Up and down
February 12, 2008 | Filed Under Project 1 : Panorama | Leave a Comment
Atleast once a day I take the elevator at North Hall. Overtime, that adds up to a lot of time spent on the elevator. Usually, the trips are pretty boring, but occasionally you run into someone who just makes those 20 seconds so uncomfortable or frustrating that it seems to last forever.
My annotation for the project kind of poked fun at elevator etiquette. The annotation helped bring my message to life; because without it, the elevator is just four stainless steel walls.
It was actually difficult to shoot pictures of the elevator because it is sucha a small space. At first, I tried moving the camera around to try and make the space feel bigger, but that did not translate into a panorama well. I ended up havingto re-shoot five or six times to finally get everything to line up right.
Animals!
February 11, 2008 | Filed Under Project 1 : Panorama | Leave a Comment
My panorama documents the walk up the hill in Pullen Park from the parking lot to school. I chose to annotate it with vector art that shows some of the things I think about on that walk that I make everyday. I used plain white outlines for the human side of nature and then white filled animals for the more expected and conventional view of what nature should be. I wanted the images to be totally sterile and almost to the point of being generic to contrast with my subject matter, nature, which most people think of as this organic, unique setting full of bright colors and interesting patterns and shapes. By separating my annotations from the background like this I hoped to show that these were my thoughts, the things I imagine, and not what is actually there. I wanted this division to be clear and I think I did that well by avoiding color and actual involvement with the setting.
My greatest difficulty with this project was making the vector art interact with the background without imposing itself into the environment too much. I wanted it to appear like they were there but keep it clear that they were actually in my head. In many of my original iterations I just had plain white line art sitting on top of the photo, and that wasn’t working at all. So I added the animals to interact with the line art and a bar running through the center to organize my text and separate the background image. These two things combined made the whole thing feel a lot more like a what I was going for and not just some cars hovering in space in front of a photo.
All in all, I think this project really forced me to think about how my type, image, and photography interacted with each-other to create a coherent story. It was nice to have some freedom in my choices but a definite goal that had to be reached. This allowed me to really play with my ideas and come up with something I was interested in and was my own personal style.
Don’t look back…
February 11, 2008 | Filed Under Project 1 : Panorama | Leave a Comment
I chose to use the panarama to show my daily journey through the Brooks courtyard to get back to my dorm at night. This part of my walk is particulary interesting (or particularly frightening) because there are trees and and dark corners every way you look. The opposite of a leisurely walk I always find myself speedwalking as I walk past the egg, my eyes wide open and looking all around, anticipating the moment when I’ll close the door behind me, finally in my room. I can’t help feeling like there’s something or someone following close behind the whole walk home. Taking photos of my surroundings through this dark path using only available light I tried to create that sense of darknees/creepiness. I feel that the panarama and stitching the night photos helped to create this dark empty space, but my photos can’t pull off the idea of paranoia and anticipation all on their own. This is where annotation became a very important factor in my panorama.
Annotation really helped me in convey the my delusional paranoia and anticipation to get home. I used the “scary” type to show both my path and thoughts that I have in my head while walking. I also have the ticking digital time throughout my path. Annotation was such an important factor and allowed me another option for conveying my message besides relying on the photos themselves.
I’m glad that with this project I didn’t really know a lot about annotation and what we were going to do with it until I was halfway into the project. It really helped me to be able to really focus on the photography of the space for a while before using the annotation to bring the message to a new level.
“You just wanted to look at yourself the whole time you were doing your project.”
February 10, 2008 | Filed Under Project 1 : Panorama | Leave a Comment
When I first recieved this assignment, I knew that I really needed to step back and look at a space where I find myself all the time on campus, but never really notice the specific details of the space. So I decided to keep track of my random journeys through campus throughout the days of the week. I found myself walking down Case in front of Reynolds Gym more than a few times, a spot that I don’t ever associate with being on campus. Therefore, I wanted the space I had available on the panorama to act as a time line for all of the activities I could be seen doing walking across this 40 ft stretch of campus at any given time of the day. The big idea I wanted to stress concerning the space my panorama covered was the amount of activity happening in such a small part of campus throughout the day. I wanted to isolate a busy space and place myself into the situation.
In my case, I felt as if my annotation suffered and didn’t really do much to help illustrate my idea throughout the panorama. I spent a lot of time trying to line up the pictures and played with a lot of the details of the pictures to try and make the panorama work. When it came to the annotation, I never really had a solid direction to go, none of my ideas were quite working. Therefore, I felt as if my annotation was the weaker part of the panorama, as far as conveying a message goes.
As my project evolved, the ideas that went into my project evolved as well. I originally wanted to do a panorama involving just the activity of skateboarding, but as I progressed through the work, I realized that I wanted to put myself into one space as various characters participating in various activities as opposed to just one character participating in one activity. This was the idea I initially ran with. I began trying to add various levels of information on the panorama through art direction in the photoshoots and my attempt at annotation of the panorama. My work is all about building layers on top of a solid idea.
