Two things…One: I found a cool photo site (which I’m sure everyone is already very much aware) called, Phlearn – GO to it NOW.

And, Two: During one of the videos (on Phlearn) he talks about the book Camera Lucida, by Roland Barthes and the concept of studium and punctum, which I’d totally forgotten about (its been a few years since I read the book) but was glad to be reminded of it again.

From Wikipedia…

Camera Lucida (in French, La Chambre claire) is a short book published in 1980 by the French literary theorist and philosopher Roland Barthes. It is simultaneously an inquiry into the nature and essence of photography and a eulogy to Barthes’ late mother. The book investigates the effects of photography on the spectator (as distinct from the photographer, and also from the object photographed, which Barthes calls the “spectrum”).

In a deeply personal discussion of the lasting emotional effect of certain photographs, Barthes considers photography as asymbolic, irreducible to the codes of language or culture, acting on the body as much as on the mind. The book develops the twin concepts of studium and punctum: studium denoting the cultural, linguistic, and political interpretation of a photograph, punctum denoting the wounding, personally touching detail which establishes a direct relationship with the object or person within it.

I decided to play around with the concept with this image. (Its the same image I posted the other day – with a little ‘addition’).

I’m also trying to learn compositing techniques in Photoshop (which is how I stumbled upon the Phlearn site…check it out: www.phlearn.com/about).