What is the most effective way to communicate?
There are many different ways of communication, but which one is the most effective? We all have our own opinion for efficient or quick ways to make contact with other people and I am hoping to decide which one I would personally prefer to use.
We all know about the ability to make a telephone call to somebody, which could be the quickest way to contact somebody, you don’t have to wait for it to turn on, you don’t have to type your whole message and having a conversation on a phone becomes a lot more personal but does that make it the most efficient? Making a telephone call can restrict you to certain areas and signal can prevent you making some calls, so unless you’re in a real emergency where 999 is needed, making a phone call cannot always be as efficient and easy as you would expect. 

                                                                                  1983 Motorola DynaTAC 8000X
  As technology has progressed we all now have much more access to mobile communication technology. We therefore now have the ability to send texts, while these are also restricted by signal problems occasionally it has took over the way people have conversations with each other. It allows people to easily contact one another, with popular shortened words and the capability of Predictive Text, which is great for quickly telling somebody something important and you can simply have a conversation without having to shout over people or interrupt a conversation by discreetly replying.
  However I feel that texting has took over the way we communicate but sending a text isn’t useful if your trying to contact someone professionally, I think that if we need to give a message to a company or if we apply for a job we always refer back to ways such as emails or even letters, which still have their use. 

  A letter is a hard copy of something which can’t be deleted and can be copied and presented in many ways, to give them an individual content, a letter can be sent to a child, or the boss of a big company and still have the effect you want it to just due to presentation. Although an email may not seem as fast or easy, they can be sent and you don’t have to worry about them not getting received, or not having signal to send, it is still a free, effective way of getting something you want to say to someone across as good as anything else could.
   I did mention how I feel these ways of communication can take a way a large personal part of communicating, maybe if its long distance and you miss that person, a text doesn’t really get that across as well as a phone call, and a phone call can’t get it across like a Skype call. Skype allows us to sit at a computer and talk out loud to a person on the other side of the world, as though they were in the same room. This may not mean we can pick up the phone and do this as quickly as any other methods, but has revolutionised the way we can communicate and is the most effective way to have a long conversation with someone and make it mean something. 

  I don’t think that you could possibly choose a most effective way of communication with all of this to take into account. If you need to quickly tell someone something give them a call, you can even give someone a ring if you have a long conversation, catch up without having to wait for long replies. If you’re stuck in a loud busy place, have a short message to send someone, a text message is ideal, or if you have some important information to share that doesn’t need an instant reply, send an email to that person, maybe even a letter to make it formal. Or you could go home and have a Skype conversation with someone on your street or in another country as easy as that, and if it comes to it, you could arrange a meeting with someone and communicate in what I think is the best way, in person.

                                                                         

Students carried out a survey in which they answered questions to do with television programmes, including most popular shows and ideal times, if we were to set up a student television station.
  The ages of the students who answered varied between 16-21 and 72% of these were male which may sway the outcome more towards a specific genre such as Top Gear. The results show that the most popular time to watch television is between 8pm and 10pm with 52% of votes, which is no surprise because the television channels are aware that this is a time when the majority people will all be home from work and school, possibly sitting down for a meal and ready to watch their favourite programmes such as X Factor together as a family.
  Out of the students that participated 66.7% occasionally watch the News, what is surprising is that you would expect students of this age group to be interested in celebrity news but none of them actually choose that option and 76.2% said that they watch world news, I think I should take into account that people may consider world news to be classed as everything and possibly not mean world affairs. 

The most popular genre of television programme amongst the students was Comedy with 76% of votes, after being asked what their top five programmes were, Friends, Hollyoaks, Misfits, and Two and a Half Men, appeared repeatedly. All of these programmes seem to be on at the same times on the night, from 7pm until 10pm, which is accurate to previous studies.
  They were also asked what their top viewing channels were and again the same channels appeared with answers such as Channel 4 and E4. Finally we asked what the ideal duration of a television programme would be, Thirty Minutes and One Hour was the most popular times with 80% of votes between them, but anything slightly over or under was very unpopular.

I think that this proves people of this age group have a very specific opinion when it comes to the television they choose to watch with the statistics proving this overwhelmingly.

BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art
Lindsay Seers

I recently visited the BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art to get some inspiration for a current unit I am covering in my college where I am going to create my own installation.  Whilst I was there I took particular interest to the work by Lindsay Seers who designed the idea for these large shapes to be placed in a this room with a strange looking building behind them, you can actually go inside this structure into complete darkness and after finding your way around a few corridors you come to a balcony which you look over, down onto a round screen where different projections are shown and a voice over tells you the story. There is also a small separate room attached to this one where you can watch a short 20 minute video explaining some of Lindsay Seers work, I did not find this particularly interesting but it did however explain her concept better. This installation inspired me to create something very thought provoking that could possibly tell a story or create emotions amongst the audience, something that you don’t necessarily understand at first and something very strange and random so that people are immediately interested. The idea of confusing the audience is a very good way of also creating interest amongst people.

George ShawThis is one of the photographs that were shown in one of the galleries where the BALTIC decided to show the work of George Shaw. These pictures have been painted using Humbrol enamel, and are all painted from photographs taken during the artists childhood as he grew up in Coventry. These photographs create a very unnerving feel because they seem so desolate and lonely, for example the painting below which shows a swing set without the swings is a very thought provoking piece.  This gallery inspires me to place some of my own photography around the walls of the studio and set something up like this for myself where people and come view my work. It also inspires me to somehow involve my photography by creating a strange viewing experience combining the two ideas I get from both George Shaw and Lindsay Seers.

This is my Great Horned Eagle Owl, Blue. I particularly liked photographing this bird because of all the colours and detail she has in her facial feathers, also she has stunning eyes which capture the photograph. Out of all my birds I feel she has the best look because of how she looks into the lens like this with her head down giving it a eerie feel about it, also she has naturally dark lined eyes which contrast amazingly with the yellow of her eye. As well as this I think that the symmetry in this photograph is very interesting and I feel the owls all create amazing photographs because of this.

This is a Female Red Tailed Hawk, Kane. I like this photograph because of how you can see the water droplets on her head her head is slightly angled so she looks slightly evil like Blue. I like the depth of field in this picture because all her feathers are in focus but the background isn't even noticeable because it is so out of focus. When I photograph the hawks and falcons I prefer to give them this kind of angle because they don't look as interesting photographed head on, I feel there beaks are an important thing to include.

This is a photograph of my California King Snake, Pearl. I wanted a nice head shot of this snake but I also wanted her body in the background. I did get a lot of photographs which had his, but I thinks that the photograph is beautiful. I love the reflection in the eye and the depth of field, like the body in the background which is out of focus. I will continue photographing this snake because I think it is one of the more photogenic snakes.

 This is a Male Sunglow Boa, he is actually blind in one eye, so I was trying to photograph him from one side which proved to be difficult. However because of this I was not concentrating on head shots and I managed to create this photograph which i feel is very successful, although very different from my other photographs. I would like to continue creating some full body shots like this one but I am still more interested in Macro Photography.

This is one of my favorite photographs of my Red Knee Tarantula, Bella. To get this photograph I took a sheet of glass and placed it across two drawers. I then climbed underneath and began experimenting with flash, focus and distance. I managed to create some abstract photographs using a Ring Flash, but I wanted to include a photograph that was sharp and shown Bella looking as beautiful as she is. I believe this is very interesting, and tarantulas create some amazing photography if you manage to get close enough.

This is another one of my creepy crawlies, Milly the Millipede. Although there seems to be nothing special about this photograph I do really like all of the little legs in this photograph and how she curves around my hand. It was actually difficult to get an interesting photograph of the millipede, but I wanted to include one because she is a very interesting friend of mine and I will continue attempting to create something interesting with her.

These are two of my smaller snakes which I wanted to get under the Macro Lens and capture as much detail as possible. The first snake is a Red Corn Snake, Amber. This snake has some remarkable markings on it when I was given it and I was eager to photograph them. This is also just one of my snakes with a stunning coloured eye, when enhancing this photograph I preferred the original eye colour and ended up keeping it the same. I have a lot of photographs of this snake, some interesting ones of it coiled up so you can see how beautiful the body is, but i feel this head shot was to pretty to be left out.

 This is one of my favorite snake photographs just because of the brightness and colour of this snake. This is my Milk Snake, Burt. I decided to place this snake onto a log of wood to get the grain as the background, I love how the snakes body gradually disappears into the depth of field. I think its the snakes stripey pattern that makes this photograph look so good, it also has a really cute, pretty face which I am eager to continue photographing under a Macro Lens.