Digital Photo Media: Gravity-Defying Photography By Li Wei

Photography has been one of a unique way an artist can express their emotion and message. This artist in particular has amused me with his amazing shots. He created jaw-dropping gravity-defying photography which is really amazing and intrigues us the audience. His name is Li Wei.

Li Wei is a Beijing-based contemporary artist. His work often depicts him in apparently gravity-defying situations. His works is a mixture of performance art and photography that creates illusions of a sometimes dangerous reality. What I like about his work is that, those images that he had created are not computer montages. He creates the jaw-dropping scene by using mirrors, metal wires, scaffolding and acrobatics. He took all the risk to take such an amazing shot. 

His work has also gave me some inspiration for my current project in school for Creative Visualization. 

Digital Photo Media: Portrait Photography By Senol Zorlu

For my second blog, I will be talking about Portrait Photography. It is also known as Portraiture. It is the photography of a person that displays certain expression, emotion or personality. This is kind of photography focuses more on to that person’s face, although the body and the background or context may be included. Portrait photography has been started since the invention of camera.

The Portrait Photographer of my choice is Senol Zorlu. He is a Turkish photographer living and working in Germany. He focused on portraying the people, places as well as their culture. It’s a bit of documentary kind of photography. His project is independent and it’s a headstrong project. In those photos, it displays the expression of a personal view of people and instances. He is also a researcher for street children in Heidelberg. He seeks to explore ethnographical photography on the base of scientific research methods.

Digital Photo Media: Photo Manipulation By Erik Johansson

Photo Manipulation is one of the ways a photographer could use to create an artistic illusion or deception. Widely used as an art form or for commercial use to create more sleek and interesting images for advertisements. Before Adobe Photoshop was created, a software called Airbrushing was use to create this kind of photography. Before we could edit the photo digitally, we have to take the photo first using a normal digital camera. For a higher quality photo, a DSLR camera is highly recommended.

Erik Johansson is one of the photographers who have practiced this method. He’s a full time photographer and retoucher from Sweden based in Berlin, Germany. He work on both personal and commissioned projects and sometimes he create street illusions. I like the way he manipulate and retouch those photos. It’s really amazing and unique. He is a very dedicated and hard working artist. He is ready to face new challenges and my goals as it will help him to realize it as realistic as possible. Although one photo can consist hundreds of layers he always wanted it to look like it could have been captured.

It also relates to my work as I love manipulating photos too. It enables me to create almost anything that you can imagine. Anything! It also can give me some inspiration for my upcoming school projects.

Storytelling 1: Now & Then (My Favourite Childhood Memories)

“I can’t wait to be a teenager!” That’s what a 7 year old kid told me the other day. Well, I’m going to be 20 years old this year and I really missed my childhood days. Do you remember the days when you played hopscotch with your friends in school during recess? Or the times when you were scolded by your teacher in thick black-framed spectacles as she wielded a feather duster?

One of my best memories I had when I was in Primary School was playing playground with my friends after school. Instead of heading back home and completing our homework, we spent our time at the playground till late evening. Back then, I don’t own a hand phone, so when I’m late, my mum would went down the void deck and look for me. I’m a very stubborn kid. I will only go home unless my mum would buy me an ice-cream. Sometimes she would buy burgers and fries from McDonalds just to bring me home. Well, I love to eat, so my mum uses food as baits to bring me home.

Most of my awesome childhood memories were from my primary school days. Often during recess time, you would see students crowding around the hopscotch area. The outlines are usually drawn with a chalk, and a stone or a bean bag is used as a marker during the game. Each player must skip through the course, with one leg, without touching the lines or the marker. Regardless of gender, everybody will play this game. It’s a good bonding session with my friends.

Another one was the Flag Erasers. Priced at 10 cents each in school bookshops, these 2.5cm by 3.5cm erasers feature the flags of almost all countries in the world. In the old days, it was a common sight to see Primary School kids playing the "flipping your eraser over your opponent's" game during recess. They also inserted staples into them and challenged their friends to the eraser spinning game. It was such a funny game. My friends and I would laugh at each other and every day we will buy new erasers.

My favourite snack when I was a kid was the Fancy Gem Biscuits. It was manufactured by Singapore's old branded Khong Guan Biscuit Company, these little biscuits with sweet star-shaped coating at the top were joyful tidbits for children. And they came in various colors -- pink, yellow, green and white. I really it. I would only eat the sweet sugar coating and I will throw the biscuit away.  Another snack that I really loved is the Biscuit Piring Wafer. It’s not only nice and colourful but it’s very cheap. Whenever I am hungry when I’m on my way home, I would buy this and eat it.

I noticed that kids nowadays are more prone to the technologies such as iPads and smart phones. Even a kid as young as 5 years old is familiar with all those technologies. Back then when I was 5 years old, I really had difficulties using my mum’s Nokia phone. They seldom spent their time outside doing some outdoor activities with some other random kids. They spent most their time indoors with their gadgets. If possible, I want to be a kid again. No stress. No nothing. I really miss my childhood days….