-medium specificity-

Model: Megan Lyons Photography: Mandarin Wilcox Source: https://www.pexels.com/ Apps: Enlight and Pic Collage 

 We reflect what we know, even if what we know is seemingly contradictory. But hey, we are human and being human means being flesh covered sacks of contradiction. Beyond this notion, we are shaped by our worlds around us; they seem to cast themselves upon us in our mannerisms, language, behavior, appearances. I explored these ideas in this piece, just as I explored the app, Enlight. I have always been drawn by the power and intrigue of photography. As it captures a single moment in time, a singular idea, it exhibits its affordances and limitations. The fact that it is limited in its time frame portrayal, allows the viewer to reflect on the events of that one moment. It also leaves more room for interpretation, something incredibly exciting. However, this can also pose a challenge if the photographer is trying to portray a specific idea. The artist must then utilize every aspect of photography (lighting, posing, framing, editing, etc.) to communicate the message. As I was photographing Megan, I was struggling to capture the proper lighting and background. Three locations and nearly fifty photos later, I finally found both lighting and a background that worked well for my purposes. Then I took another twenty pictures to get her pose and location in the frame exactly right. The many different factors of photography are both useful and frustrating. Enlight expands on the medium of photography and allows you to easily and rather quickly manipulate, edit, and design photos. For this assignment, Enlight increased the affordances of photography, mainly because I was able to edit the background and layer/double expose photos. This permitted me to portray more than I could’ve captured in one photograph in the time and resources I had. Even with locating a background that worked for my photos, further editing it allowed me to remove flaws and lines on the wall that proved problematic when I layered the stock photos on top. Additionally, when it came time for me to add the stock photos, it only required a couple of finger taps, cropping, manipulating intensity, and selecting a filter. After finishing editing my photos, I continued to explore the app and discovered you can add writing, borders, manipulate the exposure and clarity, etc. Pic Collage, an app I was already familiar with, also proved helpful once I needed to create a collage with the pictures. While I was nervous about having to explore a completely new form of digital media (technology tends to be my enemy), it proved to me that it is important to push our students to discover and explore things themselves, particularly digital mediums. Just like anything we teach our students, we should not spoon-feed our students information. As we push them to challenge themselves, we should side-coach and urge them to think about the affordances and limits of the mediums they use.

-M