A day on the Miller Fields: Through the eyes of my club ultimate frisbee team
February 10, 2008 | Filed Under Project 1 : Panorama | Leave a Comment
For my panorama, my space was the Miller Fields where my club ultimate team practices. Initially, my interpretation of this “space” was based solely on what it looked like. But by working on my panorama, I realized that the idea of space really depends on what happens in the space and who uses it. The intrinsic value of the space is defined by its function as space and changes from person to person. For instance, to me the Miller Fields is where I practice frisbee and I think of it as my team’s field. But to other club teams or gym classes, the space holds a different meaning. As I realized this, I proceeded to change my point A to point B concept into “a day on the Miller Fields,” and I only showed the side of the field my team uses; the space that holds value to us. For the annotation, I broke up the field with field lines to portray the different ways in which my team uses the field. I created a simple system by using dotted lines and headlines to label the important parts of the field, players, or specific memories. I wanted to keep the text to short phrases also because I feel like the people and actions tell just as much of my story. I chose to label everything in terms of first person, using the word “our” to include my teammates. Overall my annotation helped in conveying my message because I know from an outside perspective, most people don’t understand frisbee or the special value the Miller Fields hold to my team. I wanted to connect with the audience by including items and concepts that they could relate to (drills, teamwork, hardwork, etc) without actually teaching them the game of ultimate frisbee It helped me to notice that the “little things” that I consider common are what define the space and by bringing attention to them, my message becomes clearer.
When I first took pictures, I walked the entire length of the field and took scenery pictures. I shot pictures in the morning and afternoon, most of the times when either nobody was using the field, or people other than my team were using it. But, when I took pictures during our practice time, I noticed a difference. During practice, there was more to take pictures of and more of a story to capture; it was then that I found my purpose. Through this experience I changed my focus to a day on the Miller Fields through the eyes of the frisbee team. I proceeded to put the other club teams in the background of my panorama as well as make the background black and white. By doing this I was able to bring attention to my team and all the additions I made in order to personalize the space. I enjoyed this project because it helped me take a vast space and narrow it down and focus on the part that holds intrinsic value to my team. As I added more elements to the field, I learned that my team makes the space what it is. I also learned that a space is interpreted differently depending on who you are and how you look at it. I struggled a lot throughout this project. It took me a while to find a focus as well as avoid making everything look as if it was blended together. Once I was consumed in the project, I kept thinking of ideas and more aspects of the space came to my attention, but I had to keep my main message in mind and contain my ideas. Eventually, I was able to give my panorama the “frisbee-feeling” I wanted and I was happy with how my message was conveyed in the final product.
A Tale of two desks
February 10, 2008 | Filed Under Project 1 : Panorama | Leave a Comment
You can usually find me in one of two locations…in front of my desk in studio or in front of my desk in my dorm room. I spend so much time in these two locations it only seemed fitting to concentrate on them for my panorama.
My journey was definitely more of a conceptual journey between these two locations. I took pictures of both of my desks from the perspective of sitting in front of them. This allows for the viewer to see exactly the same things I see when I am sitting at my desks.
I then focused on three key elements at both locations. These elements are found inside the circles and call out details that I feel are important to focus on. These details are things that I feel overlap in meaning on both of my desks…meaning they have the same basic use but in different locations and for different reasons. For example, my two different computers. My computer in studio is used for school work and my computer in my dorm is used for entertainment purposes. I annotated these details by making a structured list of uses for each one. This allowed me to focus on the similarities and the differences of each desk in a way that I am familiar with myself.
My process was pretty structured for this project. I started with my two sets of photos and then divided the space into two quadrants. I played with the visual language through color and shapes and used the repetition of three to unite everything. I knew I wanted my written annotation to be in list form because I make so many to do lists. I feel like I need to add one my step to my process, which is to juxtapose the structured elements with elements that are not structured to really portray my life in front of my desks.
Secret Lives of the Neighborhood.
February 10, 2008 | Filed Under Project 1 : Panorama | Leave a Comment
My Panorama was of the street where my house is located. It was inspired from my long walks home as I travel back from class everyday. During this time I have about 20 minutes of silence where I just observe my surroundings and my neighborhood. This walk home that I have been doing for the last couple of months really had me ready for this project. My roommates and I would always make jokes about our neighbors and make assumptions about what kind of people they were. For example, our neighbor next to our duplex has very weird tendencies of leaving at 3 am, even though he is about 80 years old and walks with a cane. He also has random visitors every other day, and lives in a house that is very poorly taken care of. The only reasonable excuse is that he had to be a serial killer, so the panorama is about how he almost “corrupts” our entire street.
My panorama photos were just plainly stitched together and are not collaged together like many other panoramas. What really made my panorama interesting were my annotations to help illustrate the personalities of each neighbor and their house. Many of the things in my panorama are “inside” jokes with my roommates, so I had to figure out a way to illustrate these, so that any person viewing could understand them, but if someone who lived on our street (or my roommates) looked at it, there would be some deeper, funnier meaning to it because of the common (rediculous) stories we share, like with the serial killer, ‘Jonesy’ that lives next to us.
