Class Blog

Today's class started off really well.  The stress that our first essay brought was about to be relieved, there was nice music playing, and all we had to do was reflect on our finished essays. 







The lighthearted mood turned very somber with the announcement of a second essay.  The 7-8 page requirement was a real downer, thinking of the effort and time needed to write about twice what we just wrote was very saddening.  To be fair though, if I would ever consider a writing assignment enjoyable or fun, it would probably be this paper.  Arguing for something is always the most fun way to write and arguing about an image or collection of images shouldn't be too hard.

With talk of image analysis and then the Middle East I thought this picture would be shown.  I was a little disappointed as this picture is very controversial and has two very different sides to it.  If you're curious, the story according to the Wall Street Journal "A Palestinian woman whose house has been occupied by Jewish settlers argued with Israelis who came to celebrate Jerusalem Day in the mainly Arab neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah, East Jerusalem."  And the story according to one of the guys in the photo, "This is false propaganda. This is a case of a good photographer who documented our faces, mostly mine, at the right second. As we sang and celebrated in Sheikh Jarrah, the Arab woman came out of a house, banging on a pan, and tried to disturb our celebrations, so we raised our voices and sang louder as she came nearer. We did not yell at her or mock her. We simply tried to keep on celebrating and she tried to disturb us. The picture does not show several other women who banged on pots and tried to interfere with our celebrations."

I figured, since we were on the topic of images and sometimes needing captions sometimes not, I would post some powerful pictures that I find interesting.

  

Ok, those are enough depressing pictures.  Since we also talked about space, I figure I'll move the focus there.  Most of the cool space images you see are taken by the Hubble Space Telescope.  To see how powerful the telescope really was, astronomers pointed it into seemingly empty space.  This was the result.

 

The image is far too small here to really do it justice, but every little tiny blur of light you see is a galaxy.  To put that in perspective, the Milky Way galaxy (that's where we are) is so large, if you were to fly from one end to the other in a 747(assuming you could) it would take around 12.5 billion years, by that time there would be no Milky Way galaxy.

If you want to see more cool space pictures go here.  http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/archivepix.html

Also, if you were interested in today's discussion on the representation of color in these images go here. http://hubblesite.org/gallery/behind_the_pictures/meaning_of_color/
If you weren't interested, then this is probably a good site for you. http://justinbieberphotos.com/
 

These are three martial arts rednecks with very interesting hair styles.  I don't think there are many words to describe this photo.
It's composed in a portrait style to focus on these outstanding men.  The lack of shirts, ridiculous hair, yin-yang tattoos, and the expressions on their faces all draw attention.
I think the photo is about the awesomeness of these three martial arts masters.
I don't think too highly of martial arts so that just adds to the ridiculous nature of this photo. I also find it funny that they think they look really intimidating, they really do think they look cool.

pillars of creation

intro/conclusion

I don't think there is anything too special about my introduction.  I kind of just went over what I was going to talk about and threw in a few little extras like statements about technology and how it affected me.  I revised my conclusion yesterday and I feel like it is much better now.  Before it was a bit formulaic and boring, a revision was much needed.  I think it now it's a much better summary and analysis of what I was writing about in my essay.  I feel like it added significance to what was being talked about during the essay.  With this added significance it answers any "so what?" question a reader may have.

Peer Review

I liked the peer review because it gave me an outsider's perspective on my essay.  I was able to see and understand how it appeared to other people.  It also pointed out things that I knew needed to be changed, that definitely helps to know that something isn't working.  I will definitely be changing my conclusion and adding a few more examples to support my essay.  I'm definitely going to keep my reddit paragraph(and my love for reddit) the same despite my peer being a 4chan fan.

Workshop

The workshop actually helped a lot.  While I was writing my discovery draft I was having trouble tying everything together, I found it hard to focus in and stay on topic.  My group was able to give me really good advice, to tie everything together I need to relate it back to myself and write about how the different forms of media affected me.  As the draft sits now, it's more about how the different forms of media affect people in general.  I found it really helpful to get an outside perspective on my idea, it definitely helped me narrow in on a topic.  My next draft will be filled with more details and will develop a topic and main idea a little bit better.