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.

Think Hockney

Today in class we watched a video on David Hockney and the way his visions become a reality in a final product. All I could think the entire time was, I love the way he thinks and I love the way he works.

He went through the motions of deciding on what to photograph, and thought about it for a long period of time. Slowly making his way to finally photographing the event, and filming the event to show a difference in photo and video. He then, because of the time he was doing this, had to take the film to a one-hour photo service to develop his film. Sadly they messed up two rolls, but hey it happens. I know it happened to me a couple times when I was first getting into photography, a roll of film gets messed up and you move on. He did great at moving on. He worked with what he had. Even a note left by the man who developed the film and messed up the two rolls he incorporated into the final project. 

Overall, like I said in the beginning, I absolutely love the way he thinks about his subjects. I want to think more like Hockney. I like that he used to think, exhibitions of photos weren't a big deal. Then did an experiment with a grid of Polaroids and got inspired. A new way of thinking of photography. Creating a scene with not just one photo but multiple photos with each other. Photos that don't just show a person in one perspective or one emotion but multiple emotions. 

Today, I am very much feeling inspired by David Hockney.

Here is the link to the video that we watched in class today. Enjoy!

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!!!