Most of the books that made an impact to me is ever class I have taken and their required reading material. Seriously, you learn so much about how things are in our world by taking more and more classes and reading different material. But to think about 3 books that you could find anywhere, here are some to look at:
Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert T Kiyosaki
This book teaches people the lessons that Robert Kiyosaki had as a kid growing up in the business world. Many people don't know, and sadly don't care about business and the intricacies about them. This book tells a story how business affects themselves, from networking and how it makes you realize that importance, the basic common sense about an economy, and skill to live in today's society rather than work.
How to Master the Art of SELLING by Tom Hopkins:
Tom Hopkins is a world famous salesman and has taught many how to communicate to one another. Many should not see this book as strictly being a sales person, it helps one interact with anyone. Too much have I seen people of my generation give up business opportunities for themselves, or just good friendships, or to acquaintances because they couldn't communicate. This is a great read to better yourself at communicating no matter how confident you think you are because we are all lacking some fundamentals and this develops a good base at any age.
The Digital Photography Book by Scott Kelby:
This 3 book series is insightful to the use of a digital cameras with fascinating straightforward descriptions along with a picture on each page to effectively visualize the tricks of photography. The series by far and taken my life to new levels allowing me to visualize and capture the world to share with my family and friends and hopefully my own family to show the history of my life. Written in a style that gives you the sense you are walking with a friend who is a photographer as you are anxious to ask questions, each page in each book covers one aspect of photography to better any ones skills.
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Monday, January 18, 2010
McLuhan's theory of A Camera
In my last class session we learned about a neat guy called McLuhan and how he had a neat diagram to describe how a particular facet that is part of our lives is enhanced by it, then reversed if taken too far, allowed us to retrieve something fundamental, and at the same time making something obsolete. I thought about it for a bit, and chose to put it on the back burner because of my interest in photography was much more interesting. But today, on this rainy day, after uploading some pictures of my rabbits in my yard, MY Digital SLR would be great to use in this situation!
When thinking of how the camera has enhanced our lives that has to be our resolution. The detail and the tonality of what we can see in pictures is boggling. Just in the past 70 or so years has color been readily available to the general public to widely use thanks to Kodak. And for those who are part of my generation that was born in the 1980's, the first production digital image sensors came out in the 90's when we were in elementary school! My uncle was one of those guys who had to have the latest camera and he had a Canon early model digital still camera that was well over $500 when we can get that EXACT technology for less than 20 bucks. In professional camera of the early 90's was over 1800 for just 1 measly megapixel of resolution from Nikon's first practical DSLR in 1999 that was 2.7mp for no less than $5000!!! Nikon has some huge milestones but now Canon is its biggest competitor and for a semi professional Canon 5D MKII is $2900 for 24 megapixel resolution bringing it to around $120 in 2010. From limited film laced with silver to ridiculous sensors teamed up with glass to take a picture of a moon billions of miles away, if baffles the mind!!
But with all this technology what happens if it is taken way too far? Cameras can soon have a sensor that is 30 megapixles and is affordable for the masses. Teamed up with a wide angle lens made out of glass that creates images so sharp you can shave with it, that would mean you can have a picture well beyond the size of an a door and make out almost anything in that photograph! If one of my photography friends who do this for a living sell a photograph of a model in a city and there are people behind them too an add agency, theoretically it could mean that the people behind that model although out of focus, with an image that large you can really enhance it to find out who they look like. Then their mug will be all over a billboard and someone might get offended and sue my friend because their face is now part of a lingerie add, done outside, as a evocative add, and some poor soul who are sensitive was captured and digitized and distributed in a magazine across the world. If not that, military forces have really cool lens optics that can render your licence plate from orbit, now what do you say to that?!
What it makes obsolete is film cameras. Although still used today and has it place, digital makes photography more economical. If you cant grasp that, imagine you being a cool photographer taking a bunch of shots of something you totally love to make some real money with a film camera! So cool and old school, when it comes to developing those rolls of film, they can be out of focus, lighting was all wrong, but you didn't know that because you film camera does not have a screen to tell you so! And if you have a digital camera, you theoretically have unlimited film! Don't like the shot? Delete it and retake it with different settings. Those features alone are worth thousands to photographers to get that shot to pay the rent.
What that retrieves to make relevant again is a pictogram. They are anything from cave drawings, or sand on the floor of that cave moved around to where you step back to get the full resolution of the image it speaks to you. The film camera to eventually the Digital SLR is a modern tool to make a better pictogram to share history with others.
So with that said, I love this camera. Maybe someday I will be doing a job that has to deal with pictures like my idea to go into communications and showing images, or being a X-Ray Technologist and taking pictures of peoples bones and organs; that is way cool for your information. Only time will tell, but I hope that comes soon because my camera hobby is expensive, even if my Canon 7D's 18mp sensor is good value for money compared with the early Nikon of the 90's!
When thinking of how the camera has enhanced our lives that has to be our resolution. The detail and the tonality of what we can see in pictures is boggling. Just in the past 70 or so years has color been readily available to the general public to widely use thanks to Kodak. And for those who are part of my generation that was born in the 1980's, the first production digital image sensors came out in the 90's when we were in elementary school! My uncle was one of those guys who had to have the latest camera and he had a Canon early model digital still camera that was well over $500 when we can get that EXACT technology for less than 20 bucks. In professional camera of the early 90's was over 1800 for just 1 measly megapixel of resolution from Nikon's first practical DSLR in 1999 that was 2.7mp for no less than $5000!!! Nikon has some huge milestones but now Canon is its biggest competitor and for a semi professional Canon 5D MKII is $2900 for 24 megapixel resolution bringing it to around $120 in 2010. From limited film laced with silver to ridiculous sensors teamed up with glass to take a picture of a moon billions of miles away, if baffles the mind!!
