The miracles of photography

There’s a variety of ways to interpret a photo, in fact, there is no end to it. It is by far the most sophisticated way to convey a message. For instance, some would show sympathy or pleasure through gore and gruesome photos. Still photos are powerful in nature and not many see the gravity of persuasion it carries.

Most of the influential still photos come from disasters and agony (Hubbard 2008). This is evident during the crisis of conflict diamonds in Africa. Gruesome pictures of chopped hands were portrayed to gain the support from the world. It worked and the relevant organization and authorities took action to ease the burden of conflict victims, as well as, the sales of conflict diamonds.

Source: http://www.worldvision.com

Pictures however could be offensive in nature if it touches sensitive issues, such as religion. NST (New Straits Times), a Malaysian daily, almost got killed by a cartoon strip, which known as Wiley Miller’s ‘Non Sequitur’ (Ooi 2006), believed to be a parody of Prophet Mohammed.

Regardless of what photos bring, it is still an important visual aid in publication and design. Pictures can be digested easily even with a glimpse of an eye compared to just plain text (Schrive 1997). It works hand in hand with one another to accurately convey a message or a story across (Walsh 2006).

If you get lucky, you might just be an overnight millionaire by the sale of one photo. So far, the second most expensive photo was sold for 2,928,000 U.S. dollars at Sotheby’s in New Work (Laurie 2007)

Don’t underestimate what photography can do to you.

Reference List:

Conflict Diamond Photo 2006, World Vision UK, viewed 13 November 2008, <http://www.worldvision.org.uk/server.php?show=conMediaFile.826>.

Hubbard, T. 2008, Photojournalism Essentials, The Digital Journalist, viewed 13 November 2008, <http://www.digitaljournalist.org/issue0002/hubbard.htm>.

Laurie 2007, The Most Expensive Photographs Ever Sold, Photopreneur, viewed 13 November 2008, .

Ooi, J. 2006, Forget 2006, viewed 13 November 2008, <http://www.jeffooi.com/2006/12/forget_2006.php>.

Schriver, K.A. 1997, Chapter 6 in Dynamics in document design, pp. 364-430.

Walsh, M. 2006, Textual shift: Examining the reading process with print, visual and multimodal texts, Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, vol.29, no.1, p.24-37.