Blog Post #8

The photo I have chosen is from the Compose Design Advocate website under ‘through the eyes of children’. My photo is of a boy staring out of a window with what either looks like he is doing homework or something he may be drawing. Before I knew of the history of this photo I knew from the other pictures that it looks like the different children are from a poorer country in Africa. At the first glance of the photo which would be ethos in the rhetorical design of the photograph I look straight to the “vector of attention,” which is the boys face. A “vector of attention” is defined in the book as in all photographs the photographer directs your attentions by the way the people-or subjects- in the photograph are arranged. An obvious pathos is that the boy (Musa) looks like he is hard at thought about what he really wants to do with his day. The pathos of a photograph wants people to feel similar emotion when looking at the photograph. What kind of feeling do you get when you look at the photograph? After his face I look at his surroundings, where it looks like he is not in the cleanest room with the comfiest bed. You can tell from the elements in the room that it is not clean, has some broken pieces of wood in the room, and that the windows are dirty.

When talking about framing in the photograph the book says to look at a photographer’s choices about what to include (or not) in a photograph as they frame the photograph through a camera’s viewfinder. In the picture it looks to me like the photographer wanted to measure in on the boy and not his surroundings. From what I get in the picture the photographer really wanted to capture a moment when the boy looked like he was struggling or just did not want to be in his room. For all we know there could be many other kids in the same room doing the same thing, but with framing the photographer wants you to focus your attentions on parts of situations. When looking at the picture it feels like I am only five feet away from the boy and that I am much taller from the angle of the camera shot.

From the lighting of the picture it looks to me like there are no lights on in the room, only the sunshine of the outside world. The hue in the picture shows mostly of a dark base color but also contrasts with pinks, greens, and whites. Saturation portrays how much of a shade of hue is current in the colors. The pinks and greens are not very bright, but are still fairly saturated. If there weren’t those contrasting colors in the photo I think you wouldn’t be able to see the boy. The colors in the photo are more of depressing colors even though there are pinks and greens in it because of the overall dark color of the room.

Blog post #7

I personally find photography a wonderful and beautiful thing. A picture can say a numerous about of things about someone or something. There is nothing more special then capturing that perfect moment and looking upon it for a few decades. Photography is a way of life. It plays a big role on remembering our past and present times. Technology has made it even more personally with things like photobucket and facebook to help others view how you think of things also. They now have applications such as picnik to thoroughly personalize pictures with sweet backgrounds, add color to a picture, make it black and white, or just to crop a picture to a certain size.

A French inventor by the name of Nicephore Niépce was the first ever to construct a photograph, with earlier help from his sibling, who helped to move towards the idea of photography. He was also the first person to fix a photo so it would not deteriorate as quickly. Photography has constantly been used to capture special moments. Even with all his accomplishments only few people know of his name.

I did not know too much about photography until I read the textbook. In our textbook Compose Design Advocate, it gives a whole chapter on analyzing photography. It is a complicated process to come up with ideas about how or when to shoot a photograph. In the book it says that photographs are always rhetorical because the photographer is always making decisions about how audiences’ attentions will be directed and shaped as the audience looks at a photograph. There are three types of strategies, vectors of attention, framing, and cropping. These strategies also help you compose your own photograph. So when asking yourself how to start on a photograph, think of the three rhetorical strategies.

Blog Post 6

In Compose Design Advocate, it says that a logo is “reason and structure in arguments.” It is also seeing where our attentions are focused towards or it can also refer to the inner consistency of the message--the clearness of the claim, the logic of its reasons, and the efficiency of its supporting evidence. The force of logos on an audience is sometimes called the argument's logical appeal. Logos assist you to arrange layouts of efficient communication of information. The correlation to the video “Love Story” is thinking about why Taylor decided to do the average fairy tale theme. What is the reason she didn’t break out of the norm and do something different? Without actually knowing what she thought we can’t make assumptions. Visual context is also significant when talking about logos. Without a visual text or even text in general it is hard to determine when talking about logos.

