The Camera Never Lies

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Media Studies Essay:  “The Camera Never Lies”

It is usually thought that photographs are a little slice of the real world.  Traditionally, they have played the rule of adding realism to written text.  The text becomes a commentary of the frozen shot of real life encapsulated in the photograph.

        However it could be argued that this is not the case.  There are several aspects of the photographic image, which make it less than real.

        These aspects all have different ways of showing that camera’s aren’t always correctly right.  Even simple pictures can represent a number of qualities.  It is possible to understand a number of different meanings from one picture, this is called decoding.  For instance visual images can be false by editing and cropping detail out of the photographs/pictures.  This process changes the frame and can sometimes exclude main or minor parts of the picture.  These missing images occasionally can back up the authors article and help the audience understand the meaning.  Cropping occurs in the media to suit the audience and to express the opinions of the writer.  We can also argue photograph’s can distort the truth by the selection of the picture.  The illustration always is chosen for a particular event or story, but the final image is selected from a wide range of material.  This allows the author flexibility, in choosing the correct image for his motive in his text.  Sometimes the pictures aren’t always appropriate, but have certain ways of backing up the article.  As the photographs only show one aspect of the situation, the image could always be unrepresentative and tell many different stories from the single picture.  These images often make statements about the link between what is being displayed in the photograph and the type of person viewing the article.  The picture can be misleading a bare no relation to the text.  This is a good example of poor selection of photographic material.

        All photographs are not reality, but iconic signs.  Iconic sings are a way of demonstrating a particular subject.  When we observe a photograph in print, it is only a symbol not the real image as we see in real life.  All pictures have captions describing the image; the captions anchor the meaning of a photograph – which offers a clear preferred reading.  The text of the article also performs and shows this function.  A photograph alone without a caption can be interpreted in various ways.

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        As well as having iconic meaning, photos make meaning and signify because of the associations we have with the image.  Denotation is the simple literal meaning of all the images viewed in the picture, basically defining the illustration.  On the other hand connation is the associations we have with the sketch.  These associations are viewed in many different ways and automatically display and imply numerous opinions on certain situations.

        

The top photograph (Fig.1) shows Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness – leaders of Shin Fane situated outside a conference surrounded by the media.  The denotation in this image shows the ...

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