Self Reflection on Own Literacies Noticeboard by

Digital Literacy

davidharrhy99 — 2025-01-25 17:16:09 UTC

Digital literacy occurs through the usage of a digital camera. This is a lone activity, even when photographing other people, the operation of the camera lays solely on myself. There is some written text, on buttons as well as on the screen, it is written with as few words as possible, though there is also use of visual language such as symbols and graphs.

I will use this digital literacy multiple times a day, whenever I decide to photograph something. I do need to follow certain rules; ensuring that I am recording the images as a certain file type - RAW - or I won't be able to use them later. I need to ensure that I have a correctly formatted SD card inside the camera too. Though there are certain creative freedoms when it comes to how I process the image for different expressions, such as in black & white or colour.

Written Literacy

davidharrhy99 — 2025-01-25 18:27:41 UTC

My usage of written literacy has been inspired a lot by my university studies, as well as visits to art galleries. It is more sporadic and less frequent than my use of digital literacy. I will write about the concepts of my images to hone how I make them. I write in a formal way with full sentences with a structure that uses conceptual vocabulary in the same vein as professional artists’ work. Despite this I can write in whatever way I want, typically beginning with more informal note making that I will make when I am making imagery or when an idea springs to mind from something I have been reading about. When I am at home, I will bring these notes together and collate them into a more formal piece of writing by myself. I am confident in my usage of this type of writing, though understand it is not good enough for professional use. A lot of my writing in this context is heavily reliant on English being my first language and me being fortunate enough to have progressed through academia, as such there is a link to more middle-class identities through this literacy, which reoccurs throughout multiple other activities in this noticeboard.

Numeracy

davidharrhy99 — 2025-01-25 18:58:08 UTC

When making photographs I need to be aware of how to expose properly using the ISO, shutter speed and aperture. These functions all use numeracy to make the image lighter or darker. I am largely the sole participant in this but when I am taking photographs of someone else, this process, which can be time consuming, will affect them. This is something I will engage with whenever I take an image - meaning many times a day. There is specialist vocabulary associated with the numeracy involved and specialist knowledge required to understand how the three different numerical values interact with one another that I have learned through my education as a photography student. Despite there being set rules to how these interact with each other they allow for a lot of creativity with which I have the power to alter them to make images look different, despite a slight reliance on the amount of light present in the place I am making these images.

Reading

davidharrhy99 — 2025-01-25 20:27:56 UTC

Reading when making photographic images mostly doesn't consist of reading words. That exists to some extent, but visual literacy, which is essentially the same as reading literacy, is essential. It is something I do every day, even when I am not physically holding a camera, I will look at something and imagine its effectiveness as an image, especially when comparing it to my written concepts of photography. This visual reading can be applied further in images I have taken, sometimes immediately after. The power belongs to me solely in the reading of the images though, I do have to try to perceive what others may think. Ultimately, I have full creativity over reading the images and if I can justify what I believe I have read to be successful, it is successful. This is learned through university, but it is learned to further ones intrinsic emotional and expressive literacies, as is described by the website photo pedagogy.

Numeracy

davidharrhy99 — 2025-01-25 21:33:36 UTC

When looking at others’ photography, sometimes I must purchase photobooks to access them. They can be expensive, so I have to use websites that allow me to compare prices or look for damaged versions of books that discounted. That allows for freedom in things like bartering or bidding, but ultimately, I do have to consider my budget before I purchase something. This is a form of numeracy as social practice, my use of numeracy in this context is different to in a classroom doing equations, as explained by Oughton (2018). This budgeting is something I would argue I am still learning but began to learn when I turned 16 and first had a job and this improved as I got older and especially when I went to university and moved out for the first time and had other things I needed to pay for. Power can also lie in the hands of other buyers in a bidding scenario, at which point I need to know when to give up, and the seller in a bartering scenario.

