Final Project: Human Nature -- Infants’ Eyesight Development

Working on a theme named Human Nature, the first thing come to my mind is our childhood. Confucius said man’s nature at birth is good. Although there’s another extremely opposite theme, I believe us human were born naturally good. So for me, when it comes to Human Nature, I know infants are the most simple and pure human stage. That’s the reason I choose to narrow down my concept to infants’ development.

Anne Geddes is one of the photographers I admire. She’s an Australian-born photographer now living in New Zealand. She is known for her stylized depictions of babies and motherhood. In most of her work, babies are dressed as fictitious characters such as fairies and fairytale creatures, flowers, or animals like bunnies. Her subjects are extremely idealized; babies in her photographs are almost always sleeping or staring into space, as if still in utero. She has described herself as “a baby freak”. I think her works are fabulous because they captured the most nature emotions and expressions of babies.

With all respect to those famous baby photographers, I found that there are millions of photos taken with the subject as babies, there’s almost no work has been done as the perspective of babies. After we grow up, we just naturally forget what it likes to be a baby, and we forget how we see the world at our earlier ages. So, eventually I decide to do this photo essay as Infants’ Sight Development. Also in order to contain some conceptual element, I would like to shot photos through baby’s eyes, which means my photos would only show what or how they see the world. I believe it would remind people how we use to see the world in a quite different angle.

My very first idea was to shot a serious of photos that shows how baby see the world different. Which includes they see things in different angle, such as upside down, and also how they have limited sight view because of their sight development.

Like this shot, I took it with how would it looks like when it’s turned upside down in mind. I want show how it’s a person standing there facing the sky, but in babies angle of view, they might try to see it upside down so it looks like human can fly just like birds.

The original idea was too wide which includes too much information. So the next step I did was to narrow down my concept to the development of baby’s sight. So I give up on the photos contains senses other than sight.
I did more research on baby’s sight development to find out more information that would allow me to pursue their development through photos. After the information searching and collections, I highlight out few steps of babies’ sight development based on a timeline after they were born.

1st month:
a. Immediately after birth, and infant’s eyesight is only 1/30 as good as grow-ups’ when they were fresh born. They would only see things in the angle of 45 degrees.
b. At that stage, they can only see from eight to fifteen inches in front of their faces.

2~ 3 months :
c. Babies can see things in 180 degree after 1 moth. They cannot distinguish the colors well yet, so during the first month they pay attention to high contrasts best which is why balck and white toys will be popular at that time.
d. Their focus has improved, and are able to more smoothly follow or track an moving object with his eyes. 4~ 6 moths:

e. Allowing them to see objects farther away. Depth perception begins developing at this stage. They like to tracking people’s faces and following them moving around with their eyes.
6~8 months :
f. Their ability to see detail has improved to 20/30, nearly the level of an adult’s normal visual acuity of 20/20. They would be able to notice things disappear in front of them, so they like to looking for hiding things.
After 8 months :
g. By then, baby could reganize their relatives whom were sround them a lot with their eyes. They starts to use all the other senses to see more of the world.

Class EX C - Reflection paper

How does documentary photography different from photojournalism?

Documentary Photography is about producing truthful, objective, and usually candid photography of particular subject. Most often pictures of people and it’s tied, historically, to both exploration and social reform. Photojournalism is a particular form of journalism; it’s about producing images as part of the work of getting news for daily newspapers and magazines.
Documentary photography is different from photojournalism in terms of timeliness, objectivity, and narrative. The term “documentary” in documentary photography applied to photography antedates the mode or genre itself which is the way to accurately describe otherwise unknown, hidden, forbidden, or difficult-to-access places or circumstances date to the earliest daguerreotype.
Photojournalism nowadays is about speed. It reports stories about events, stock markets; even sports have become the norm. But speed does not change the content quality of what we see and how life is portrayed. The images combine with other news elements to make facts relatable to the viewer or reader on a cultural level. Photojournalist is more like a reporter but must often make decisions instantly and carry photographic equipment. They often expose themselves to significant obstacles, such as physical danger, weather, crowds, to get great news story.
Documentary photographers, unlike photojournalism, it took over a period of time to reveal the infinite number of situations, actions and results. In short, they reveal life. Life isn’t a moment. It isn’t a single situation, since one situation is followed by another and another.
Photojournalism tells instant stories, but don’t show “life”. It neither has the time to understand it nor the space to display its complexity. The pictures we see in our newspapers show frozen instants taken out of context and put on a stage of the media’s making, then sold as truth. Through documentary work, the photographer has a chance to show the interwoven layers of life, the facets of daily existence, and the unfettered emotions of people who come under the camera’s gaze. When finally presented, viewers are encouraged to use their intelligence and personal experiences, even their skepticism, to judge. By eliciting associations and metaphors in the viewer, and image has the potential to stimulate all senses. For example, if the Molotov cocktail-throwing Palestinian is shot. As news reported by a photojournalism, we will never know since time is of the essence, and a deadline always looms, so is him a nationalist or terrorist? Viewers can be left with a biased view. However, a documentary photographer can complete the whole story out of someone’s life.

