In ‘Edward Burtynsky’s The Power of Photography he uses powerful photos and messages to convey a story. In the documentary he was very good on capturing the audiences attention on specific things, he would have a picture on the screen of an up close image like a garbage dump of computers so you do not see the whole picture, and than zoom out so you can see the extremities of everything else occurring or in this case the rest of the overwhelming dump. This was a good method because the audience could immediately tell what it would be like to be in that situation, and it would not have been as effective if all we saw was the dump right away. This method was used many times throughout this documentary. Also Burtynsky would keep images or shots held up on the camera for a long time, to show that it is important, in the opening scene while introducing the building he had an 8 minute shot of a camera going around the building. This was smart because, it gave the viewers ideas on how big the factory is and how much time and effort it goes into making one object, you can see how these types of jobs are very repetitive and the workers do not get paid much just by watching the camera go around.
Burtynsky was good at showing how a picture can tell a message, and this was apparent in each image he showed. Like any image every picture beholds a story but you can define many of the pictures stories by the way they were shown in the documentary and the way the work was showed off. For example when the pictures of all the computers were shown in the dump, based on the photos you could see where the computers ended up and that a numerous amount have been thrown out, but when you take it into a greater depth you can understand that they are polluting the environment are they are extremely toxic, but some things like how they got there are left up to interpretation. Some might think they were thrown out because they were broken while others might ponder how new technology is continuously coming out and an attraction for people to get the new icon. Another exampled would be footage of the irons being assembled, you could see the work put in to making one and how repetitive it would be every day, each week. From this you took away, that the workers do not need much of an education for a job like that because a child could assemble parts of one with simple instruction, and it must be a hard job working in those conditions and being quite board.
While in Flickr I found a photo, which I found to grab my attention immediately, it was artistic and I found to be very deep. As you can see it is of a boy who is standing 90˚ away from the camera so you can only see the side of his face. He seems to be wearing a hoody covering the majority of his body proportions shown in this image, which represents how he is hiding something and that he could potentially have something to hide. He has a camera up to the back of his head, which represents a gun and that he is preparing for someone to shoot him, and as the trigger is being released the photos against the wall represent the blood splattering everywhere, but when I look at this photo I can see another meaning. I look at the camera behind his head, and all the photos being realeased and it made me realize that you can find your self in photography and find freedom, you can forget about many other things and be able to capture things that amuse you, and going back to the theory that he is being shot, while the photos are being released it could represent how he is being freed from what ever he was hiding and that he is starting over.
