These gorgeous images are by Julia & Yuriy Manchik, from the Mr and Mrs Globe Trot blog.
Sometimes my two worlds collide in a beautiful way.
A few days ago I was teaching visual rhetoric to my students. I was asking them to take the tools of rhetorical analysis we had been working with all quarter and apply them to still images. As I was developing my lesson plan, I realized just how much the questions I was asking my students applied to my own work as a filmmaker, photographer, and artist. The concepts of framing, denoted and connoted meaning, audience. . .they are all considerations we make instantaneously as creative artists without thinking of it.
But what if we really thought about it?
I really had to step back and consider how I create films and still images. In the whirlwind of a wedding, how much time do we actually take to frame an image for meaning rather than just beauty? How much time do I take to get my tripod set up at just the right angle to capture meaning in both the foreground and background. We like to walk a wedding before the big day: visit the ceremony and reception venue to visualize where we will set our cameras and how we will choreograph our behind the scenes movement while the action rolls. But in the moment it is hard to always be aware and not get caught up in the action.
The basic tenets of rhetorical analysis became just so crystal clear when I applied them to visuals:
1) Situation: What motivates the photographer to capture this image? What motivates the filmmaker to press record?
2) Purpose: What is the photographer/filmmaker trying to show in this image?
3) Claim: What argument the artist is trying to make in this visual?
4) Audience: Who is the intended audience for this image? What can we tell about the audience from the image?
There is so much creativity in the work we do, but this creativity is most powerful when it tells a story. The cameras we use have great rhetorical power: we have the ability to change zoom lengths to capture a moment close up or far away. The manual controls allow us to highlight parts of a scene by changing the depth of focus. In film, we blend real speech, music, and moving images to tell a story. When we embrace the rhetorical power in our work and use it to tell our couples’ stories, then we are creating a truly memorable film that will last for generations.
Take a moment to consider the gorgeous Paris photos I posted at the top of this post. The first photo is the Eiffel Tower from a Parisian alley. The second is a very impressive view of the Eiffel Tower standing over the city. Each angle has layered into its differing perspectives different motivations & different goals. In each picture, The arguments being made by the photographer as an artist, Paris as a city, and the Eiffel Tower as a symbol are wildly different. And we can see different audiences responding differently to the images separately and together. In short, the perspective we choose, the way we frame and crop an image, the way we edit. . . each of those minute decisions affect the rhetorical voice of that visual.
And so I challenge myself to slow down when I shoot and consciously ask myself:
- What is the situation that brings my camera up, my index finger to the shutter?
- What is my purpose in framing an image: with a tight zoom or wide to capture everything?
- In the blur of the wedding day, sometimes it is difficult to consider the claim I am making as a filmmaker and artist: what part of this couple’s story am I trying to tell?
- And in the case of paid shoots, my audience is of ultimate importance. We are telling the story of one couple’s wedding day back to them, to their families and friends, and to the world.
As a scholar, I consider these elements in my work, but as an artist, how do we consider these elements as we create?
2 comments