Ethical Reasoning
Visual Literacy helped me understand different ethical perspectives because it made me think of what reasons why people do what they do and what effects it can have on them afterwards. For example, the man who took the photo of the starving Ugandan child which the looming vulture in the back. From just looking at the picture a person may criticize him for being selfish for taking such a picture the picture is bigger than that. He did not just take the picture for the Pulitzer prize, the premise of was to expose the the conditions of those areas to inform people. He also did not leave the child all alone, ten feet away there were food and people standing by.
The assignment the enhanced my ethical self-awareness was the Pulitzer Prize photo and the film camera technique presentation. The Pulitzer Prize photo makes me question when it is appropriate to engage in certain activities. Some of the photographs show very tragic and horrific images that the photographers had to make a conscious decision to take the photo and that makes me think of things that I may do and if it is an ethical thing to do. The film technique project changed the way I see movies and television. When I watch movies, I can recognize the way the movie creators used different camera techniques to shape the way people perceive the movie and how it attracts them.
Ways I was able to evaluate different ethical perspectives was when I participated in group projects. The two projects that saw the most difference was the short film project and the photo essay project. The short film project showed how all our ideas had to come together to create a movie plot. All of us think differently and I had to learn to accept different ideas that other team members had so we can come up with a plot that we all agreed would work. For the photo essay, my team had the word go and thinking about what types of pictures we should take, I realized that for word, object, or anything it can have multiple meanings and can mean different things to different people.
I am not sure if this would fit the definition of ethical, but for this semester I have always made conscious decisions for every class, every assignment, and everything I do because I want people to be able to perceive me in a certain way. I always make sure that in anything I do, I convey certain messages about myself . For example, when I am doing a presentation I may choose to use certain words and stand a certain way because I want people to perceive me as intelligent confident. Apply ethics to my life has important to me because it the decisions I make not only affect me but also the people around.