OBON

Family Reunion with Ancestors

Obon is a 3 day holiday during the summer to honor deceased ancestors in Japan.During this period, family members celebrate the return of ancestral spirits by gathering together, feasting and praying. This practice of honoring the ancestors has been around for centuries. Many Okinawans believe that after people die, they continue to exist in the spiritual world where they sometime continue to exert powerful influences over the living.

Obon is celebrated throughout Japan but the holiday customs differ slightly in Okinawa. The most notable difference is the dates held. In Japan, Obon is usually celebrated from August 13th to 15th each year. However the Okinawa festival dates are set according to the lunar calendar and therefore changes year to year. (On the Lunar Calendar, Okinawan Obon is celebrated July 13-15)

Obon is the most important event in Okinawa, so you have to go back home for family reunion otherwise you make your parents very disappointed. My family normally don’t get along very much with many small/big issues, but during this time, we all unite together and respect the ceremony.

3 Days of Obon (Lunar Calendar, Okinawan Obon is celebrated July 13-15)

1.Unke – The welcoming day. On the evening of the first day of celebration, we make fire to show the pathways to help guide the spirits back home. All doors are open to allow spirits to enter. We decorate the family alter with candles, flowers and offer food such as rice, fruit, sugarcane, tea, awamori and the favorite dishes of the deceased.

Alter decoration for Obon. Offer ancestor’s favorite thing.

2.Nakanuhi – (middle day) finds many family members spending time praying to their ancestors at the family butsudan where as many as three meals may be served throughout the day. Family members may move about during the day travelling from one family to another to pay their respects.

3. Ukui – (final day) serves to escort the spirits back to their world. Families throw lavish farewell dinners. They light incense and offer prayers to their ancestors, asking for protection and forgiveness for any perceived neglect. Another custom is the burning of paper spirit money or uchikabi so that the ancestors will not have any needs upon returning to their realm.

Here is some slideshow I took during returning my family home for Obon in Okinawa.

-Photo Slideshow- “Okinawa from my eye”

The song I used for this slideshow is a Okinawan traditional song called “Thinsagu nu Hana” (Flower of Balsam). It is one of most popular song among Okinawa. The song is about a lesson of keeping parent’s precept. It starts with

“Dye your nail with flower of balsome, Dye your heart with your parents’ precept”.

Okinawa is known as a place to respect elder people and deceased ancestors. This custom of “Celebrating Ancestors” is always a key to tie our family. Good tradition.

Reference website: Young Okinawans of Hawaii

Keith Cottingham’s Fictitious Portrait

Emulation Project

–The goal of this project is to understand artist’s intended meaning of the photograph, and emulate the image with my own interpretation and re-defining.

I chose Keith Cottingham’s “Fictitious Potrait” to create the emulation image.

Keith Cottingham "Fictitious Portrait"

“Fictitious Portraits” uses the myth of photographic realism to challenge modernist notions of personhood. The series demonstrates that the self is not generated out of an internal dialogue alone. Instead, the very core of personhood is dependent upon the body.

In effect, we are our race, gender, and age. Yet, because the self is fluid and able to change we cannot be reduced to these exterior attributes. To tease out the fluidity of identity, I use anatomical drawings, wax sculpture, and digital montage to hybridize myself to others. By creating multiple personas of myself, I expose that identity is like a mobious strip upon which internal and external social realities write the body. “Flesh” and “soul” are not dictomized essentials, but two sides of a coin that has circulated for so long that its humanly fabricated nature has been all but forgotten.

My first interpretation

My understanding was “By showing multiple personas, it can depict real portrait”. I liked that idea.I thought it is great because we are so pursuing “Beatiful portrait of ourself”, and tend to miss real personhood.  so I decided to show multiple personas of myself, so that I can depict “real” portrait of myself. I photograph variety of my emotions, with focusing on only face expression. Then stack them up.

Maki's Portrait

How about line them up?

Maki's Portrait-2

I enjoyed this process. I have never seen my face this way. It is an interesting way of showing somebody’s portrait.

However, after this work, I read some other articles about Keith Cottingham and his work, and I realized that the artist intention of the work was much deeper than what I thought.

http://arken.wp.dk/content/us/arkens_collection/photography_and_graphics/keith_cottingham/about_the_work

Here is my second interpretation

In today’s society, it is no longer obvious what is “Natural” and what is “Artificial”. Boys on this “Fictitious Portrait” are not real. Beautiful women on magazine covers are enhanced with photoshop. You can alter your look through plastic surgery. You can implant new organs. Cloned human being may be walking around in near future.

So I think  Cottingham is telling us (or questioning us) what you are seeing is not really Real, but it is a kind of reality now. So maybe, it can be, it is ‘natural’ in this society.

So I made another image:

Composite image

This is combined image with images of me and Kate Beckinsale to prove Cottingham’s point. Well, it was not pleasing process at all. It is just horrifying!

Image of Maki

Kate Beckinsale
image from 30 Most Beautiful Woman

Photoshop Is Not Evil

—– Why using photoshop is good thing —–

Some photographers say “I never use photoshop”. Why do they have to say that so Proudly? What’s wrong with using photoshop?

I value photoshop(I mean post-processing) very much. I would like to tell you why.

