Blog 23: HONY Observation/Inferences Chart

Observations	Inferences
Speaker: Brandon Stanton, a photographer young risk-taker, spontaneous takes portraits and talks with his subjects sometimes takes pictures without face	Has traits of an artist Interested in both physical appearance and personality He respects each person’s preferences
Occassion: Tumblr blog, Facebook, and book	Online social media tends to publicize information to a wide range of people. Allows open discussion about photographs.
Audience: anyone who has Facebook or Tumblr	The reactions to the pictures are overall positive. Commenters sympathize with the pictures or support the stories. May raise interesting discussions from diverse viewpoints.
Purpose: Take pictures that make him and his audience happy	He connects on a personal level with his audience. Wants to make people aware of different stories Change how humans see life/places
Subject(s): People who are oftentimes overlooked What Stanton considers beautiful, cute, or interesting Regular “street people” People posing	Whether or not something is beautiful is a matter of perception. View the overlooked people from a new angle. People can relate to their experiences.
Tone: varies among photographs Pitiful Humorous Heartwarming	Each subject has different stories/personalities leading to these nuances Different tones catch audience’s attention (breaks monotony)

The aspects of Humans of New York that fascinate me are the clothes the people wear, the backgrounds of the photographs, and the short stories/captions on the bottom of each one.  The diversity of styles, locations, and records of their personal accounts/statements somehow catches my attention. If I am to write a rhetorical analysis about HONY, perhaps I may analyze the relationship between the photos and the stories or explore how the photographer, Brandon Stanton uses the different mediums to appeal to his huge fan base on social media.