One of the overall themes of this class is the idea that all things can be considered "texts" and therefore all things also contain some sort of rhetorical meaning. For this first writing project, i am exploring the rhetorical techniques and strategies used behind photographs in particular. I am an architecture major and have an interest in large buildings, so I chose a documentary photograph which seemed to reflect these interests. It is entitled Barcelona Nights and was taken this summer by Liam McAllister. The photo consists of two very popular buildings in barcelona, the Hotel Arts and Torre Mapfre, as well as some palm trees, a few other short buildings and some bright street lights. It is my opinion that this photograph and the way in which it is composed, has the particular goal of acting as a reflection of the local culture itself.
The primary audience to which I will be arguing this point will be my teacher, however it is also important to consider possible secondary audiences because this project will be published online and available for anyone to see. The most likely secondary audience would be my other classmates. Keeping these audiences in mind, I will compose my project in a manner in which the ethos, pathos and logos will appeal to both My teacher and fellow classmates. This means I need to make sure I use language from the book to establish credibility with the teacher and I need to make sure all of my ideas are well developed so even my classmates can see where I am trying to go with them.
The next important thing to remember while writing will be the medium in which I am creating this text. As an online blog post, I need to take into account that my work is going to be read and interpreted from a computer screen as opposed to the pages of a book. This may mean altering spacing, wording, or sentence structure to make it more eye friendly when viewed from a monitor. This also means that I can and should incorporate elements such as hyperlinks, photos, and other multimedia items to help convey my point.
The context of this project is also an important thing to
consider. By context, I mean the situation in which my work is or will be viewed. Although my project will be online for awhile, the most important context to consider is the fact that this will be turned in online, as a class project. It is to be reviewed and graded by my instructor, late in the first semester. He will likely be grading many other projects at the same general time, so it is a possibility that attitudes formed by other classmate's projects may reflect onto the grading of mine. This means that it may be advantageous for me to try to write my project in some sort of unique, yet acceptable style, so it can sort of "stand out from the crowd."The idea I want any audience to take away after reading this paper will be that the city of Barcelona becomes a completely different place at night than it is during the daytime. How during the day, the beach, small shops, parks and marinas may be the center of attention but at night, they almost dissapear into the shadows of the highly urbanized nightlife. I plan on mainly focusing the analysis in my paper on the lighting teniques used in this documentary photograph which convey this point.
