After watching the episode of Art 21 on Florian Maier-Aichen that was suggested to me, I became interested in the idea of photo manipulation. Aichen would manipulate his photos digitally, changing elements that he did not like, even going so far as adding in things that were not in the image beforehand. It got me thinking about how I could really bring my own vision to the images I am creating, especially after my meeting where I expressed concern with people not liking my images because of where they were taken.
“A new concept in urban design and landscape literature emphasizes how façade treatment can create a more attractive and friendly pedestrian environment. To illustrate this idea and to engage the residents with this concept, the team used photo-manipulation to demonstrate the visual impact of incorporating ground-floor retail into a blank parking ramp. The team selected photographic images of parking ramps and commercial storefronts and used cut and paste functions to combine them. To make the combination more realistic, they used the drawing tools of the software program to blur lines and colors so that the result appeared to be one original image. Some of the storefronts that the team selected were from local stores that had Mexican art in the façade design. The resulting images helped to demonstrate how using space creatively, such as using the parking ramp as a retail store, could reinforce cultural identity in the streetscape of the neighborhood.”
“Our experience suggests that photo-manipulation is most helpful in cases where the design issues have already been defined, since the image library must be prepared ahead of time. In the advanced workshops in the Pilsen project, the participants had already brainstormed and identified problems when the photo-manipulation technique was introduced. The photographic images facilitated more precise design decisions. Instead of showing various pictures of different styles of benches, the team could show exactly what the benches would look like when actually located along a particular street. The participants could evaluate how well they blended with the existing streetscape. This kind of realism, which included vivid colors, seemed to stimulate excitement and commentary. It proved to be a very helpful tool in explaining new designs and eliciting responses.”
(63), In Scopus. "ScienceDirect - Landscape and Urban Planning : Using Visualization Techniques for Enhancing Public Participation in Planning and Design: Process, Implementation, and Evaluation." ScienceDirect - Home. Web. 26 Oct. 2011. <http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0169204699000249>.
Susan Sontag's On Photography deals with the state of photography and how it has changed throughout its short history. She discusses a variety of issues, from photo manipulation to appropriation, photographs as evidence, etc. She talks of how photography has become a commonplace thing, not the exclusive hobby that it was first starting out. People collect photographs, they are printed, re printed, over and over again. People collect them as trophies, memories of trips.
"Photographs, which fiddle with the scale of the world, themselves get reduced, blown up, cropped, retouched, doctored, tricked out. They age, plagued by the usual ills of paper objects; they disappear; they become valuable, and get bought and sold; they are reproduced. Photographs, which package the world, seem to invite packaging. They are stuck in albums, framed and set on tables, tacked on walls, projected as slides. Newspapers and magazines feature them; cops alphabetize them; museums exhibit them; publishers compile them.
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