SE+Wk+11

In chapter five of //Rhetoric//, Ramage defines discounting as, “a process like translation, whereby a statement is understood in terms of its circumstances” (Ramage 140). Discounting is essentially our translation. In the same chapter, he discusses how to defamiliarize. He says we must look at the material as if we are looking at it “for the first time rather than as the fulfillment of well-defined expectations.” (Ramage 151)

The story I'm telling in my project is somewhat personal, so I decided to use photos of my own. But because I knew when and where I took these photos, it was kinda hard to to defamiliarize myself with them. I don't remember when I took all of them. My memory’s pretty sketchy. But I do remember //where// I took them. So, the way I defamiliarized myself with them was by distorting them in Aviary; making them black and white, blurring them, making them darker, playing with the contrast, etc. After I played with them, they kinda seemed like new photos to me. Also, when I grouped the photos in Prezi, the context of them (where they were taken, how they were taken, etc) kinda fell by the wayside. I started looking at each photo as a small part of a story. Each photo has to have a meaning to advance the story. Before, the photos didn't have any meaning. The photos just had some sketchy memory that I associated with them. It was easy to add meaning to them when they had no deep meaning in the first place. All of this relates to discounting. The original context is gone due to the changes I made to the photos. It's also gone because these separate photos now must work together to tell a story. Thus, my translation of them is going to be different because the circumstances of the photos have changed. There's a new context for the photos, and much more meaning.

In “Diana and Nikon,” Malcom discusses the changes brought about in photography. Now that photography is more universal, and not being done just by photographers, the content and the quality has changed. She says, “The attributes previously sought by photographers – strong design, orderly composition, control over tonal values, lucidity of context, good print quality – have been stood on their heads, and the qualities now courted our formlessness, rawness, clutter, accident, and other manifestations of the cameras formidable capacity for imposing disorder on reality – for transforming, say, a serene gathering of nice-looking people in pleasant surroundings (as one had perceived it) into a chaotic mass of lamp cords, rumpled kleenexes, ugly food, ill-fitting clothes, grotesque gestures, and vapid expressions.”

Well, I took all the photos I'm using for my project on my phone, and I took them without much care. In other words, I saw something that interested me or caught my eye, and I took the picture. I didn't construct any of the scenes, or move anything around. I wasn't interested in “strong design,” or the control I had over the tones and colors in the photo. I was just taking photos for no real artistic reasons. I can't remember why I took most of these photos.And because I took them on a trackphone, and have never taken a photography class, the photos I'm using have a certain “rawness.” Some of them were “accidents.” In other words, I took them without any real care, with ambivalence, and they turned out pretty neat. Also, I took many of the photos I'm using along time ago. I was surprised as I was looking through all of them that a lot seemed to fit the story I wanted to tell.