But with all this technology what happens if it is taken way too far? Cameras can soon have a sensor that is 30 megapixles and is affordable for the masses. Teamed up with a wide angle lens made out of glass that creates images so sharp you can shave with it, that would mean you can have a picture well beyond the size of an a door and make out almost anything in that photograph! If one of my photography friends who do this for a living sell a photograph of a model in a city and there are people behind them too an add agency, theoretically it could mean that the people behind that model although out of focus, with an image that large you can really enhance it to find out who they look like. Then their mug will be all over a billboard and someone might get offended and sue my friend because their face is now part of a lingerie add, done outside, as a evocative add, and some poor soul who are sensitive was captured and digitized and distributed in a magazine across the world. If not that, military forces have really cool lens optics that can render your licence plate from orbit, now what do you say to that?!
What it makes obsolete is film cameras. Although still used today and has it place, digital makes photography more economical. If you cant grasp that, imagine you being a cool photographer taking a bunch of shots of something you totally love to make some real money with a film camera! So cool and old school, when it comes to developing those rolls of film, they can be out of focus, lighting was all wrong, but you didn't know that because you film camera does not have a screen to tell you so! And if you have a digital camera, you theoretically have unlimited film! Don't like the shot? Delete it and retake it with different settings. Those features alone are worth thousands to photographers to get that shot to pay the rent.
What that retrieves to make relevant again is a pictogram. They are anything from cave drawings, or sand on the floor of that cave moved around to where you step back to get the full resolution of the image it speaks to you. The film camera to eventually the Digital SLR is a modern tool to make a better pictogram to share history with others.
So with that said, I love this camera. Maybe someday I will be doing a job that has to deal with pictures like my idea to go into communications and showing images, or being a X-Ray Technologist and taking pictures of peoples bones and organs; that is way cool for your information. Only time will tell, but I hope that comes soon because my camera hobby is expensive, even if my Canon 7D's 18mp sensor is good value for money compared with the early Nikon of the 90's!
Here is a picture of one of my rabbits in my yard after the rain passed:
Saturday, January 9, 2010
BLOG 1: Media Autobiography
"For me and my circle of friends, I would like to say that the media has little to no effect on myself and I make my own choices." This is something along the lines of what I might of said when I was in middle school, in my social studies class, learning about media and how it works in my life. Today, I don't personally hate or love the media, but I know what it is, and where it is going in my life. To quote an anonymous individual who thought of the morals of guns in the world, I go on to apply it to mass media that, "Mass media has been a critical tool in history. Since its creation it has been praised and denounced and carries moral responsibility. To understand the use of mass communication is to better understand history. "
Since this is my first blog entry for my mass communications class, I should say how the eight types of mass media are intertwined in my life helping me be who I am. Out of all eight, I will start first with magazines!
Magazines have been in my life since I was a kid. I really liked magazines compared to books because I liked the tone I got from reading them versus books, kind of like how I disliked learning from my teachers in grade school in comparison to my mom and dad. I think this will be good foreshadowing to how I feel about the other 6 types of mass communication because I don’t necessarily like them all! The other big reason I liked magazines is because it incorporated pictures in literally every page! From ad’s and headline photographs, they spoke more to me than the copious amounts of text that follow them. In some cases I thought when things were long and wordy it was to cover something up, to derail you, to make you believe something is true. Perhaps this is why people love to read novels and get lost, but I personally haven’t read one in a long time since it really does not have pictures! Newspapers on the other hand, I have a different view.
Newspapers along with books, radio, really are not too big in my life. Even internet news, or eBooks, or net radio does not all to interesting to me! When I think about it, I chose not to because they are too easily forged. News papers can have a story that totally contradicts a picture, or they just pick one that fits the article best. Books don’t really show me what it was like; it tells me what it is like, normally from one perspective too. And for radio it is just an audio book that incorporates tone to sway my thoughts. In comparison to television, and video recordings, and movies, they show how it really is, well most of the time…
Certainly anything in the media can be fabricated and my warm feelings of video documentaries, television broadcasts, and most certainly movies can be a bunch of smoke and mirrors to mislead me, but my preference is to see the footage, not read the report. What I have really liked is video documentaries with captioning so I can see the sights the videographer wants me to see and listen to the narration of the shot and read along to keep my vernacular up to satisfactory levels. I have grown up with public television ever since I was a kid, and I most certainly loved the programming as a kid, now I find it rather silly I was captivated by such ideas but they seeded in me to subconsciously question to understand how our world work or even the universe! At least how it comes together for my life and the ones I care for.
But for now I’ll keep all of that deep thought on the back burner of my enormous imaginary thinking stove and think about the more important things at hand that are prudent to being successful in the social world I live in. I think it would be neat to the readers to know my academic goals are and that is to complete either a Nursing degree or a Speech Communications degree. In the end I think they will be both fun to dabble in just as long as I chance to live the life I want. But that will be for another blog entry!
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