An-My Le Video

I thought that An-My Le's work was different because of her interest in the relationship of people's activities to different landscapes, specifically in the area of military and war activity. She is not so interested in the psychology of people, and the way that she photographs almost builds people into the landscapes through different techniques. In the photos that she took of actors reenacting war scenes the actors become part of the wildlife in a way because of the way that she frames them and how they blend in. I liked that she shot those in black and white as well because it related the photos more to the history, and I'm sure it would be difficult to distinguish those from actual historical photos. I also appreciate her choice of shooting in color at certain times and not at others. I agree that at times color can bring out much different things in a photo than black and white would. I think you can really change the meaning and focus of a photograph simply by choosing either black and white or color to shoot it in.

Robert Adams Video

The Robert Adams video was very interesting for me to watch because I want to learn more about photography and how to capture photos that can be considered fine art rather than for practical use. Adams seems to truly enjoy his work, and his subject, nature is something that he is very close with. I think that in order to take good photographs you have to have some sort of passion or connection to the subject of your photography like Adams connection with nature. He does a good job of bringing out the character that he finds in different sites and seeing things through the eyes of a camera, which is as he says an improvement on what we can see plainly with our eyes. He also creates a lot of contradictory images by capturing human influence on nature, such as the beer can sitting on the tree stump. It was interesting that he photographed the industrialization and deforestation of land, which he hated, but he ended up very happy with the photographs because of they way they portrayed the sites.

The Removal Act Video

I thought that this video successfully got the message across that was intended. The lyrics made sense with the footage that was in the video, and it was actually very interesting to see some images that I hadn't seen before. It caused me to pay attention to some of the poor ways that Native Americans have been and are treated, and that is something that I wouldn't normally pay attention to because it doesn't affect me. I liked that it drew me into the perspective of a Native American, and from there I could sympathize with the things that they have experienced. It was an entertaining video as well. It made me wonder where all of the footage was shot and what was going on at that time. I thought that the use of footage of the mistreatment of bison was very symbolic of the way that Native Americans were mistreated and moved out of their land.