Photography Reveals the Way of Seeing the World

For The Art of Instant Gratification, I am fond of the way that Stephen Joel Trachtenberg briefly describes the changes of photography since its birth in 1839. This essay also raises my interest in investigation more about the motivation of taking pictures.

Referring to the history of photography, The Art of Instant Gratification by Stephen Joel Trachtenberg discusses the significance of taking pictures for the masses. From the very beginning of photography, the legend that people relates the portrait to the soul is absurd though has its reason. The knowledge about themselves that most people gain at that period is not enough to explain the images made by photography. Except the mirror, it is the first time that people see their portraits in the images which is very clear and realistic. I still marvel at the magic of light and chemicals on the film today, let alone the surprise of people in early nineteenth century. People’ interest of collecting memory by pictures grows. But technological limitations make it difficult to accessible for the masses. According to Trachtenberg’s essay, until the end of twentieth century, photography became tangible. Today, new techniques allow digital recording images to enjoy a large population. Trachtenberg believes that although the technological development of photography changes many aspects of taking pictures, public’s desire of maintaining their memory remains the same.

The investigation about the significance of photography in this essay triggers my thinking about the meaning of taking pictures for me. Holding my digital camera in hand, I try to imagine the size and complicated procedure of processing film at early nineteenth century. How much effort was devoted to the improvement of photography and camera before we can easily press a button to share the images all around the world? It is true that the satisfy makes people enjoy capturing pictures and transmission of pictures through modern media everyday. We are provided opportunities to collect our memories in a most convenient way in history. The instant gratification serves as a critical reason that inspires the progress. It gradually leads to our dependent on photography today, which reveals that we tend to gain an understanding of ourselves from the images that we capture. The camera is an extension of human eyes following our choices on taking pictures. The way that I choose to take a picture results how the image would appear in many degree. When I was recording images for drift 2, for common subject matters, if I tried a different angle or distance, I would find interesting images. When I look at these pictures, I would find that I am following certain ways to watch this world. The image can be seen as a mirror which reflects my thought about seeing things around me. Watching other artists’ pictures also allows me to study their ways of taking pictures. The more I experiment on my photography, the more I learn about myself. My study leads me to more innovative and inspiring way of seeing the world.

Video Hardware/Software Repsonses

How was your experience with the Olympus digital camera? How did it compare with other still or video cameras you have previously used? Were you able to successfully implement your Image Capturing Strategies using the features of this camera? In an ideal world, how would your still/video camera of choice function?

The Olympus camera is different from my cameras in size, medium of storage and format of images.

• Name, Megapixel, Medium of Storage, Format of Moving Image, Manual Focus
• OlympusDC, 4.0, xD-picture card, MOV, No
• Cannon DC, 3.2, CompactFlash card, MPEG,Yes
• Panasonic DV, 3.1, MiniDV tape, AVI, Yes

I have a Cannon digital still camera and a Panasonic digital video camera. The sizes of both of them are bigger than this Olympus camera. The Olympus is able to take images of higher resolution than my still camera, while it has less performance in manual mode compared to my Cannon. The Olympus records and exports moving images at MOV format, which is more suitable for transmission on the internet. My video camera records videos using MiniDV tape and the videos can be export at AVI format, which provides higher resolution of moving images than the Olympus. But the Olympus is more portable and provides enough storage space for its images, which is convenient for taking pictures at public areas for a long time. The images can be transfer to computers with USB cable in a simple way. But its batteries cannot support this camera for a long time if I keep using recording function, which is the most significant disadvantage.

It took me a couple minutes to know how to use the Olympus digital camera, but a couple weeks to know how to use it to catch ideal images. The Olympus digital camera is easy to carry and operate for general image capturing. I had no difficulty on implement my Images Capturing Strategies using the camera. I decided to capture images under artificial lights requiring no special function for general digital camera. I took some interesting pictures which have amazing visual effects that cannot be seen by human eyes.

If I need to choose a video camera for this class, my ideal camera would be a digital video camera featuring characteristics below:

• uses a hard drive for data storage
• has a similar size as a card
• enables manual focusing
• the batteries can support the camera for at least 24 hours after completed charging

Our demand on ability of image capturing for cameras can be endless. But even the finest camera would have its disadvantages. It is easier to improve the ability of artistic exploration by practice my skills at discovering beauty. So I don’t expect to discover interesting images only depending on cameras. Basically, I enjoyed using this Olympus camera to capture images for Drift_1 and Drift_2.


Discuss your choice of video-editing software and describe your history with this software. If you used this software for the first time, explain why you chose this particular application and how you think it helped you to accomplish your creative goals (or proved detrimental). Will you use this software again for future projects?

After I failed to use the video-editing software that I used before, I had to use Windows Movie Maker to edit my videos. I planned to use Ulead VideoStudio for my editing at the beginning. I used it to export videos from my digital video camera to computer and edit videos. It was simple easy to operate and functioned well in Windows XP. But When I installed Ulead in Windows Vista operation system, some problems about compatibility came out. I could not finish my editing at that condition and the software even shut down in the process of editing. I thought that there must be something wrong with Ulead software. But after I tried several video-editing programs and failed again and again, I found that it was the Windows Vista that made it impossible for editing in my laptop using them.

I had to use Vista’s Windows Movie Maker to complete the editing. The reason that I did not use Movie Maker at the beginning is that I was not familiar with it. Another reason was that it could not open and edit MOV files. So I need to convert MOV files to WMV files before editing. Movie Maker only allows me to export files in WMV format. I need to convert WMV files to MOV files to meet the requirement. Fortunately, I was able to download free converted software Prism Video Converter after I tried more than ten different ones in the internet.

Windows Movie Maker provides enough special effects and is also easy to operate. My experiment on video-editing software brings me experience. For general users, most of them are not difficult to operate and can be used to edit sophisticated videos. I had no problems on editing and converting after practice. Although the format of exported files did not meet the requirement exactly, they can be opened and played with Firefox and IE. I tried to fix this problem, but Prism Video Converter doesn’t provide H.264 at compression in Vista. I have only one option MPEG4 for compression.

I would like to change my operation system of my laptop if I need to edit videos. It is difficult to find compatible video-editing software that functions in Vista. I feel very frustrated that I didn’t devote more time and thoughts to editing videos because of trouble about video programs’ compatibility with operation system. Editing collected materials should be fun. But my experience on editing prepares me to face the difficulties in filmmaking in the future.