I love photography how can I incorporate that into a term paper about ancient greek culture?

Question

We have to write a term paper how how our career goal(mine is photography) relates to ancient history. I am really struggling with this.

Answer 1

Two words: golden mean.

The Greeks used it in architecture. It is basically the ratio (1.681 if I recall) of length to height that seems to "make sense" to man and nature. It also comes up often in nature in such things as the pattern of seeds in a sunflower head and the chambers of a nautilus shell. The measurements of the human body match it as well, the length of the second knuckle of the human hand is about 1.681 more than the first knuckle, and the third about the same more than the second knuckle, extending through the arm to the torso. The number is known, I believe, as "phi" and also as the Fibonacci sequence. You saw it in the DaVinci code, more so in the book than the movie. I would imagine that in composing a photograph the same ideas of proportion could be used.

Answer 2

Photographying ruins was extremely popular with the invention of the camera. Take a look at some of these examples:

http://www.getty.edu/research/conducting_research/digitized_collections/photography_greece/index.html
http://chnm.gmu.edu/worldhistorysources/r/238/whm.html

The Getty Museum in Los Angeles had a good collection in this genre--check with them for more information.

Answer 3

Talk about how the Greeks often studied optics (they came up with using a pinhole to amplify an image on a wall, I believe).

http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/HistTopics/Light_1.html

Answer 4

If you have been to Greece then use your pictures and explain what the picture is of and how the greeks used it, then go on to explain why you used that place as well as the postioning of the pictures and lighting.