I look at as almost flourishes, not really doing much for the identification of the letter itself, but giving the letter personality in its font so you can tell the kinds of emotion or feeling that the words that each letter is making up is trying to convey.

All to often I think typography is over looked by the day to day world, and I think that's why I am so drawn to it and interested in it. Type has more effect than most of the world would ever notice, or care to admit, and I love that by just choosing how a word is presented and the font that a word is written in can have so much effect though commonly seemingly unnoticed.