Period 4 -- Critical Analysis #1

9/20/2019

Today you will be writing about this photograph by artist Joel Sternfeld. Your analysis must be 4 paragraphs, 5 sentences minimum per paragraph. Remember to post your analysis as a comment to the blog post that corresponds to your class. If you post your analysis to the wrong class post, it will not be graded.

If you do not finish your analysis in class, you must finish and post your analysis before class on Monday, 9/23/19.

Refer to your "How to See" handout for analyzing a photograph--

Describe specifics.
Describe form.
Describe the content.
Evaluate the image

Your analyses will be graded on:

meeting minimum length requirements
depth of organization
evaluation of the content
grammar/punctuation

12 Comments

diego saucedo

9/20/2019 09:16:48 am

There is a house that looks like a villa, on what looks to be in somewhere in America, You can see a wrecked car on the bottom of the picture with what looks to be some kind of ruins from the house, the first thing you imagine when you see the picture is that an earthquake happened or something bad happened because theres some kind of bad tone to the picture.
You can also see some mountains on the far back of the house and the picture, the tone differs on the top and the bottom, the top looks like a happy image of a house but the bottom looks like a dark depiction of a disaster.

Zac Isaac

9/20/2019 09:38:46 am

In this image, it looks like there was an earthquake. The earthquake made a cliff in which a car fell into. The photo is taken in the day. The image has cars, houses, mountains and a cliff. A car is destroyed because it fell off the cliff.

This photo is not pleasing to look at because of the natural disaster. Somebody could’ve been hurt. The photo is taken straight on the accident. When I see this photo I see the house first. Then I look at the cliff and the totaled car.

Some ideas that are in the photo are natural disasters, maybe even death. One reason why the author made this photo is to show how dangerous and the power of earthquakes are. This photo reminds me of the movie “San Andreas”. This image is interesting because it makes you wonder if this was on a stage or if it was real. It does not really question any religion.

I kind of like it because of how the photo was taken because I wonder where was the photographer standing. Was he standing or was he on a helicopter. I believe this photo was successful. The colors and the picture itself is interesting to look at.

mj ervin

9/20/2019 09:43:57 am

The image is of a street with a house and what looks to be like the underground. The image seems to be a picture of the underground but it looks like it is just a cliff. There are some mountains in the background of the image. It looks to be like an abandoned place or like a small village. The colors on the buildings are bland and warm. The trees are palm trees and the mountain is faded in the distance. What's weird about the image is that what im guessing is underground has some trees and moss on the left. For some reason it's odd that there is a car. So im guessong that there was a crash or something happened here. I want to say it seems like their e=was a hurricane / tornado her in the past and that's why it looks like that. It even kinda looks like a crater like it was hit by a meter. There aren't any people or anyone in it. It just is like deserted.

I feel and soothing quiet vibe. The way this image was shot looks like it was from far away. I feel this place would be randomly in the middle of nowhere whenever you go for a road trip. The image is quite symmetrical and i don't think it really uses the rule of thirds because it's not really a picture that would need it. This picture uses a deep depth of field because you can see the mountains in the background but then you can also see the cliff / underground closer to you.

In this picture it seems to be telling something. I think it may be what is said about the meter or hurricane but this image kinda makes me confused on what's going on. It seems like whenever a movie plays a scene in the future but then blends the past into the same clip. That is what this clip reminds me of. This image does make me wonder what really is going on but i wouldn't be able to figure it out without reading about what the picture is really of.

MJ ervin

9/20/2019 09:47:21 am

their were some errors to the first paragraph

So i'm guessing that there was a crash or something happened here. I want to say it seems like there was a hurricane / tornado here in the past and that's why it looks like that. It even kinda looks like a crater like it was hit by a meter. There aren't any people or anyone in it. It just is like deserted.