My process started with many different photoshoots. I first documented about 4 blocks of my journey home (which was rediclous), and had to continually narrow it down to just a few houses on my street. I also did many styles of photography. First I stood in the middle of my street at a single point, and continually turned to get a true panoramic shot. This, however distorted the panorama and didn’t get the idea of a linear travel from one point to another across. My annotations were first mainly vector drawings (I just learned the pen tool on this project… I was missing out), but then turned towards more type oriented work, followed by overlapping and collages of livetraces (as seen in the trees of “jonesys” house). I still think I can push many of these annotations further, and also add more of them, too. I would really like to push the idea of “jonesy” the serial killer, hunting down and creeping everyone on my street out really bad, but I ran out of time and didn’t put as much work into my process right off the bat, which would have given me more time. Maybe add something like a hit list of people on the street into it, and somehow show him trying to kill off certain people (such as the married couple that is kissing above the house next to him…maybe show him breaking up their marriage?).
Journey from Leazar to Brooks
February 10, 2008 | Filed Under Project 1 : Panorama | Leave a Comment
I had originally started this assignment with a documentation of my walk up the stairs from the ground floor to the first floor of Bragaw but it did not work out as well as I had planned. The main problem was that I was working with a vertical subject on a horizontal plane and although we discussed multiple possibilities on how to make it work I eventually moved to a different subject which interested me more. In the end I chose to document the physical and chronological journey from Leazar to Brooks hall as we all graduated from second semester freshman to first semester sophomores.
The “panorama” includes a combination photograph and cartoon caricature of each member of my studio performing a typical task asked of us in either Leazar last year or Brooks. Those in Leazar are enthusiastically working with different tools and techniques taught to us back in the day such as using the letterpress, cutting linoleum, and using the brayer and ink. The photographs used of my classmates are ones I had actually taken back in freshman year which is why Alex’s hair is so long. As the composition moves over to Brooks hall, it becomes more dark and dreary. I attempted to use less bright colors and more dark one to represent the fact that we are much more stressed out this year due to the introduction of computer technology. Although this was meant to be humorous and entertaining, it is actually partially true.
For the most part, the panorama explains itself to us students who were there through all of this, but Alberto suggested that I add in some typographic annotations to help those who were not there understand where all of the humor is coming from. Unfortunately, I am not very good with type and it looks like it was just slapped on, but I am hoping to improve it later. Another suggestion for improvement at the critique were to better represent the technology side whether it was using pixelated images or an actual appearance or a computer screen to better broaden the depth of field, which I completely agree with.
50 Feet apart:186 Steps away
February 10, 2008 | Filed Under Project 1 : Panorama | Leave a Comment
Most of my time is spent in two different rooms: my dorm room, and studio. While in one room, I can see the other room through the window. The two windows are physically only about 50 feet apart, but the journey between them is much longer. Therefore the space for my panorama is small and yet large at the same time.
This posed a problem for me. I had to figure out how to show both of these relationships and make it clear that they were so close and yet so far away. I started out with LOTS of pictures and finally edited them down to the three pictures I used and realized my annotations could really help to emphasize these multiple views I wanted to portray.
The different views I wanted were: the path of my sight from window to window, the literal journey from one room to another, and the proximity of point A to point B. I illustrated the light coming into each window (in the photographs and the floor-plans) with a connecting dotted line to show the sight path. The literal journey was shown through the floor-plans of the two spaces with the brown line and a photograph of the cross walk between the buildings. And the proximity of the buildings was apparent in the background panorama photograph.
My process with this project was a little scattered because I started with a lot of photographs and had to drastically edit down to push the meanings of my panorama. I would start with one concept and decide how to best portray that one idea without conflicting with the other paths already shown.
Gathering the Teeth Brushing Utensils for the Morning Brushing of the Teeth.
February 10, 2008 | Filed Under Project 1 : Panorama | Leave a Comment
My space happened to be my suite in Carroll Hall, and this panorama was my attempt at showing people my short trip out of bed, down the hall, and to the bathroom to brush my teeth and get ready for the day.
I definitely had loads of fun with annotating my space. It was fun getting to let loose with a project and just putting whatever I wanted in my space, which included King Kong, and a water monster named “Cutie.” I used the annotation to explain what different things in my environment are, if I like them, and to give a goofy explanation as to why out bathroom smelled terrible and why we could hardly stand to enter. The annotating allowed me to put a piece of my mind down on paper and to portray my thoughts on different things as I see them in the morning.
At the beginning I was kind of worried that mine wasn’t turning out looking like a typical panorama: one image straight across the page. But by the time I wanted to possibly re-do my pictures, it was too close to the deadline, and I had to do with what I had. I had talked to Santiago, and we had determined that what I had to do to make it work was to link all of the panorama’s sections together somehow, be it with the lines I already had in place, or with other photographs. I felt that it made sense to link all of the sections together with lines, but then creating a bridge between each with images and/or text. Between the first and second section, I put an image of one of my suite mates pointing at my door handle. Between the second and third sections I put some water and a cruise ship with text, conversations I might have on my way to the bathroom in the mornings, coming out of its smoke stack. The third section fades into the last few images of the building’s front door. Throughout each section, I put little captions explaining what something is and what I think about it, and maybe explaining why something happened the way it did, according to me and my imagination.