National Geographic Picture

thpicture I decided to depict was a 2 page spread of 9 people from Palestine praying. When you look at the background of the picture you see holes in the walls, wall paper coming off the walls, and exposed cement on th walls. There are 8 elderly people all intensely praying with deep emotion in thier faces. They look defeated as if they are asking God for something better. Among those elderly people stood one boy. He was croutched on the ground like many other of the men were. The only decoration in the whole place was a picture hung up on one of the walls of what looks like baby Jesus. The room is dimly lite making the picture more dramatic.

When I look at this image I feel like the people of Bethleham are suffering from the low economy and are praying for better things to come. The trashed room and dim lights gave it a depressing feel to it. The facial expressions of the praying people looked sad and helpless with a little of hopefulness all mixed in together. I think that everything that I saw in that picture was set up by the camera people. Even the things that the people were wearing was picked out by the National Geographic team. National Geographic has been around a while and they know what needs to be done to keep readers coming back. When they take pictures they think of ways for the pictures to be depressing, but make you think that there is hope and things are going to be better. National Geographic also tries to get you to focus on certain stories rather than others. Most people learn a lot about the world around them from reading National Geographic, but we need to remeber those pictures are photo shoots too. Shekar Deshpande wrote an article called the "Confident Gaze" which was about National Geographic and how honest thier work is. She went on to state, "we forget thatt he photographs and the contexts which they are placed represent a very concious effort by the editors to make the world a happy place and a happy place especially for the Western eye" (2). This means that the editors know what kind of pictures to put in the magazine to get the best results. National Geographic know what kind of articles to write next to the picture so you have a certain emotion while reading it. National Geographic is a great magazine with wonderful pictures and articles, but they dont always have the best intentions for the reader, or even who the article is about, they are always thinking about the magazine.