Critiquing Photo Challenge
1. Descriptive: This photo by Richard Quindry is descriptive because it is a professional headshot, which serves solely to show what someone looks like.
2. Ethically Evaluative: This photo by Nick Brandt is ethically evaluative because it is part of his series depicting people and animals 'impacted by environmental degradation and destruction' and gives light to the climate crisis and those it has affected.
3. Theoretical: This photo by Philippe Halsman is theoretical because of its surreal nature with nothing in the photo making sense or having reason.
4. Explanatory: My photo is explanatory because it shows the detailed movement of a coin when it is spinning.
5. Aesthetically Evaluative: My photo is aesthetically evaluative because it is an interesting photo of a gull taken using the rule of thirds and displaying a lot of varying texture, making it pleasing to look at.
6. Interpretive: My photo is interpretive because it displays an image of a skull behind a gauzy material that obscures it and can cause viewers to feel and interpret it in many ways.
Multimodal Project
For my project I decided to focus on the American photographer Joel Sartore. Sartore is a long-time contributor to National Geographic magazine and has a focus in conservation. He's most well known for being the head of their 25-year project, The Photo Ark, which aims to document the world's living species. His wildlife photography from being in the field use many techniques to showcase the animals and draw the viewers focus . His work for the photo ark aims to highlight each species - big and small. He does this by using studio lighting and plain black or white backgrounds which bring out the true colors of the animals, level the playing field so they all look the same size and show they all have equal importance.
Reviewing Sartore's work helped me better understand using certain techniques to establish certain emotions. His use of techniques including different perspectives, vanishing points, complementary, monochrome and dramatic colors which help create certain feelings within the images. It also showed me that sometimes a more simplistic photo is what is necessary to get your idea across. The simple backgrounds in The Photo Ark allowed the animals to be the focus of the viewers attention which helped achieve his goal of educating them on the conservation of these species.