What do you think about when you hear the words “Love Story?” In Taylor Swifts video “Love Story,” I think she wanted to make the video exactly how it sounds. She plays a student who sees a handsome co-ed (Justin Gaston) and imagines them as a Romeo-and-Juliet couple. The story shifts between present day and medieval times where she is dancing in a gala or sitting out dreaming by the walls of the castle. It can only be imagined that she didn`t read the play, given that a fairy tale ending is tacked on at the end. When we talk about logos as shaping someone else’s attention, I think that in the video when it flashes back and forth from the medieval times to the present time, keeps the audience on their toes, all the attentions on what is going to happen next in the medieval time.

The textbook defines ethos as 'what your audience sees in you.' Like discussed in the last blog post, different video audiences will consider unusual things, which is the case in any film. But with this one and connecting ethos, it is vital on what people will assume of Taylor Swift, the artist rather than the video itself. It is looking past the artist and the video and asking “why” she prepared a video this way. The audience will either agree with what you think or dislike it, there is always going to be something everyone likes and dislikes.

We have discussed many ideas when talking about the rhetorical designs ethos, pathos, and logos. There are many of all three in “Love Story” that deal with the lyrics in Taylor Swifts song that express emotion that she wanted to get the audiences emotional response from.

Blog Post #5

Taylor Swift’s video “Love Story” contained romantic lyrics which are combined with mid tempo country and pop sounds made it a smashing hit. She plays a student who sees a handsome co-ed (Justin Gaston) and imagines them as a Romeo-and-Juliet couple. The story shifts between present day and medieval times where she is dancing in a gala or sitting out dreaming by the walls of the castles. It can only be imagined that she didn`t read the play, given that a fairy tale ending is tacked on at the end.

The most important part of writing is the audience. As an audience member to the video, I think that the lyrics go precisely with the video. Before I seen the video, I could explicitly depict what it was going to be like. We are familiar with the Cinderella and her prince love stories, therefore that is what we usually picture when hearing a song like this or reading a book. The title also displays what it is going to be like. You can tell from the castles and context of the video that Swift’s character has a reputation for being wealthy.

This song goes along well with our Composition Design Advocate textbook in the regards that it brings a lot of flavor from the rhetorical strategy of ethos. In Composition Design Advocate, the authors state that ethos main point in writing is the way you come across to the reader through the choices you make and how they reflect you (191). It also can be constructed through “the face you put on" for your audience (192). We can advise from the video that Taylor Swift’s point is to present a struggle going on within her. She shows that she has high spirits whenever she is with him; however once he goes away her smiling face turns lifeless.

Blog Post 4: Create Your Own Video

After viewing this video, I was driven towards some realizations. For writers, context shapes, some might disagree that it actually causes a purpose for writing. Furthermore, contexts shape the chances, obligations, and restrictions that influence the choices writers make as they generate their papers. For readers or audience, context shapes their attempt to build meaning as they understand. Physical context can improve or reduce their ability to read the text. Social context can affect the point to which writers and readers share ordinary experiences and expectations about a text. Cultural context will affect the beliefs and ambitions that they pass to the reading of a text.
In Taylor Swifts video “Love Story”, as the audience, I think the context is supposed to be positioned to the earlier century about an adolescent boy and girl. They fall in love, but the girl’s father is not pumped about the idea. He tells “Romeo” to stay away from his daughter, so they sneak around in the garden and around the town. “Romeo” goes away for awhile and they meet outside of town where he asks “Juliet” to marry him. “Romeo” said he talked to her dad, so begin making plans for the wedding. In the end, it was just a life-size love story.
In the story, there is all three context theories from stated above. The physical context is the story of how Taylor Swift interprets her video to the words. It depends on where you read or watch the text. The social context is when people put you in their shoes. Groups talk about their personal experiences from the text. Cultural context is about the peoples beliefs of the text. For example, when they father says stay away from my daughter. The cultural aspect is that he is afraid to let his daughter leave him. That means in their culture it isn’t appropriate to date at that age, but in different cultures it might not be so bad.
From the video I learned about the way context is perceived, and how the different audiences relate to the video.