Final Spreads

Here are my final spreads for my book which include the book jacket, end page, title page, table of contents and my two double page spreads. Enjoy!

Book Jackets and End Pages

Here are the full book jackets and two end page designs.

Revisions

These are revisions from critique from classmates and my professor. The table of contents do not have the color hue/overcast that they do on here, something went wonky when uploading them on here.

Title Pages, Table of Contents, Bios and a Nifty Publications Logo

Possible Final Layout

I designed this layout after talking with my group and progressively working in class and asking opinions. This is what I have so far, and I dig it.

Revised Layouts

Layout 1

Layout 2

Project 4: Creating a Book

YAY FINAL PROJECT!!!

Our final project for BDS 102 is creating a book. For this book we were asked to choose an artist, from our field or not, and write up an essay of sorts about them. From there we created three sets of two double page spreads including work from our artist. I chose Daido Moriyama as my artist, he is a street photographer. I recently did a project in my photo media 101 class over him and have grown to love his work.

Today in class we critiqued each others spreads and figured out what else we need to design, along with getting in our groups and deciding on a book title and where things will go in the book. I'm pretty excited because I am paired up with three other photographer students who chose photographers as well, so we get our very own book of photographers. Our book is called "The Photo Book," simple and to the point because we think that our photographers are all fairly minimal and simple. The other photographers in our book are Cindy Sherman, Diane Arbus, and Annie Leibovitz.

Layout 1

Layout 2

Layout 3

Collaging

These are photos I took the other day in class while I was working on a way to layout my collage. The main bunch of the set was an idea I had with Margie to kind of have pictures of Gus sleeping or looking innocent in a grid like form and then have a place that was frantic and had a lot of overlay and was him playing.

After showing this to Margie again, up on the wall and getting some feedback from other classmates and the TA we decided to have more space between things and to have more of a narrative.

So this is my final idea and what I am working on.

An Idea

I had been talking with Margie about how I should present my collage of my cat Gus. She had an idea of taking close up photos of my cat and kind of reconstructing that as a collage to make a bigger version of him. I thought that would be totally awesome, but then I never got around to taking those pictures. 

So then I thought, well what if I had the silhouette of a cat and put the collage of Gus into that. Have the overall outline as the cat. 

So I tried that and got some feedback from classmates and it was a good idea but Margie brought up that you look at the overall thing, you see the cat silhouette when I'm wanting you to see the cat in the photos. So it was back to the drawing board.

"Photography Changes Everything" by Marvin Heiferman Reflection

What I got from Marvin Heiferman's article is the title, exactly. Ironic ay?

He talked about how photographs have changed, the meaning behind them, the way we take photographs, the things we use photographs for, everything about them, and it all has changed. Even in my 22 years, well I'll say like 12 because I was young before and hardly knew anything but that's beside the point, photography has changed so much in my time. My first real camera was a Minolta 3, it was a film camera and I loved it. I still love it, I miss film. Shooting film is something kind of magical that not a lot of the kids of today will really understand. Then I moved up to digital about two years ago when my mom bought me my Canon Rebel T3. It's my baby. And as much as I love digital, it's something new and different, even still.

Now-a-days everyone can be a photographer though. You don't have to have a big, fancy camera to be a "photographer" and that kind of pisses me off. Just because you have a camera on your phone and post selfies and pictures of sunsets with filters on your Instagram account does not make you a photographer, it makes you a "photographer." By that I mean, yeah you take the time to snap a picture of something you like but is it worthy? Is it worthy of being shown in the Smithsonian or MoMa? I mean, we are kind of getting to that age where yeah that could happen if it's a compelling series or something but, I still think it's just a bunch of baloney.

And Heiferman talks about this in the article, talking about the changing of the medium and the meanings of photographs. To me, I love the old way, I love film and Polaroids. And that will always be a form of photography but it might start to get over shadowed by the Insta-famous generation we live in.

Heiferman also makes a point about other kinds of photographers and the differences in what makes a good photograph. And it's a valid point. Not only does everyone see something differently when they look at a photograph, but depending on your background or your occupation you can see photographs differently too. He mentioned being asked to sit in on a photography talk at the Smithsonian with others to talk about it and was surrounded by a geographer, an astrophysicist, a former director of a major art museum and an information analyst for the CIA. Weird stuff, but they all have to look at photographs and look at them differently because of their profession and what they are needing to look for or are looking at.

Photography is a weird thing. I dig it.

Collage Progression

Here are the two collages that I chose to do more with over break. At the end of class today, with the help of my peers, I chose to continue on to the final project with my photos of Gus, my cat. It will be executed differently than I did here. I will have a larger board and have little sections of collage clusters, possibly in a grid like form and have photos of him moving around my apartment as transition photos.

My Cat Gus

Chi O Fountain

Spencer Art Museum Visit

Today in my BDS 102 class we visited the Spencer Museum of Art on campus. We weren't looking at the galleries set up but rather photos in a room that our professor had the staff get out for us to look at the in some way connected with our current project; photo collage.

Right as I walked in I was intrigued by a piece called "12 Drive-Ins." Or at least I'm pretty sure that's what it was called, I'm starting to wish that I would have taken notes on the pieces that I liked haha. Anyways, these images drew me in because I loved how structured and grid like, yet simple it all was. It was all a kind of collage in a very geometric kind of way and I love it.

There was also some stop motion photos that I really liked as well, I think they play well with out project too. A lot of things I am doing, taking photos of my cat at least, deals with catching him in motion some times.

I also liked the collage/montage photos of the city one artist did. Not so much the "City Shell," although it was intriguing, but the other one really worked well with the project and had fun angles that drew in the viewer.

