My Birthday Weekend

I thought I would begin my blog with a photograph consisting of recent good memories. This photograph was taken on 29/01/2011 by a close friend. The image is a group shot of myself and my best friends in fancy dress on my birthday weekend in Manchester. I love this photo as our body language alone adds meaning to suggest the close bond in which we all share. The close distance we are all standing to one another suggests to the viewer that we are all friends and signs such as placing our hands on each others arms and smiling whilst we are together (showing that we enjoy each others company) represent this.

After watching clips from John Berger's TV series Ways of Seeing, I became much more interested in this photograph as I realised that if this photograph was segregated up to display each single person alone in this image, our personalities and characters could be judged entirely differently. For example, as the image currently stands we are a typical group of teenage girls enjoying a night out with the specific purpose of the photograph being to catch our enjoyment - but once the image is broken down each person can be judged separately on a basis of their appearance and actions, giving the viewer an insight into our personalities and traits whether it be a correct or incorrect judgement.

In terms of composition I also enjoy this image as it contains a fairly vast amount of background - which gives the quality of actually being there again. Because of the positioning of the image, as a viewer your eye is guided around the entire image (foreground/background) including everyone within it - establishing more of a relationship to the subject matter and giving the image more meaning. It is obvious to the viewer that the people within the photograph are the intended subject matter of the image as we are featured within the center of the frame where as a large proportion of the bar is excluded from it. As the audience you are then typically manipulated by the image and pay much more attention to the people within it as opposed to the landscape as such. This, I have come to learn is a highly important aspect of photography in the media as once you have captured the attention of the viewer they will not be dragged away easily...