George Welch

9/20/2019 09:44:18 am

This image looks like a sinkhole formed over what looks like a hotel/convention center. The photo looks like it uses a lot of natural light. The colors are very bright. The objects in the photo include cars, buildings, and mountains in the background.
The photo has a very wide depth of field, everything is clear and easy to see in the photo. The edges of the photo crop off parts of the mountains, the building, and parts of the sinkhole. The positive parts of the image are the cars and the sinkhole. The negative space in the image seem to be the building and the mountains. And the image seems to direct your eyes to the destruction at the bottom of the image to the damaged building and parking lot, to the mountains in the background.
To me, there is a story to this image. It looks like one day a sinkhole opened up in the parking lot of a building and pulled down whatever was on top of it. It also looks like this could be used for aftermath photos of the destruction a sinkhole can cause. This image doesn’t really remind me of anything. And the theme to me is a disaster.
I like the image. I like looking at aftermath pictures of accidents/disasters. I think his photo could be used to show before and after photos of sinkhole disasters. Overall it's a good image. I like it.

Anaya Zachery

9/20/2019 09:49:15 am

In this image, we see mountains in the background, a house with a car parked in front in the middle ground, and what looks to be some sort of sinkhole in the foreground. There is lots of greenery and the image, and is scattered both around the house and in the sinkhole. The hole in the ground is massive and a car is shown that has fallen into it.The lighting looks natural; most of it comes from the overcast sky. The color palette of the photo is fairly neutral, with lots of greens and browns.

While it was difficult to tell the photographer’s exact point of view, I assume that he was probably on the other side of the sinkhole, and somewhat lower than the street to take the photo. The depth of field in the image isn’t extremely shallow, but we can see some blur in the far background. The focal point is most likely the hole, as it is the largest object in the photo and is right at the foreground, so it’s one of the first things you see when you look at the image. There is not much empty space in this photo, and most, if not all, is filled by the house, mountains, and hole. One thing the photographer did choose to cut out of the image was the other half of the hole in the ground. This shows us that he definitely wanted to include the house in the image, otherwise he would have focused solely on this sinkhole.

Personally, I think the meaning Sternfeld was trying to convey with this photo is that ultimately, nature is the deciding factor in our fates. The mountains in the background show a beautiful, untouched reality that is far away from where we are today. The house and car, though desired by many, show how humans have destroyed the natural beauty that was once everywhere because of the want for material things. Now the grass as been replaced with concrete, the wildlife with cars, and the beautiful views with the side of a wall. But finally, we see the sinkhole, which has taken over the artificial, man made creations. There is a car that we see has fallen in, which further demonstrates the fact that going too far and manipulating nature will only come back to destroy us.

I like this image, and think that it was successfully taken. The colors used are pleasing to look at. I do think that it’s slightly eerie how there are no people around, though. I like how it prompts further questioning of the meaning and reasons for taking the photo. The photographer leaves a lot for the viewers to imagine, which I think is always a good characteristic of an artwork.

Garrett Greiner

9/21/2019 01:47:13 pm

The main subject of this image is a car that has fallen because the road has collapsed. The car is flipped upside down and you can see pipes underground that have been uncovered by the road collapsing. It sits in the middle of a dirt pile, and you can see what was under the road. On the left and right side of the collapsed area, there are lots of shrubs and grasses, some of which appear to be dead, while others appear to be alive. In the middle ground, there is a nice looking house that has trees scattered throughout. There is another car that is parked safely on the ground, just nearly missing the collapsed part of the road. Off to the right, it looks like there is a building that is partly destroyed. Since it has one side open and is located outside of the wall that surrounds the house, it might have been a garage or used for storage. In the background, you can see the beautiful mountains that are located behind the house. It uses natural lighting, as it was taken outside. It looks like the picture was taken on a cloudy day because, in the background, you can see the sky, but it looks a little more grey than usual. It has lots of green, seen in the plants and the mountains, as well as a lot of yellow, seen in the plants and the color of the buildings. There is a good amount of brown in there as well, seen in the dirt uncovered due to the collapsed road.

