Book Design: My Designer of Choice

The End Result!

I could not be happier with the end result of this project. It turned out better than expected. The process was very smooth, surprisingly I never had any major issues while constructing this project (except for running out of tape!). The biggest thing I learned from this project is that the process of making a small mock-up can make the final construction of a project flow much easier. I will definitely use that technique in future projects. Also, I feel as if I learned so much about photography not only through the readings assigned, but also through just going out and taking TONS of photos. I really enjoyed this project; I feel as if the extra time and effort I put into it really paid off.

Final Concept Statement: "My concept for this arrangement of photos was to capture my ideal trio of homes. I accomplished this by taking bits and pieces from multiple houses around Lawrence, KS, and compiling them together to get one beautiful, (almost house-sized!) amalgamation of my dream neighborhood street."

A Work in Progress

The final of my process work was compiling the photomontage to my full-scale final piece. I did this by taking my Photoshop mock-up and looking at it to see which pieces I needed. I mounted it on four different pieces of foam core that I taped together, and adhered the pictures using double-sided tape.

Refined Collages

These images were my final two test collages. Both were rendered in Photoshop, but definitely helped me see what pieces and pictures I needed to gain and take to achieve my final work. This step was crucial and played a huge role in the making of my final photomontage. In the end, I decided I wanted to continue onward with the street collage for my final piece.

Test Collages

This was a trial run for composing a tiny photomontage out of 4x6 photos. This technique was to be applied to our large scale final composition at the end of the project.

 

Oh yeah, and here is me on location taking these pictures! #selfie

My Initial Locations to Shoot/Initial Ideas

The Dream Home:

Concept: To create one full picture composed of many different photos and parts of different homes to result in one large picture of a single “dream home” that i would desire. 

Brick Road Homes:

Concept: To create a photomontage of Victorian homes throughout the city of Lawrence, KS. The photographs would be layered to make many different houses look like a few homes on a neighborhood street. 

Senior House: Concept 1

Concept: To create an arranged photograph capturing time and space of this one home. Pictures will be shot in morning, night, and different types of weather to create different pieces for a final photomontage.

Concept 2:

Concept: To create the ideal senior home. I will do this by keeping mostly parts of the senior home as it is, but  also add parts of different houses to the photomontage from houses in surrounding areas.

Ways of Seeing, Episode 1 Video

This episode begins with two men, one resembling a mad professor, walking up to a neoclassical painting and cutting it with a pocket knife. The knife man identifies himself as John Berger, and he goes on to explain his intention to deconstruct the processes of representation, duplication and perception in the age of mechanical reproduction. He argues that, “The meaning of a painting no longer relies on its unique painted surface which it is only possible to see in one place at one time. Its meaning—or a large part of it—has become transmittable”.  These reproductions broaden the potential audience of works of art, but they also encourage the obsession of “authentic” originals.

Even though Berger gives credit to this boosting interest in original works of art, he goes on to say that anyone can reproduce these works for their own purposes. He argues that original images can be manipulated to serve different agendas. He concludes by stating that not all art, such as photography, is being placed on the high pedestal that it should be since there is so much reproduction going on. He says it takes the elitist element out of creating art. This was an interesting read and was a good reminder to always value original works of art, for they were constructed at the highest level of creativity possible and not stolen from anyone. I seem to always be “influenced” or “inspired” by other works, so this was great inspiration to challenge myself to be 100% original. 

Photography Changes Everything, By Marvin Heiferman

This writing by Marvin Heiferman dives into the topic of photography being unruly and hard to define. He talks about photography being incredibly different to every individual, and how to one person it may mean one thing but to another person it is something very different. He gives the example of the food photographer juxtaposed with a fashion photographer—each uses it differently; the food photographer wants to make food look more fresh, while the fashion photographer is trying to unleash a different sort of “hunger” with his viewer. 

Aside from making this first analysis, Heiferman goes on to talk about that photography really does change everything in human’s life. He says it changes what we want—by influencing how we define our needs, and what we desire. It can change what we see by showing us what the human eye cannot; photography can change perspective and challenges us to question our assumptions of what we think we are actually seeing around us. Photography changes who we are, what we do, where we go, and what we remember. Not many people really pay attention to how important this medium of art is in our daily lives, but it really does shape a big way of how we act as a society. Heiferman does a wonderful job in this work by bringing to attention how photography really does change everything.

Masters of Illusion Video

This short film, hosted by James Burke, is a fascinating examination of the concept of how we see things, and specifically how imageries that appear to our eyes to be three-dimensional are rendered convincingly on flat, two dimensional surfaces. In a movie studio special effects lab, Burke shows viewers how visual illusions practiced today actually began during the Renaissance, when painters first mastered the skills of incorporating the idea of depth into paintings. The principle of “linear perspective,” where all lines end to a common vanishing point, sounds complicated, but the examples shown in this documentary make the idea perfectly clear to the viewer. After this, paintings completed before the Renaissance were shown, and it was immediately clear to the viewer that artists who hadn’t mastered perspective drew scenes that appeared incredibly flat on the canvas. But when artists such as Michelangelo practiced using perspective, art suddenly leaped forward. This is an unusual documentary that makes fascinating a subject that most people have never considered, though it relates to things we see everyday. I liked this spin on how art came “to life” and making the making of it three-dimensional.

On Photography, By Susan Sontag

In this writing, Susan Sontag discusses the statement, “To collect photographs is to collect the world”. She states that photographs are experiences captured, and just about anything and everything since the photograph was invented in 1839 has been. She makes note that when one is photographing something, that person is putting himself or herself into a certain relation with the subject matter. It is interesting that she noted this is also how humans today relate to the past to progress to the present. Photographs are the most realistic form of freezing and capturing time in a single document. She also talks about how the photograph is a form of evidence of something that has indeed happened in the past. 

Sontag concludes with saying that the photograph has evolved from a type of documentation to a form of artistic activity, which I personally 100% agree with. It can be used for a variety of things, and is an important skill for all to process. I use photography to document something of importance, a happy time taking place, or for artistic purposes as we have just demonstrated though this assignment. 

A Viewer's Guide to Looking at Photography, By James Brooke

This article was an overview of how to understand photographs by being able to obtain maximum pleasure and insight from viewing them. This work begins with stating that no picture can be properly analyzed in under 5 minutes. Most require a lot of time to analyze to grasp their whole meaning. When looking at photos, Brooke states that it is best to free the mind of any past prejudices about the work, and look at it as if you’ve never encountered such a thing before—and gain your own thoughts regarding the photograph by doing so. He also notes to not overlook the title, because that also fuels for the meaning of the picture. He goes on to talk about every little thing in the picture having a meaning, from textures, shape, lights, shadows, to time. To take all of these into account will help the viewer gain a better, more full, understanding of that the image is really saying. 

This was a very in-depth writing explaining every single little detail that goes into the making of a photograph. Though I have only briefly touched on the many topics James T. Brooke discussed within his writing, I feel as if I have a better understanding of how to view photography, what to look for, and how to interpret it. This writing was worth reading that I can definitely use and apply to many things throughout my time in (and after) design school.

An Overview of the Project: Photography as documentation

For this project, myself, as well as my class, was given the assignment of constructing a   of a person or place over an extended period of time. We were to build an understanding of photography’s unique relationship with time and location by intentionally compressing, extending, and altering both. By the end of this project we were to be able to grasp a better understanding of how a three-dimensional space can be rendered on a two-dimensional plane and how it relates to perspective.

To gain a better understanding for photography, we were also given the task to read and study multiple writings  and videos pertaining to photography to further increase our knowledge of the art.