Assignment 5: Emotions Capture

The last assignment—Emotions Capture. It sounds quite hard to me because we are supposed to choose one NON-HUMAN subject. Compare to an assignment like this, to capture a human’s emotions seems relatively very easy now… the requirement is at least 3 different emotional expressions which can be:
 Peace, serene, calm, harmonious, tranquil
 Happy, cheerful, satisfied, delighted, joyful
 Progressive, active, advancing
 Lonely, abandoned, desolate, solitary
 Sad, gloomy, miserable, depress, solemn
 Chaos, disorder, turmoil, mess
To be totally honest, I don’t know half of the words above… maybe that’s why I have trouble with naming the emotions of my photos I took and edited. But anyway, I was very happy when MS. Jing said she likes my series, it’s the naming part get wrong…
Anyway, first let’s start with how I choose my subject. To think of things bring out emotions out of me, I start think about my childhood… I always remembered (at least I thought it’s a memory of mine… but imagination…) when I was little, once I was eating fairy floss. It was a windy day, the fairy floss get blew away… I had this vivid memory watching it flying away… it reminds me balloons which just similar in sharp and also contains a lot of childhood memories of mine…
That’s how I decided to choose some balloons as my subjects! I imaged the photos in my head; they were prefect, although I don’t know how to shot most of them. So I decide to get some balloons first and just go out shot photos with them!
Here’s the first one come to my mind which has the effects I could actually archive.
I was gonna name it LOST or SOLITARY.

My classmates don’t see solitary in it… I capture the moment just before the balloon disappear in the sky which I thought a single balloon in position like this could perfectly portray the ideal of loneliness…
People said it more likely capture the emotion of freedom. Actually I adjust the colors into dark ones to bring out sad emotions… change the color of the balloon from yellow to red to enhance abstract. I am thinking about change it to freedom which need more work to change the color back…
As I said I have trouble to name these emotions… the second one which I named Reminiscence, people say they don’t feel that either… I am gonna change this to Dreamy!

Last one, actually was the least satisfy one among these three. I named it Peace, by imaging lying on the beach, looking at the sky. See the floating balloons and top of a tree… but people just say don’t feel that way… in conclusion…. Apprentaly, my photos just don’t bring any emotions out of anyone......

I don’t know how to name this one yet… even thinking about change to another one!

Assignment 4: False Reality

To be honest, this module has come to my favorite part as we are allowed to manipulate the photos. I’m keen to learn more about Photoshop, to know what new I can do with it. I know lots of people believe photography is about do every single amazing effect with your camera, with techniques and tricks but without “cheating” with Photoshop. Anyway, I am actually from the group of people believes Photoshop absolutely adds benefits!

Anyway, this assignment is about false reality and the key word is surrealism. My first ideal was unzipped a human body and his evil part come out of it when the guy is looking in the mirror. I didn’t really finish my original idea because I think it shows too much evil side of me… LOL… seriously, the reason is the mirror in my room is too small. I know I could duplicate the mirror or anything else to make the mirror bigger. But just feel somehow not right… I want a big mirror because the major effects are in the mirror which I need them to be clearly stand out!

I back out of the original idea the night before the tutorial. I made this new one based on the stress I have at the time I try to make the work over the night… the whole concept is basically about my view of student life. These days, students get really stressed out and totally feel hopeless sometimes… so I want to presume the feelings of hopeless and desperate by making the guy faceless while working on pile of books and looking up to the hazy sky. Plus the dark side of the sky he’s looking at is “growing” or “crawling” into the window.

