FINAL PROJECT – SUMMARY REPORT

1) How did reviewing your notes and/or blog posts from throughout the semester assist you in developing the theme or concept for your final photo book?

At first I had a hard time figuring out what I wanted the theme to be for this book. I started out with very broad topics like a travel book or a book about my life. I then decided that these books would not be able to represent the whole topic in only 20 pages. After doing some research and looking at many different photobooks with varying themes I noticed that almost all of the photobooks that I looked at not only fall under the same theme but the images are all linked together. I also looked back at some of the articles that we read throughout the course about making a good and effective photobook. They helped me to realize that the themes that I had picked were too broad. I looked at one of the images that I had previously selected for the book about my life and it was an image of the moon. I then decided that the moon is a big enough part of my life and is attached to a lot of memories.

2) What resources related to your concept did you look at before and/or during the production of your photo book? Describe any library or Internet research you engaged in to assist with the creative and conceptual production of your final project photo book, and how this helped you to generate ideas for your project.

            The first research that I did for this book was in my own photo archives. I looked through all of the photos that I have taken over the course of my life and pictures of the moon started to become a recurring theme. I started to compile all of the pictures that I have taken of the moon over the years and these pictures started to become a good outline for a book.  I then started to fill in the missing pieces with various photos from the internet.

3) Articulate the primary content of your work. How did your ideas begin (in relation to the above research questions) and how were they ultimately developed and realized in your final portfolio?

           

            My theme developed overtime after changing the theme of my book several times. My initial book ideas had too broad of topics and had to be narrowed down several times. After looking through all of my photos I found that the moon is a big part of my life and I decided to highlight that part of my life and expand it into a book.

4) How did critique and discussion, or peer or instructor feedback assist and/or influence the work's development?

            I defiantly was at a few crossroads with the direction I wanted my book to go and the order and format that I wanted to put my photos in. I think the critique helped me to get a better idea of what I wanted to do. By getting other peoples opinions on my book I got to look at it from a new angle, reassess what I was doing and create a better book.

5) How do you presume those unfamiliar with your project will interpret your work?

            I think that the moon has a different meaning for everybody. Some people may just think it is cool or pretty and others may have a story that goes with it. It is in all of our lives whether we realize it or not and I think that everybody can appreciate that beauty and mystery of the moon.

6) Provide a formal analysis of one or more of the images and/or sequences of images in your final photo book, including a rationale for the aesthetic and conceptual choices made and how/why these choices were made in terms of your aim for how the photographs would be read/interpreted. (Consider such things as: type of images selected, size of image on page/margins, pace and rhythm of book based on sequence, image manipulation (if applicable), etc.

            I started this book with a bunch of photos of the moon. Many of them were my own and then I found some on the internet that I felt went well with the other photos. I wanted to make the book have a chronological feel to it so I made the photos go from dark to light. This gives the feel of going from night to day. The moon is out all night and all day whether you can see it or not. I also wanted to connect the first and last photo in the book somehow so I chose to use tropical palm tree pictures for each one. The first photo in the book is very dark but beautiful. The way the light shining from the moon highlights the palm tree is subtle but effective. You get the tropical/beachy vibe from the photo without it being too obvious. The final photo is pretty much the opposite of the first photo. I wanted the “night to day” effect to be prominent. This photo is more of a bold and less subtle photo which is very obviously portraying a tropical scenery with the moon more subtly in the background.

Brain Fittnes Debreif #11

Today was my final day with T. I was so happy to get to meet his wife who I had heard so much about. T was so happy to see his book that he started to get a little overwhelmed. His wife then looked at me with a big smile, held my hand and just said thank you. It was that moment where I realized how impactful this project has been not only on me but on T and his family. I realized how much I loved talking to a person in an older generation and how much that I can learn from people in a different generation than me. They already have so much life experience and have so many stories. It is also a great thing for the people at brain fitness with Alzheimer's and dementia because they get to reflect and work at remembering things from their past. Working with a younger generation also helps to prompt them to remember things from they were young.

I think that Rollins should do more classes like this because it teaches great social skills and students are able to learn things that they wouldn't learn in the typical classroom setting. Civic engagement is a good way to learn about the other people, the world and issues. It is also a great way to get involved with community service while also building character. I think that the different generations of people are split by age and they are interacting less and less. This who class helped to bind that gap and show that different generations have a lot to learn from each other.

