Isn't this just a great picture of our president? Standing in front of a crowd giving one of his famous "we can do better" speeches.
When I look through the exhausting list of pictures of president Obama, many have this same feel. A proud, and very stern man, addressing the people who surely trust him, about issues that have real relevance to our lives.
This is a shot of him, where the photographer wanted to highlight this attribute of rigorous and unrelenting presentation of his beliefs, and the way he thinks things ought to be.
The shot features just Obama, as the crowd to which he is speaking has been blurred from our vision. This is because the people simply don't matter here. The image is supposed to direct all attention to the president to show him as strong, as I have mentioned before.
It seems that today, even when people don't agree with the president, we still want to see him as a tough roll model to follow. We have, in the past been put through a presidency that many would like to forget, and therefore we want to see our new president through this lens. He has become a symbol of power and change to many in this country, and images such as this do a very good job and driving that point home.
A news photograph is a great target for the kind of description that we are looking for in this assignment, but this one is a little challenging. It doesn’t give you a whole lot to go on. But there are still some possibilities. For example, you describe Obama as “rigorous” and “unrelenting” in this photo. But what is it about the image that conveys that meaning to you? What exactly do you see that leads to an interpretation of “rigorous” and “unrelenting.”
ReplyDeleteThe way you described this picture is spot on. Most every picture of Obama is a fairly close up shot that goes from the waist up and he usually fills out most of the frame. Some people say it is because he is a a fairly young president and the close up is nice to have and others say they want to capture as many close up images of the first African American president that they can. Great post.
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