{"id":675,"date":"2015-10-27T15:44:18","date_gmt":"2015-10-27T19:44:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/web.colby.edu\/humanslashnature\/?p=675"},"modified":"2015-10-27T15:44:18","modified_gmt":"2015-10-27T19:44:18","slug":"thoughts-on-charles-traubs-lecture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/humanslashnature\/2015\/10\/27\/thoughts-on-charles-traubs-lecture\/","title":{"rendered":"Thoughts on Charles Traub’s Lecture"},"content":{"rendered":"

There were several topics that Charles Traub talked about that grasped my interest: (i) the talk about difference between a \u2018snapshot\u2019 and a \u2018street portrait\u2019; (ii) the difficulties of capturing the \u2018realness\u2019 where masks could be abundant; and (iii) the mentioning of \u201cglobalization making everyone similar.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Distinguishing \u2018portraits\u2019 (photography) from \u2018snapshots\u2019 was something that had never really crossed my mind before. With the easy accessibility to cameras, on our phones, on our laptops and digital cameras in recent years, pictures of many forms have become abundant and available. And amongst many of these photos that contain people, the ones that go up on social media and we see more often are snapshots. Snapshots are taken in a more casual way as opposed to \u2018portrait\u2019 photography which are taken for a more artistic purpose and in a more organized\/structured manner than a snapshot. The increase in photo abundance has perhaps, makes it more important to make the distinctions between casual snapshots and artistic portrait photography. It is also interesting how the lines are beginning between photography as a profession and photography\/casual photo-taking done by non-professionals are becoming blurred. It appears that there are more and more \u2018artistic\u2019 photos that are out on the web that are not taken by professional photographers.<\/span><\/p>\n

The second topic that I was interested in was the difficulties in capturing \u2018realness.\u2019 I could see how this could be a difficulty in photography, especially when taking humans as the object. Once people are asked to be taken a picture of, they often put on a \u2018camera mask\u2019 (especially people who are socialized to) and it becomes harder to capture the \u2018realness\u2019 in them anymore. It becomes a challenging task to capture the right moment when the person is relaxed and reveals the \u2018realness\u2019 in them. Despite such difficulty, I was amazed as to how Charles Traub and other photographers I whose work I have seen in the past can capture \u2018realness\u2019 and a distinct atmosphere that comes with it in a photograph. <\/span><\/p>\n

Lastly, the talk on globalization and how it \u201cmakes people look similar,\u201d intrigued me. I have heard many debates about globalization and its effects in sociological, economical and political contexts in the past. However, I have never really considered its effects in the area of arts before. Hence, it was interesting to hear about the effects of globalization from an artist. With globalization and the loss or decrease in distinct cultural practices and features of people, it could become more difficult to capture something that is more unique and striking to viewers. However, I am not sure if I agree entirely that it necessarily \u201cmakes people look more similar\u201d or in Traub\u2019s words, \u201cboring.\u201d With conversion of different cultures there could arise new \u201ccultures\u201d\/ types of people or practices. In my opinion, these new \u201ccultures\u201d or people could be an interesting thing to capture in arts too. <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There were several topics that Charles Traub talked about that grasped my interest: (i) the talk about difference between a \u2018snapshot\u2019 and a \u2018street portrait\u2019; (ii) the difficulties of capturing the \u2018realness\u2019 where masks could be abundant; and (iii) the… Continue Reading →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5925,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[249700],"tags":[258857,258839,1216,12425,258855],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/humanslashnature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/675"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/humanslashnature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/humanslashnature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/humanslashnature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5925"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/humanslashnature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=675"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/humanslashnature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/675\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":676,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/humanslashnature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/675\/revisions\/676"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/humanslashnature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=675"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/humanslashnature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=675"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/humanslashnature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=675"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}