I think it is pleasing to look at because there are life and beauty to balance the destruction aspect of the image. The photographer took the picture from the other side of the pit. He took the image at eye level, which makes it easier to imagine yourself standing right there where the picture was taken. This photo was taken using a deep depth of field. We can tell because if it used shallow depth of field, the car would be in sharp focus, and everything else would be pretty blurry, which isn’t the case with this photo. The focal point is the car flipped over in the dirt pile. The mountain range in the background leads you to the house in the middle ground. From there, you follow the line of the road/edge of the cliff produced by the collapsed road, bringing you to the line of shrubs on the left-hand side of the image. The line of the shrubs of the left side of the car directs the viewer’s attention towards the pit and more specifically, the car. The image is close to symmetrical. The house and the buildings that accompany it are spread out through the middle ground, there are shrubs on both the left and right of the car and the pit, and the mountain range is evenly spread out in the background. I think the subject of the image fills up the image pretty well, and there is no wasted space. Only the mountains and a few shrubs and trees were cut off in the photo.

The main themes in this image are life and destruction. The theme of life is seen with all of the green in the image that is seen in the plants and mountain range. The theme of destruction is seen with the sinkhole and the car. I think the artist made the image to show how mankind and nature co-exist, but there are some mishaps that occur along the way due to human manipulation of nature. The image reminds me of California, because not only is the setting fitting, but also it just seems like something that would happen in California.

I like this image because it really captures the entire setting of the sinkhole situation. If the picture he took only captured the sinkhole and the car, it would be a lot less interesting. Having the house and the beautiful backdrop of the mountains, along with the shrubs and grasses in the foreground makes the scene so much different. The way in which he took the picture changes the way would view an image with a similar subject. I think that the artist was indeed successful in accomplishing their goal because they turned what would have normally just been a picture used in a newspaper to a work of art.

Elise Miles

9/22/2019 10:43:09 am

The image is of land and a caved in mountain sinkhole. There is a car buried in the caved mountain which is upside down. There are a bunch of trees on the left side of the picture. The image is using greens, browns, tans, and a bit of blues. The mountain is bluish, there are many green trees, and the buildings in the picture are tan. The lighting is pretty good, you can everything really clearly. In the picture are mountains on the top. In the middle of the picture are tan broken down buildings with an old blue car in front of them. On the bottom of the picture is the sinkhole with a car buried in it. There are pieces of trash all around buried in the bottom of the sinkhole. On the left of the picture are a bunch of trees and green plants. In the image it looks like a car crash just happened or maybe a big storm that opened up the earth.

The point of view for this photo is straight ahead because you can see a lot in the picture. There is a big depth of field that shows a lot of details. The focal point of the photograph is the caved in sinkhole showing the buried car. The photo is symmetrical because all of the details are balanced. The subject does not fill the space, there is a lot more space with different details. The image crops off the trees and the dirt sinkhole and the mountains.

The idea of the image I think is a hurricane or a big disaster happened which caused the dirt sinkhole. It is also deserted. The story is that a big natural disaster happened which probably killed lots of people. I think Sternfield was trying to show that natural disasters happen a lot and that we need to do what we can to help the people affected in the disaster. This picture reminds me of when a hurricane recently affected my grandparents’ coasthouse and completely ruined it. The image is very interesting to me in that it shows houses on top but then a huge dirty sinkhole with a car buried in it.

I don’t really like the image because there is tons of things happening in it so it is very confusing. The photo is successful because Sternfield was able to capture a bunch of details in it.

