My Final Post

Well fellow writers, the semester of Images in Action is coming to a close and I wanted to take the time to summarize my blogging experience with all of you. I think my blog is a good representation of who I am and how I see things through my perspective. I hope that through my perspective and analysis of visual rhetoric in the images I chose to blog about and participation in interactive class discussions, you were able to get to know me better as the semester proceeded. 

    

                     

                        First Post

Last Post

In my first blog post I introduced my home, where I grew up, and how that place (my home in Muskoka) has shaped the person I am today. My last blog post was on a controversial advertisement for a sport that I associate with, but a company that I don't support (Reebok's CrossFit ad). Throughout my blog I tried to include a balance between personal experiences and achievements, and more generic/ relateable topics like the environment, comics, and advertisements (things that we can all have our own opinions on, with fewer personal biases on my part). Throughout my blogging experience, I realized that when I talk about things that interest me and that I can relate to, I have more emotion in my writing and I hope you were able to see that. I think this routine blog helped me dig deeper and uncover more detail in some of my personal experiences in a way that I never have. Throughout my blog I think I gradually moved away from just simply telling a story through my perspective to actually uncovering details in the visual rhetoric in each image and then using those tools to construct an argument. 


I think it is interesting the way we can look at images in advertising for example, and see patterns in the visual rhetoric. What I have learned from this is that a lot of strategy goes into creating advertisements, and more so than I had originally thought. Digging deeper into the different strategies of ethos, pathos, and logos incorporated in advertisements has helped me become a better analyst of visual rhetoric.

When I go over the images that I have been blogging about all semester, one thing stands out to me as a constant theme in my choice of images, and that is that they are all images of the outdoors (except for the last advertisement). I think this says something about myself and my interests. The fact that I am only noticing this now suggests that it was unintentional, but obviously something that I enjoy and can relate to. 






Here is an image that we encountered in class this semester. This image is one that particularly confused me because now that we have technology to do this, how do we ever know what is real and what is fake. I think analyzing this image in class has made me more skeptical when I look at photographs on the internet. When I initially saw the image on the right by itself, I didn't question for a second whether it was real or not, but now I really understand how important it is to consider the fact that photos such as this one should be questioned. I think this is also why I used my own personal photographs because to me that is as close to reality as I can get. But how can all of you know that I didn't photoshop my pictures? Thats just it, you can't know, and thats what makes this confusing.

Good One Reebok...

Blog Post #7

Reebok! How could you say such a thing? 

Reebok recently came out with this ad in Germany and as you can imagine, it didn't take long for the public, mostly women, to express their outrage. The ad was pulled 2 weeks after it was exposed in Berlin according to an article in the Toronto Star.  

How did Reebok ever think they would get away with this? That's what I want to know. If you read the article you will also see that Reebok apologizes quickly and almost acts as if they were unaware of this ads exposure.

For those of you that don't know, Reebok recently bought the naming rights to CrossFit. Reebok has completely rebranded their entire business around CrossFit. Their new slogan is "Reebok CrossFit the sport of fitness has arrived. 

As a CrossFitter (from before it became commercialized) I have a hard time seeing ads about CrossFit to begin with, not to mention ads like this one that I am showing you today. I was quite content with the CrossFit lifestyle before Reebok bought the name. It was a fitness lifestyle that people joined and adopted and it was different than any other kind of gym BECAUSE it wasn't commercialized, materialized, and backed up by a "big name" like Reebok. It was inevitable that Crossfit would be bought out by a large sporting company, but on an individual level, it will always be more than "the latest fad" for me and I will never associate Reebok with this aspect of my fitness lifestyle. 

So you know a bit about my exposure to CrossFit, now you can see how an ad like this one is really annoying to me, not even so much offensive; but here we have a company who just bought naming rights to a "sport" that I have already made a part of my lifestyle well before they got involved, and they send out messages like this one. I am not impressed. 

I think the message about not cheating on your workouts is a great idea, but that message is almost lost when Reebok over-powers it with the part that says "cheat on your girlfriend [instead]". Those particular words, because they are so harsh, are what everyone who sees this ad will take away from it, hence the outcry and backlash that Reebok experienced with this ad. 

The image in this ad is not even very powerful, or fitness related. And it doesn't have to be. The power is in the written message. The only problem for Reebok is that this "bold" statement will probably only do bad things for their company. For a fitness lifestyle that intends to attract both men and women, these kind of sexist, and disrespectful statements are not beneficial to Reeboks campaign whatsoever. 

Some may argue that this kind of statement, although it gives them a lot of negative attention, at least their name is out there. This is not an effective marketing technique for a company that is trying to spread the word about a "new sport of fitness". More people will be mad about this than intrigued by it, and if anything people will see this and lose interest in supporting a company that sends messages like this one.

Let me know what you think. 

Is this offensive? Or funny? 

Does it make you want to support Reebok? Or does it change any positive thoughts you ever had about the company? 

Picture Perfect Moments

You know that feeling where you are in a moment and you want it to last forever? That is a picture perfect moment. This photograph that I am showing you is also one of those moments (for me).

It's not everyday that I see the world at 5 in the morning, but last summer, it was part of my routine: wake up at 5am, crush a crossfit workout at 6am, and then work at 8am. I was moving particularly slow one morning; it's hard to get up when it is still dark outside. But I eventually went downstairs to make a quick breakfast. It wasn't until I was in my kitchen that I saw out the window and noticed this incredible sky. I was then literally drawn to it, and went outside to get the full feel of this spooky, yet captivating natural experience.

When I stepped outside on to my front patio the sky felt heavy overhead and there was an unsettling energy in the air. I say unsettling, but I also got a feeling of calmness. My feelings were conflicting at the time. Why? How? What do you see when you look at this image? How does this unique sky speak to you?

Remembering back to my childhood, my father always used to say this expression: Red sky at night is a sailors delight; Red sky in the morning sailors take warning. Let me start off by saying that although the sky in this image is more of a pinkish colour, a "sailor", for the purpose of this expression would consider it to be red. We talk about how red symbolizes warning and caution, but why in the morning? And why is it that at night it means delight? It's got to be more than just simply that they rhyme. But what? Perhaps my initial reaction of feeling an unsettling energy was due to my recollection of this expression from my childhood. To take this another step further, perhaps my scepticism of this expression today contributes to my conflicting feelings that I experienced in this moment.

I also want to say that since I have been at university and away from home, I have come to appreciate these moments more. As a child and teen I wouldn't have ever really thought much about it. This view is one that I have been waking up to my whole life, but never before have I taken this much time to really soak it in, reflect on it, and admire it. There is something about being away from home for the past few years that makes me see my home environment differently. I took a picture of this moment because I knew it was one that I wanted to revisit, and recall the feeling that it gave me that morning in June.