I also loved that Mark Klett was in the photos that we looked at. I've been seeing a lot of his work lately in other classes as well and I love how his idea of recreating photography can work with just about anything. I also just love the images and landscapes that he captured with that project.

Overall I think the visit was kind of worth the time and effort. It sparked some ideas, but it's more things that I think I'll do with later projects or things just on my own than for this project. I did like seeing other photographers though, that was very fun and interesting. You learn something new everyday, and today I learned that Mark Klett will be speaking on campus the day after my birthday for Hallmark and I'm pretty excited. GO PHOTOGRAPHY!!!

Project 3 - Photo Collage

I am SUPER PSYCHED about this project! FINALLY something for my major that I can kick ass at! Well hopfully haha! I have so many crazy ideas going for this project, I might be a little too ambitious. But hey, it's go big or go home!

For this project we are to show time in some way using photos and making them into a collage with numerous photos. I instantly got a ton of ideas and once I started getting really ambitious there came even more.

Some of my ideas are the Chi O fountain and Jayhawk Boulevard, downtown Lawrence, Clinton Lake, hookah, and SKC game (going to one over spring break).

And then I started thinking outside the box. I was inspired by the Hallmark Lecturer we had last Thursday by Matt Shlian. He is a paper engineer so he folds paper. I saw one of his first pieces and was instantly inspired. What if I cut slits in a printed photo and folded them to create a 3D effect? From there I started thinking about doing buildings and having 3D effects on the edges on a few areas. A friend in my class then suggested what if I took pictures of someone folding a piece of paper and making something our of paper and the image is then slit and folded to mimic that work. IT WOULD BE SO COOL!

Then I started thinking about shooting a hallway with doors and maybe a couple of the doors are 3D and they have a little pocket that then holds a picture of the inside of that room.

My mind is going bonkers over this project and I love it.

For homework we were to take photos of a couple of our ideas and put together a mock up of a collage with a few photos. Here is what I came up with. You'll notice I have two ideas that aren't listed above as initial ideas that I had. I don't have a vehicle or an easy way to get to downtown or Clinton Lake so I improvised and came up with two other ideas. One is looking out my window in my living room and capturing day and night with the different things that show up in the window. The other is just my cat Gus and his shenanigans and the different things he does throughout the day.

Masters of Illusion Reflection

While watching the Masters of Illusion video I was very intrigued. I've always loved perspective, it's one of my favorite elements to use in photography, but I never really knew about everyone who started up the idea of perspective and the way we see things in art.

I was familiar with Da Vinci and Rafael the most, but most of the others, especially before their time, I had never heard of. But I am so glad with the brilliance that they had in that time and what they have created through new minds in their far future, and what can still be done in our future thanks to their minds. 

Shadowing is a funny thing. You see a shadow and see what's happening but don't truly understand it. When you actually try to achieve this effect through sketching, it's something completely new. I know that this was a fun part of Drawing for Design, a class I took last semester with Margie. I had always loved pictures and paintings that incorporate perspective and shadow and wanted to know how I could achieve that. I wasn't great at it in class, and still am not so great, but if I were to keep trying and look back to the great minds of the past, I could perfect the illusion. 

All in all the video really got me to thinking about everything in art and how everything has unique perspective elements and shadowing. It all just depends on how we see it.

Final Product of Project 2

Where were we...

Once I had figured out what my design would be for my box it was time to find some scrap wood and practice my cuts, buy my wood for the final product and glue it and then finish the project. For the first week and half or so I was broke and unable to buy my wood, leaving me only a week to finish all of it, with the cutting, the gluing, the sanding and adding the coat of finish to it. So until then I made a practice box out of scrap wood.

My practice box went extremely well. Before cutting I asked Cotter and Margie their thoughts and how I should go about cutting my box since it was almost two boxes. Once I started cutting it all came pretty easy to me. Next thing I knew it was all done.

Once I bought my wood for the final product and got it glued up and ready to cut I was a little anxious and nervous, but shook it off and started cutting. I thought I was doing great, and then I realized I did the cuts out of order, leaving me with too small of pieces to fit together and hold my box together the correct way.

In the end I decided my practice box looked good and would be my final product. And I have to say, I am pretty proud of it, even if it is a little shabby and imperfect. It's perfect to me, especially considering I have NEVER used a band saw in my life. I am proud of myself no matter what anyone else thinks about my box. 

The (somewhat) Finished Product

I realized, when it was a little too late, that I only posted once about my vessel project for project two. So here is me playing catch up and informing you about what all went down with my vessel.

After the day of cutting with Cotter it was time to sketch. I quickly had ideas for one item that I was really interested in creating a box for, my flash drives and my external hard drive. I had other ideas for items to go into boxes too like my cards and ID's, pens and pencils and my Ipad mini. But none of them really struck me as fun or gave me as many ideas as my flash drives and external hard drive did. 

After the sketches came prototypes. I went to work on my prototypes quick and was pretty impressed with myself, even though they really weren't that great, but they got the point across. But once I brought them into class everyone kind of had the same thing to say about mine. They are just boxes, nothing big and fancy to them. No organic shapes. All designs that don't have to be done on a band saw, when that's what we should be designing for. Even though they were kind of fun, with sliding sides for openings and one that looked like a robot, they were just an ordinary box. So it was back to the drawing board.

I decided to make a word map and play off the flash drive idea. I looked at my sketches and just thought of things that you associate with flash drives. Computers, technology, usb ports, etc. And then I saw it. I looked at the shape and design of one of my flash drives. It was right in front of me the entire time. A simple rounded box with a curved line in the middle. That would be my box design.

To try and not make this incredibly long, since I still need to add some photos, I'll post the rest of the project on a new post. :)