Max

9/22/2019 11:40:33 am

Ah yes, another Joel Sternfeld image. I think the biggest question here is “why the heck is that there?!” Why is there a car at the bottom of a cliff? There are PLENTY of parking spaces/ road above. What happened here, because there is also some more damage to the buildings above the cliff. Not to mention the yellows and greens, the yellow being the sickly looking grass, and the walls of the buildings, and the greens as trees and shrubbery.
This photo is definitely pleasing to look at, but not for the right reasons. It’s easy to look at because of the disaster in the photo. The destruction and curious crumbly buildings in the frame really pull your eyes. It kind of makes you think that there was an earthquake or another natural disaster. The image is kind of being framed by the dead-drop cliff in the front center as well as the mountains in the background. It kind of crops off a few trees and the rocks below the cliff, but leaves the interesting rock formation thing going on in the bottom right corner.
Really, the big theme is irony in disaster, as usual for Joel Sternfeld. The irony of the car being at that spot at that exact moment when the road gave way. Also, literally no one is doing anything about it whatsoever. This is a good image, it’s fun to look at, and even more fun to write about. It kind of reminds me of Cuba, you know, bright colors, fun buildings, old cars.
I absolutely love this image, it’s fun, and silly, and extremely well done. He did a good job with the framing and composure of the picture. He pretty much captured silent disaster in this photo. The colors also catch your eye, and do a really good job of drawing you in. Joel Sternfeld is one of my favorite photographers, so I definitely think that the image was successful.

Ryan Shields

9/22/2019 12:51:40 pm

This is an image of a crashed blue car that's upside down and half buried in the rubble of a collapsed road. The image appears to be taken sometime in the 90's because the cars look to be from that time period and the scenery makes me think that the image was taken someplace in California. In the middle ground you can see a cluster of smaller yellowish tan buildings that look like they could be part of a motel, and a car parked in the small parking lot. You can also see palm trees. In the Foreground you see part of a big hill that leads up to and levels out at the road. Part of the hill has collapsed along with the road. In the rubble of the collapsed hill there’s a flipped blue car and broken pipes.You can also see some trees, rocks, grass, and some broken pipes in the foreground. In the middle ground you can see multiple smaller buildings that appear to be part of some sort of motel. You can also see some trees, most of which appear to be palm trees. In the Background you can see a big green mountains. The picture has lots of greens and earthy tones. In the image it appears to be either morning or afternoon because you can see what looks like either the last parts of a sunrise or the beginning of sunset on the big mountains in the right of the background. There are lots of shadows, epically in the foreground. There are lots of objects in this image, there are a couple cars, some buildings, some broken pipes in the pile of rubble, a hill, lots of different types of trees but mainly palm trees, some grass, and you can see the mountains in the background. In this image a car is flipped upside down in a pile of rubble and broken pipes that used to be a road.

The composition is good, the picture is pleasing to look at because the greens contrast the earthy tones of the rest of the image, but the image is a bit grainy, most likely due to a higher ISO. The rule of thirds is being used, I can tell because there are things in the foreground, middle ground, and background. The picture seems to have been taken from about the height of the road but far back enough to see just about all of the hill. There's more of a medium depth of field, everything but the mountains in the background are in focus. The focal length is probably on the shorter side because there's a wider field of view. There’s a very clear line that follows the the uncaplased side of the road that separates the middle ground from the foreground. And The tree line separates the middle ground from the background. These two lines direct your eye from the foreground up to the middle ground, and from the middle ground to the background. The image relatively balanced, there's no part of the image where its just empty, but the image is not symmetrical. The foreground is much bigger than the middle ground, and the background is bigger than the middle ground, but smaller than the foreground. The image fills the frame, there's no part of the image where its just empty. At the top edges of the image there are mountains and nothing is cut off. At the bottom edges of the image there is the base of the hill and part of the hill is cut off.

A themes that I see in the image is destruction. I dont think theres a story being told in the image. The artist probably made this image because it’s cool and it’s something you don’t see a whole lot. The image reminds me of a big sinkhole that collapsed a road a couple years ago in Virginia. The image does not question any of my beliefs. I think the image is interesting because it’s cool to look at.

