I decided to analyze this picture for this week’s assignment because when I was browsing through my picture album, it looked so innocent, happy, and peaceful. To give a little bit of description, the little boy in the picture is my nephew, Dylan Kwok and the person right beside him is me. The picture was taken on July 6th 2007 in his house. As you all can perfectly guess, this picture was taken on his birthday. Like my father said, a picture can capture the essence of the moment and we can always remember the moment. From this picture, we can see a lot of happiness going on because of the expressions, the brightness, and the items from the picture.
I remember how hard it was to get a picture with Dylan since he was 3 years old at that time that he couldn’t really stay in one spot for a minute and he ran around the house. Luckily, I bought him a gift and told him that I would give it to him if he took a picture with me (Children are so easy to be bribed…). It was a set of Legos that we could assemble into a big ship.
Furthermore, as you can see from the picture, it was his 3rd birthday. We can see it from the cake. It was filled with many cute toppings and a big number “Three.” A lot of friends and families came and celebrated with us, and so we needed to dress appropriately. Dylan wore a nice blue T-shirt with Mickey surfing on it and matching blue jeans, while I wore a casual red shirt.
So what can we tell about the atmosphere and feeling from this picture? Well, I could tell one thing about the feeling when I first saw this picture: happiness. When we look at the birthday cake, the feeling that comes to mind is something that is definitely positive because birthdays are something that we generally celebrate every year. The atmosphere from the picture has a hint of pureness. There is a crystal white desk, bright yellow chairs next to it with lily flower on top, and white wallpaper. All and all, the colors from this picture contribute happy moods and created a positive interpretation.
In conclusion, I think this picture captured the heart and meaning of happiness because this picture is happiness from expression to the atmosphere.
2 comments:
Haha. Dylan looks like he is ready to run away after the picture is taken. Great picture.
I know from experience that it is hard to get little kids to behave for a picture. Two weekends ago I went home (Saratoga) for the weekend, and during my stay, my 12 year old half-sister, Janna, got everyone together for a family photo that she needed for her summer school project. I groaned when I heard about the photo because I don’t like being in pictures. Derrick, my twin brother, groaned. My brother and I both said “Let’s do it right now and get it out of the way.” So, we got everyone together to take the photo. There was one problem: my seven year old half-brother, Mark.
Mark likes to annoy Janna and he knew that she needed to take this picture, so while she was trying to get everyone lined up, he was busy running around and not listening to her instructions (Mark is very good at staying still, but when one of his immediate family members tells him to stay still, he isn’t good at staying still). Normally, I am ok with Mark annoying Janna or vice versa, but this time he was not only annoying Janna, he was also annoying me and my brother. We all tried to bribe him with extra video game time, but that didn’t work. Bribes used to work, but not anymore. He is too concerned with being disruptive at this moment to worry about any benefits on his part that come later on down the road. Finally, we got him to settle down, but we had to take two pictures because Janna said Mark looked “too evil” in the first picture. What an exhausting experience.
Anyway, great post. I enjoyed reading all of it, but especially the part about how it was easy to bribe Dylan. That part made me remember my own experiences trying to bribe Mark or Janna.
"I remember how hard it was to have a picture with Dylan since he was 3 years old at that time that he couldn’t really stayed at one spot for a minute and he ran around the house."—In this sentence "stayed" should read "stay."
I like how you pause on the trickiness of 'family' pictures—and I like how Arlen picks up this thread.
As an exercise, it could be very interesting to ask what a non-positive interpretation of this photo would be. I am not necessarily saying a 'negative' interpretation, but an interpretation that did not require valuative terms. Do you see what I mean? This would be interesting: to try to describe the photo as if you don't know the people, and you are unfamiliar with the context. What would this viewer notice?
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