storyboard

Encoding

The 'people' we see in the media are not people but a constructed image of them. The construction is a process of selection, presence and absence.

How presence and absence create a representation of an image

During this exercise we discussed that this image is well lit, there are no shadows and the image is clearly visible. We decided that Amiee looked very weak in this photo, one of the reasons is because it has been taken from a high camera angle, so we are looking down on her. This makes her look less powerful. We also decided that this image was the least polysemic( has the least amount of meaning ) because her actions are clear and show that she is doing a traditional womans job; washing up. In our group we decided that this was a very stereotypical image, because she is a woman and some people say that cleaning is all women are good for and they shouldn't have jobs or do manual labour.

To improve this image we could of thought about the surrounding more, we could of either covered the paintings on the wall to make it unclear that we were in a classroom or we could of taken the image from a higher angle or even just take a photo of the hands in the sink to remove the surrounding walls, the only problem with this idea would be that it wouldn't be as clear that the photo is of a woman and the photo wouldn't be as effective. Using the props we had we used everyday objects, for example Amiee was using a cloth to wash up a mug, the props around the sink were soap and a cloth which are regularly used around the sink. To try and make this shot more realistic we removed the paint pots and brushes.