write a case study on a graduate's works and come up with our own series based on his or her photography techniques.

In this series, the graduate conveys her emotions and struggles in having an autistic sister through her photographs.

She expresses herself by employing slow shutter speed and blurred techniques in her works. I observed that her most of her works involve making her subject appear to be fading away and out of focus. My guess regarding the rationale behind her choice of technique would be that she wishes to express sad, nostalgic and perhaps painful memories viewed through tear-filled eyes; one's vision often blurs when one is on the brink of tears. I was most intrigued by the photograph showing the back of a person with his or her head disappearing into the light. It gives me a sense of feeling unbelonged, unwelcomed and being a 'no one'. I was interested in her exhibit due to my familiarity with the subject matter, and the fact that I enjoyed her abstract and artistic photographs. 

A Coca-Cola vending machine. When I was in primary school, I often bought canned drinks from the vending machine in my school canteen.

Toy capsule machines. These were machines that dispensed a capsule containing a little toy once you insert a $1 coin into it. I loved spinning for toys from these machines a lot as a child; whenever I found these machines in a neighbourhood, I would be sure to check them out for toys that I would be interested in. Till today, I still often find myself checking out these machines whenever I have the chance to.

Toy sets on display at a neighbourhood shophouse. As a child, I often visited the shops in the neighbourhood and would look through all the toys they have to offer, and eventually beg my parents to buy them for me.

Gachapon machines. These machines were different from the ordinary toy capsule machines; these were machines from Japan that contained toys made of higher-quality materials, and costed more, too. I often see these machines whenever I visited my favourite store, Toy 'R' Us, but I never bought one as a child due to the price.

Snacks at the supermarket. Twisties, Cheezels, Super Ring, Cheese Balls and Pringles. They were a staple of my childhood. I would often buy snacks from a mama shop or the supermarket, and eat the snacks outside as my mother would almost always tell me off for eating snacks if I were to eat them at home.

Cereals at the supermarket. I ate cereal for breakfast a lot as a child, but would often wonder why my cereal was always soggy. I only learnt later on that it was because my father would always heat up the milk before adding cereal into it, making them soggy - I did not know that cereal was meant to be eaten with cold milk until my teen years. I guess my father didn't know that, either!

A friendly neighbourhood stray cat. Having been a cat lover since I was young, my father would often point out stray cats for me and allow me to pet them. Sometimes I would bring my stuffed cat with me to play with the stray cats, though they often seemed to be afraid of my stuffed cat.

Here are a few of the other photographs I took while working on this assignment. I have taken a lot more photographs, way beyond what I have uploaded here, but I decided to limit the number to prevent this page from taking too long to load.

I considered using these clearer pictures of the toy vending machine as my main photograph for the series at first, but I decided against it in favour of using the blurrier photograph, as Jayme's photographs were often blurry and hard to identify.

I tried out taking a slow shutter speed photograph of an M&M machine, but the result does not look very good, so I decided not to place this in my main series.

I saw a numerous works at ADM, and were impressed by most of them. However, I thought that the Digital Photography exhibit was pretty small and did not really contain a lot of works. It does not matter, however, as quality is more important that quantity. I was amazed by the wide range of techniques utilised in each of the graduate's works and the way they express hidden meanings in each photograph, as if they were painting a work of fine arts with their camera. To be honest, I have never considered the camera to be a medium for creating artwork before, but I guess that is the reason I am here in CRIC - to learn how to experiment with photography and create abstract and modern masterpieces using the camera.

 

Besides the Digital Photography exhibit, I looked through the other exhibits, too, including the Visual Communication, Product Design and the Animation exhibit. It was an enjoyable afternoon at ADM, despite the day having started off terribly. We have visited ADM before last year too, and I think it would be nice to visit this place again in the future! (well, the nearby foodcourt does serve good food!)