I like the image because it’s interesting and it’s cool to look at. I think this image is successful because it captures people's attention, it’s pleasing to look at, and there's not any problems that are immediately apparent.

dana salinas

9/22/2019 09:31:57 pm

The photograph by Joel Sternfeld shows a deep ravine that is surrounded by houses. It seems as if the hole weren’t even there due to how calm the picture looks. We can also see two cars, one that is flipped over and covered in debris and one parked in a parking spot. It is an odd picture because we don’t know if the ravine was there before or after construction. There are no barriers that would keep someone or something from falling down so it makes us question why there are no warning signs or rails. The photographer is using both light and dark colors; lighter colors start appear if you look at the photograph from down to up but it gets darker as you look at it from up to down. I think that the author chose this contrast of colors to portray a deeper meaning and theme.
This image is pleasing to look at and I really like the composition of it because of the contrasting colors and the scenery that the photographer chose to capture. It is especially pleasing to look at because it seems as if it only were showing the levels of the earth and what is inside of it. It seems as if the artist cut the earth in half to show what was buried underneath the buildings. The photographer, I believe chose to take this picture at this certain angle to show the whole landscape. The artist maybe wanted to create curiosity in the public’s mind by seeing the car flipped upside down and no bystanders to be seen. The theme however, is different.
The themes of this photograph, I believe, is how oblivious we are to everything. The car that is parked outside of the building is very questionable because it got there, knowing that there were no rails to keep them from falling in the pit in the event of an accident and yet they chose to park by pulling up and not reverse parking. It also shows how oblivious we are to everything because this could be an example of how little attention we are paying to the outside world. We don’t know why the car fell or why there’s no one around, but the simple fact that there is only one car and not a single person is questionable because how is it possible that no one was able to hear the car crashing down. The bottom of the picture conveys solitude because no one was there to help the person or even the car that fell down. We don’t even know if there was someone inside, and if so, it’s even worse because it was just forgotten. This image just reminds me of different scenes from different movies where there are pits or really steep hills and people usually get pushed into it or they fall and it results in a big tragedy.
The picture is very beautiful to me and I really like it. The image is interesting to look at because of how the photographer chose to capture nature to the side of and show how it was surrounded the whole landscape. This image shows both chaos and tranquility in a very simple yet complicated matter. I think it’s complicated because we don’t know the full story or know why there are no rails, if it was an accident, on purpose, etc. We just interpret it as we’d like. The photograph is successful because it transmits different ideas to the public and raises a sense of curiosity.

Nathan Bond

9/23/2019 07:34:14 am

The first thing this picture makes you think is that an earthquake just recently happened, but if you look closer it looks like some time has passed this didn’t just occur. There's a blue car buried in the debris. A tan-colored building in the back to the right of the building you can see what looks to be a garage that is destroyed so we can assume the building took damage. There's another car parked by the building that’s unscathed. There are trees to the left of the photo that makes a line that leads you to the surface where the house is and then will lead you to wear the sinkhole is.

There are mountains in the background. Trees around and in front of the house. There are trees surrounding the sinkhole with the blue car in it. There are not many things in the sinkhole from what I can see there’s just the blue car flipped upside down and 4 red pipes. The line of trees to the left also have bushes. These trees are alive and green. It looks like they could've grown in the dirt from the sinkhole.

It doesn’t matter that they cut out of the rest of the image theres no extra important details needed, but they did cut out the right of the image that showed another edge with trees that circled the debris. If they did show the edge to the right it would show that the edge to the left and right make lines that leads the viewer eyes to the house and sinkhole. It’s bright outside there is the sun shining behind the camera that lights up the picture. This picture is pleasing to look at because of the destruction. It makes you think about what happened.

This picture doesn’t question my beliefs, but it's very interesting and noteworthy. The cameraman took the picture from behind the sinkhole. It reminds me of every earthquake movie because of the great destruction. There’s is negative space in the mountains and to the left and right of the image. There is a positive space in the middle where the sinkhole is. The artist probably took the picture because it's so cool to look at

Period 4 -- Critical Analysis #1

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