Month: March 2023

It was when I spent the first night at the hotel of the quarantine after I landed in China. Because it was my first time so far away from my home, without any of my family members, I was overwhelmed with all the emotions I felt. The loneliness, excitement, scariness and mostly the homesickness. I was quarantined in Guangzhou and probably not the central part of the city because it was usually pretty quiet, which actually made me even more lonely.

I remember the feeling of having to stay in this unfamiliar place, where people spoke a different language, scared me the most. Because it was such a hot day, I decided to take a shower while thinking of what to do for the next 9 days. And because I was not used to the new and odd Chinese dishes, I cooked ramen for my dinner.

I also remember I was not being able to figure out how to connect my phone to the wifi so I stuck there for the whole night in total silence. Well, as there is no such thing as silence, I heard water dripping from the shower head in the toilet as well as mopeds passing by the building and the AC blowing at its highest frequency. Nothing made me miss home so much that I cried myself to sleep, only to wake up by the sound of something like a coin dropping but went back to sleep because I was too afraid to think about what will happen next.

Ninj Tumurkhuyag

Fruit of time

CONCEPT:

The overall concept of my project is the abstractness of time. The idea of combining two different things, fruit and time was inspired by Salvador Dali’s melting clock as I tried to define time as conceptualised space in our mind. 

PROCESS:

I. The process of trying to capture the right moment of the dragonfruit was difficult as my image was more focused on the details of the bubbles. I’ve used a dark background to emphasise the fruit and tried different angles of lighting to make the bubbles look as defined as possible. 

I. The second part of the project, creating a digital image was also difficult as my still image was all about details. By adding small details such as tiny dragon fruits, I tried to depict the bubble. I also played more with the colours to make my image more like pop art.

CONCLUSION:

In conclusion, if I had given more time to work on this project, I would’ve definitely added more details and filled up the dark part of my image. 

FINAL PROJECT:

Overall concept: 

– Shapes, colour combination

– Close-up shots, details

The digital image will be created as an abstract version of the still image. Therefore, I’m thinking of taking as many detailed close-up shots of colourful fruits as possible. And by cutting, dividing all the details, I will be able to use them to create one object. 

Fred Ritchin: In our own image

According to Ritchin, what he meant by the “fluidity of the digital” was how the field of digital media in photography is flexible and is always in the process of changing and being presented with a new challenge. Indeed, it is stated on pages 18 and 19 that “…new kinds of photography are slowly emerging including strategies for documenting realities heretofore inaccessible.” An example could be an AI image generator which creates realistic images based on any input that you provide. Moreover, Ritch also mentions that photography should not only use to capture memory, but also offer flexibility in both analogue and digital environments. (20)

Photography is often perceived as pictorial evident of a certain event and as a medium that portrays reality. However, though a photograph can capture the moment, it only shows one dimension of real life, therefore you can say that it cannot fully portray reality. Other media, such as films or videos, on the other hand, have a multidimensional spectrum and are capable of representing reality in a slightly more vivid and detailed way compared to just displaying a single image because they can include sound as well. In fact, “They also overestimate the power of the technology saying that ‘the camera never lies is as foolish as asserting that the computer always does.” (126)