Once Upon a Time...

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Rhetorical Analysis of the TED Talk, "Frans Lanting: The story of life in photographs":

In this TED Talk, the speaker, Frans Lanting is trying to share, with his audience, a summary of the story of life through pictures. I believe his goal is not to persuade the audience of anything, but rather just help them to visualize the story of how life came to be. Frans, a National Geographic photographer starts off his Talk by telling the audience a little bit about why he decided to take on this "personal [photography] journey" five years ago. Although he shares that it was the hardest thing he has ever attempted and he felt like backing out several times, he had some revelations as well. Frans went down to a remote lagoon in Australia, the only place in which stromatolites -- "the first living things to capture photosynthesis" -- still occur today, in hopes of seeing the world as it was three billion years ago. He shares that "going down there was like entering a time capsule" and he "came out with a different sense of" himself in time. Frans then goes into the story of life, beginning with how, in space, matter was condensed into spheres, which eventually created Earth, then how oceans were created. Mud and minerals became substrate and bacteria led to living structures, such as stromatolites, which were first to exhale oxygen and change the atmosphere forever. Membranes formed from meteorites and eventually more complex forms, that could see and move began to emerge. From there, species began to appear and develop from marine life to amphibians to birds and plants. Frans describes how the event of an asteroid, which demolished many types of creatures, led to the creation of a new world filled with mammals, including humans. He introduces the connection of humans to nature with our blood veins mimicking courses of rivers around the world and our brains replicating a drainage of a tidal marsh. Frans ends his Talk by saying that "Earth is alive" and we can imagine and shape where we go next in our journey.

The speaker, Frans Lanting gets his point of informing the audience of how life came into existence across by showing his pictures on the screen while sharing the story of life. He utilizes Pathos the most during this TED Talk, but examples of Ethos and Logos are also apparent.
Pathos: Frans is trying to play on the audience's emotions by saying how difficult this project was for him to do. By telling the audience that he wants to share one of his revelations with them, they feel as though they are fortunate and one of the few people that he is sharing his experience with. He also displays his photographs on a screen, which helps the audience understand what he is trying to explain to them.
Ethos: In the beginning, Frans mentions that he is National Geographic nature photographer and by doing this, his intention is to prove his authority. However, besides this title, he doesn't really give any more information on how he knows the story of life. I think it seems more credible to the audience because of his use of his pictures. In my opinion, the audience definitely should look up the story of life from a more credible source to make sure Fran's story is valid.
Logos: Frans backed up his Talk with his personal information in the beginning and the pictures that he took. He mentions where he went to take the pictures and what his reasoning behind his journey was. He used scientific words that helped the audience believe in the story he was telling (whether all of the facts were right or not). The structure that Frans used in his presentation was very smart because it was in chronological order and was easy for the audience to understand.

I picked this TED Talk because I have always been interested in photography and I am amazed that a whole story (and multiple interpretations of a story) can be told by just looking at a picture. In this case, when a lot of photographs were paired together to create a series that was then paired with a powerful story, the feeling I received from it was complete awe-struck. The story and the photographs both benefited from being presented together. I think this Talk could relate to this next unit we are going into about new discoveries and why and how certain things have come about, like the cloning in the book, Never Let Me Go. By Frans mentioning at the end that it is basically up to us where we go from here, it also relates to The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde with the newly improving and expanding scientific field.