The reason I put the window there is I want give the feelings of limit space gives stress… but it seems didn’t go well… I might even consider change the whole thing coz there’s not much of surrealism inside… but I guess the faceless is good. So as far as I know, I will keep the faceless element and probably change all the other things.

Class Exercise B -- Surrealism

"Surrealism style uses visual imagery from the subconscious mind to create art without the intention of logical comprehensibility.” – I believe this is a good explanation of surrealism.

Here's some good images I think qualify surrealism.









We did a class exercise during lecture.

Here’s our group’s work: Definition of Surrealism: A photo that brings out the thoughts of a subconscious mind in an irrational manner.




We created something we want to present as surrealism. We put a lion’s mouth on a green apple.

We make the apple biting a human’s arm. Here’s a explanation why we got this idea and concept:

Genetic modification of food or plants and use of pesticides for the cultivation of food has altered them so much so that it might come back to haunt us. We eat apples because it is presumed to be healthy but now with genetic modification and use of pesticides, it may harm our health.

Assignment 3--Focal Length & Sensor Latitude

1. Perspective

This is my perspective shot. I wasn’t sure what kind of view counts perspective. I thought there should be a lot of space in an impressive angle of view. Turns out I did fine with the perspective. The teacher likes my angle which is a looking-up view. Not like normal eye-level angle.

2. Close-up

I saw few ants climb around a white cute flower. I took some photos. I crop it up to the ant but turns out the quality drops too much. I thought the ant is so tine, so it should counts close-up. Anyway, it doesn’t … so I need to change the subject…

3. Zoom Shot

This is the most amazing tech I ever learnt so far! I was walking by this very pretty white church. The zoom shot effects out of the cross should be amazing!

I also love this one, but I might want use this as high key, but not sure it is qualified…

I was moving the camera around on purpose while take the zoom shot beside the street. I love this one very much. But one of my friends said it’s just messy lines… so I wasn’t sure about this…

4. High Key

High key suppose to have a neat white background with few highlights in foreground. It’s a cloudy day while I took the photo. So the background (the sky) is quite neat white. And the church is white too! So I thought it’s the perfect subject for my high key photo.

While I was taking photos around the church, there’s a couple taking their wedding photos outside there. The bride wearing a very pretty white wedding dress, so I thought with the white church background, if I push the expose a bit, it’s a good high key that not a lot of students would have the chance to take.

5. Low Key

I thought this is a great low key. With the lights shape in a curve, it’s a great photo! I don’t know why others saying it’s messy… but I think I get it, there are some trees between all the lights, so there’s lines cutting some of the light ball in half…

So here’s some backups ….

Assignment 2-- Aperture & Shutter

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
These are the very first four photos I have been taken with knowing what I was doing. After learning about aperture, shutter speed and ISO etc… I was shocked to find out how great photos cameras can take without editing in PS!


The Motion Blur was taken by accident. I was gonna shooting the MRT train. But the lady was walking around. Because the train would be gone soon, so I lost my patient, just shooting a lot of it. Then few of them got the lady in it. Surprisingly, it looks better than the ones with her. So I picked this one. But after tutorial, the teacher said I need someone there, but the position is not right…

Here’s one I took with someone at the right side which I hope would be a good one! I like the person I got in the photo wasn’t purposely posing there. It’s real life!

Freeze Action, I wasn’t really like to shooting a friend jumping, coz I was afraid there would be too many students shooting the same type of photos. (turns out I was right) However, I did catch a good moment of my friend jumping, and it is taking in a tree house which looks like a cage. So I was trying to say he wants to escape! Anyway, the teacher said I need a neat background. So another need to retake....

Shallow-Depth-of-Field, these one is a retake one already, instead the one I shown during tutorial. The one I shown in tutorial is a flower. It’s not really an interesting subject to shoot at. So when I was out shooting for another assignment I took this one.

Deep-Depth-of-Field, I was also using the same flower one during the tutorial, coz I didn’t know we could use different one for both shallow one and deep one. Plus, I thought by using the same one, the difference should be more clear! Anyway, I always like this kind of chairs and desks, especially beside beach!