Thomas Shum Photography

 I have re-edited 3 out of 10 photographs for the portrait since some of them do not look good, and I ran out of time to do all the re-editings. Here is the link to Google Drive, that all the selected photos and their EXIFs are inside so that I can save up the space here in the blog. All my work was taken with Nikon Z fc and a Nikkor Z 24-70mm f/4 S.  I used portrait for most of the work, because I thought it would look better than in landscape when it comes to portrait photography. And the other reason was that I am not good at handling portrait photography in landscape. Whilst the setting of the camera are more or less the same, I usually use a lower shutter speed and enlarge the aperture. I tried not to fully use the aperture, since the photographs might not look sharp. The image would not only look so noisy when the ISO is over 1000, but also it will increase the difficulties on editing for high ISO situation, and these the reason why I have to limit the ISO from getting ...

Topgun: An American Story was a book written by Dan Peterson, a retired naval captain of the United States Navy. It was an autobiography of himself, developing the US Navy Fighter Weapons School, which is very well known as the Topgun. Peterson wrote the book using first-person perspective, which was different comparing to my short story, that I have used third-person perspective. This can let the audience get to know more about Peterson himself, and to understand the story more easily through Peterson's view. The book recorded his services in the Navy and how he established Topgun with eight other fellow aviators in a very detailed way, and my short story is like a small chapter from his long novel.  Peterson used some literacy technics to express his experiences in the military. It is no doubt that he has used symbolism in his book. For example, he used "The Khmer Rouge"  when he described the communist party of Vietnam during war. He also used "the Big E" to ...

The Necklace was written by Guy de Maupassant in 1844, and it was published on a newspaper named Le Gaulois. The story was about a woman called Mathilde, who was invited to a ball. Her husband agreed to let her participate the ball, and she borrowed an expensive necklace from her friend, Madame Forestier, in which she lost it and have to pay the debt for 10 years. My story is about a life of a military bomber, based on some historical facts. The story might not be as interesting as the Necklace but there are some similarities between my writing and the Necklace in terns of different writing techniques, such as imagery, metaphor and symbolism.  In terms of imagery, I wrote "in a fiery explosion, one of the bombs teared through the lead aircraft and igniting flames that illuminated the sky" for my draft writing. This refers to how the bomb damaged, or stroke opponent's fight jet. And in the Necklace, de Maupassant wrote " She thought of silent antechambers hung with Or...

 The second photographer that I am going to research for re-assessment would be William Klein (1926-2022). He was an American-born French photographer, and was well-known for fashion and street photography. According to  Howard Greenberg Gallery (n.d.), Klein did not study photography formally but instead he studied painting at the City College of New York, and he won his first camera in the army when he was stationed in Germany.  TATIANA AND MARIE-ROSE WITH CAMELS, MOROCCO, 1958 The photograph was taken with black-and-white colour negative, as at that time colour films were not widely used. It was taken in a sunny day in Morocco, as we can see the light came behind from the photographer onto the models' body and creating shadows. Klein took this photograph through his eye-level, because we can see that the photo itself was levelled at a low height, probably he was sitting or squatting down his body. The photograph created some contrasts between the female models and the ...

Diane Arbus (1923-1972) was an American photographer, known for photographing "the fringes of the society" (Artnet, 2022). According to Artnet (2022), she was also known for her photographs of children, celebrities and the society, and she committed suicide in 1971, when she was at the height of her career. The image of "Child with a toy grenade in Central Park, NYC, 1962" brought a contrast between the boy, Colin Wood, and the children behind him. The photograph drew my attention when I was looking for a photograph of Arbus' collection "on freak" as I can feel how desperate and anger the boy was. Arbus photographed the boy who was staring at the camera through eye level, for me it created the feeling to the audience that we should immerse to her perspective. I believe that his anger was expressed through his facial expression and his hand gesture, and children at his age were supposed to be happy. And I think that he might face some difficulties at th...