Digital Literacy

davidharrhy99 — 2025-01-25 22:18:11 UTC

When looking for inspiration in other people’s photography, I do this by using Instagram to look at what people have published. I have been learning how to use digital literacy in this context since I was quite a young teenager and my relationship with it has changed a lot. Initially my usage of social media was very much as what David White (2014) referred to as a ‘personal resident’ in how I accessed this. I have developed, as an adult and as a photographer into something less resident and less personal, now representing my photography rather than my own personal life, in ways that has become somewhat institutional. This is not a sole activity and is entirely dependent on the activities of others online for me to consume their media to like or to comment and receive replies. This digital literacy also occurs in my scouring of photographic news websites and online stores for photobooks.

Reading

davidharrhy99 — 2025-01-26 00:44:28 UTC

Reading occurs in many ways when researching other photographers. Such as looking at photographs made by other people – similarly to how I read my own - via Instagram, photobooks and reading news articles online. There is much more wrriten word in this activity than making photographs especially within artist’s captions and prefaces. In this context, there is a lot more white, male and middleclass voices present and as such I try to consume work made by more diverse voices, as I would feel uncomfortable to consume things in an echo chamber. In this sense I get to be creative in what I look at. I am the one with the power in this context with my right to choose, though I need to understand the power that belongs to the establishment in whosevoices are made easier to hear. I do this every day; I enjoy looking at other people’s photography and make sure that I do so in a way that is varied and interesting.

Writing

davidharrhy99 — 2025-01-26 00:49:53 UTC

As I have mentioned before, writing takes place in this mostly from writing comments on Instagram. This is very informal writing, though not entirely personal in the way that my digital footprint will be represented, as per David White’s scale, though at times, this will turn into more extended discussions in direct messages, this happens especially when it comes to using my Instagram to message people I know enquiring about certain photographers who I would like to research but do not fully remember the names of. In this application, the private messages are much more personal, but also act more as a visitor as it does not leave a lasting effect on my Instagram page that represents me as a photographer.

Digital Literacy

davidharrhy99 — 2025-01-26 02:09:13 UTC

Digital literacy is essential in photo editing in the 21^st century. While analogue photo editing is still practiced the way in which I edit is with digital programmes. These require quite a bit of specialist knowledge, both for vocabulary used as well as the digital literacy itself. Alongside this there also exists a lot of symbols that one needs to understand before they can be comfortable using the programme. I am still not entirely confident with my literateness regarding this despite almost a decade of use.

I do this alone and at home and it is something I only really do once a week. It is something that I have learned mostly through college and university, being taught by trained practitioners. However, there is a lot of online tutorials that I have also used to help me when I have needed them, in this case I am interacting with these things as a personal visitor, I do not leave any trace of myself in these tutorials.

There is a lot of creativity in what you can do with photo editing, despite that, there are rules within the industry that are good practise to follow and so I keep my creativity within these parameters.

Numeracy

davidharrhy99 — 2025-01-26 02:18:58 UTC

In photo editing numeracy shows up in a lot of places, which I remember being quite daunting when I first began to learn how to edit in my teenages. But the numberacy is really important and is also quite intuitive once one begins to understand its use. It incorporates numeracy in multiple ways, from resizing images, which is typically in centimetres and millimetres in photographs, to looking at the intensity of colour values and exposure. It is at its most intuitive with things like sizing, where it being introduced to me in a more physical way, rather than the more arbitrary seeming application of it in things like colour intensities, made it more familiar and as such introduced numeracy in something I wasn’t expecting it “in contexts which allow them to be sustained by human daily sense” (Carraher et al., 1985)
Numeracy is also used in the levels and curve tools, both are used for exposure and contrast but provide a visual representation of how the light and contrast is being represented in the image. This way of interpreting data via a graph is something that I realise I now consume naturally, other than learning this through numeracy in school, it is something that I find myself often consuming in news articles but also especially through photo editing. It’s purpose of visualising the minutiae of exposure helps me follow the rules of photo editing more closely than I can simply my looking at the image itself and as such is infinitely useful.