One time, I visited my friend who just had a baby. She was kissing her baby boy and it was a heartwarming scene. I grabbed my camera and took a shot.

Original image of mother kissing a baby

I was amazed by her beautiful expression. I knew she was pretty girl, but I had never seen such beautiful motherly expression of her in real life. I realized that camera can capture some precious moments that we cannot see with our eyes.

But I knew this image is not a “great photography”. There are many distractions: Color of wall, clothes, some lines and shapes behind them, and her face is too dark. And small brown spot in a center of image draws my attention. What I want to tell here is only her emotion.What can I do to enhance this image?— Photoshop! Here are what I did.

• I turned it to black and white so that color distractions disappear.
• Lightened up her face and removed her brown spots, so that viewers can focus on her expression.

Here is the image after.

After editing Mother kissing a baby

I believe the second one tells clearer story, and has a stronger emotion.   I made a print of this image, and gave it to her. She was thrilled by this picture, and proudly hang it on the wall. The fact my image made someone happy made me super happy. This event set my goal. My goal of photography is extracting a essence of subject and creating a image that has emotion and story.

To me, photoshop is one of tools to produce a image, which means using photoshop is same as adjusting aperture and shutter speed in a camera, or using flash light. All tools are used to reproduce what I saw in a subject with my mind eye.

Pros and Cons about Photoshop

I asked my fellow photographers about photoshop.To the question ” Do you use photoshop(or editing software)?, all photographers said they use some kind of editing software.

And here is pros and cons from discussions about photoshop.

-Pros

• Be able to create an art based on what you perceive.
• Retouching makes clients happy.
• Be able to create a image what you see with your eyes.(Sometimes camera cannot capture whole rage of light)
• Eliminate unwanted elements to emphasize the point what you want to tell.
• When you don’t have much time, sometimes it is better to fix something in photoshop, rather than fix on a shoot.

Baby in a basket

Woman with soft smile

Mother smiling at baby

A couple on a bridge

-Cons

• Government use it for propaganda.
• Super skinny flawless skinned models(heavily photoshopped) on Magazines gives a false impression of how we should look

Top: the orginal: Obama, as the neutral party and host, in the middle, is flanked by (l to r) President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, President Mahmoud Abbas of Palestine and King Abdullah II of Jordan

Bottom: Altered image: In the ‘doctored’ photo, Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak has been pasted in so it appears he leads the group in peace talks at the White House

Ralph Lauren skinny model

 

 

 

Model Filippa Hamilton, on Ralph Lauren magazine. She was fired by Ralph Lauren previous to the publication of this image, supposedly for her not fitting into the sample clothes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It is difficult to draw the line between good photoshop work and bad photoshop work but after the research, I think: As long as you use photoshop for personal purpose, it is good. However if you use photoshop for a public image and change the truth, or use it to make a image that lead your own benefit, then it is bad.

Value Editing Time

I value editing work. It is time consuming, but I think it is necessary process to refine images to have a story. And also, a high skill of editing/post-processing is one of values that separates from amateurs. But sad thing is not many people know that we spend a lot of time for it. Photographer’s job is not just clicking a shutter! To prove it, I found this pie chart from some wedding phtographer’s blog. She made break down her work time of one of typical wedding job.

photography work-breakdown

She spend 15 hours for shooting the wedding and 43.5 hours for editing! No wonder why wedding photography is so expensive.

5 editing tips you should know to create story telling images

1. Decide where you want to be a focal point in the image. (What is a essence of Subject?)
2. Analyze the image and decide what are the distractions from telling a story.
3. Crop the image if that makes focal point to be focused more.
4. Eliminate unnecessary elements.
5. Add vignette to make focal point to stand out.

Of course, you SHOULD NOT use photoshop if the image is what you wanted already. But if there is a potential to enhance the image to tell the story, why not use it! Ansel Adams said:

You don’t take a photograph, you make it

Links related to this topic

Adobe photoshop: http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop.html

10 Online Photo Editors That You definitely Need To Bookmark: http://www.dailygyan.com/2008/11/10-online-photo-editors-that-you.html

Bibliography

Scott Kelby photoshop insider: http://scottkelby.com/2010/is-photoshop-a-bad-word/

Jo LeFlufy Photography: http://jleflufy.wordpress.com/2011/11/17/but-thats-soooo-expensive/

Mail Online: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1312439/Egyptian-newspaper-Al-Ahram-photo-shops-Obama-picture.html

viz: http://viz.dwrl.utexas.edu/content/photoshop-disasters

What I want to explore

I hesitate to enter this everyone-is-photographer world as a pro photographer. How can I survive? There are so many images out there, how can my images stand out? Then this thought become “How can I photograph something sells well?” I believe that is a dangerous thought photographers would fall into. You start chasing new style, copying popular photographer’s images, buying new template… And you realize you no longer enjoying photography, no longer have passion or your own creativity.

I want to photograph something that has true value, something timeless. But what is it really? Something showing famous event? Something expressing love or world peace? Or Image that has strong message? Or just somebody’s every day life…

In this image flooding life, how we view photography is changing, or it has to change. But it is very hard to know what kind of image is good and valuable.

Through this course, we will study how new media changes our society. I want to think how photography effect people, and how people value photographs, and seek what I want to do as a photographer.