Brain Fittness Debrief #10

I had a great conversation with T during our final session together. We talked not only about his life and future plans but he also got to know me a lot better. We talked mostly about him during all of our sessions together and he was really interested to get to know more about my life and my future plans. I got to show him pictures of my past and pictures of my family. He was so interested in getting to know more about me and I think that we really connected even more once he knew my story. I was getting kind of sad at the end because I knew it was the second to last time I will probably ever see this man but I am glad I even got to have this experience in the first place. I think we learnt a lot from each other and we have both benefited greatly from this experience.

Brain Fittness Debreif #9

Today I was unable to meet with T because his wife had to have an emergency dental procedure. I was however able to go over the organization of the photobook and I learnt how to use InDesign. I was given T's email just incase I had any last minute questions but managed to find everything that I needed in the notes that I took over the semester. I am continuously working on the book for T and although there have been multiple set backs I think that the book is going to turn out pretty good! 

Photobook research assignment #2

After looking at several of the photobooks in the photography section of the library, I found Willie Doherty's Requisite Distance: Ghost story and landscape. Right off the bat this book caught my eye. The book has several different sections and each one is clearly divided due to the drastic change in color (black, white and grey) between the sections. Each sections' photographs formally go together but are different from each other and yet each section comes together under the overall theme. The beginning of the book has beautiful yet kind of eerie photos of different roads or sides of the road that are completely empty. I also love how these photos in the first section were labeled. They have a little descriptor in the corner of the opposite white page. The following section of photographs have a much darker feel. The beginning photographs had white backgrounds and there was a lot of sun and greenery. The second section of photos have a dark grey background and are very foggy and mysterious looking. They then have pictures of eyes put throughout the section.  The ghostly look goes well with the title, Ghost story and landscape. I feel as though the landscape photos in this book could be the scene of a creepy movie, this is probably because many of the photos are film stills. The creepy and dark feel represents the troubles of Ireland.

Formally, the cover of the book has on of the "creepier" photos of the road which wraps around to the back cover of the book. I also like how the photos on the first section have all the same format and then the photos in the second section change format and have 3/4 photos on one page then they have a full bleed across two pages, then there is a small photo in the corner of an empty page. All of these formats go together in a way to make it more intriguing to look at.

After seeing how successful the use of multiple formats is at getting a point across and keeping the reader engaged, I am really considering doing that for my photobook. I originally was going to do a book with all the same format that is very uniform and clean but I started to see that that could be boring. That is a lot like the first section of the book and I don't think that the book would have been as good without the second section to compliment the first section.

Brain Fitness Debrief #8

During me time with T we finally got to sit down and go through the images that I have narrowed down. We went through the images one by one and he told me specific details about each one. WE still have several more images that we have to go through but we made some great progress. T still brought a whole bag of photos to our session and I struggles with telling him that there was not enough time to go through them all. I wish that we had more time to talk about the photos that I had finally narrowed down but I am confident that we will get through the rest during our next session. I have really enjoyed this whole process and I feel like I have made a new friend. I have already started to do the layout and organization of his photo book. Now I just need to get the blurbs done!

Reading Response: Blurb photobook design handout

I think that this article helped me to get a better idea of what I want to do for my photo books.
There are a lot more components to a photobook than I thought. This reading helped me to think about what I am going to be doing for the cover and the back, what format the images are going to be, will the format of the images be all the same or vary?, will the blurbs of the photos be short or long?, will I have a long blurb at the beginning of the book explaining what I did or not? etc. I think that I want my photo books to be neat and have the pages be uniform just because of my personal taste. I think I would have a couple important photos take up the entire page and then have the blurb be on the opposite page. I think that I want an overall theme to go with my books to make them flow better.

Brain Fitness Debrief #7

Today my partner T was not able to come to our session so I met with another member at Brain Fitness Club. We had some great conversations and he told me a lot about his life and his profession. He then proceeded to show me photos of his wife and a dear family friend and then he showed me some family photos. He was able to send me some of these photos so that I will be able to pass them on to his partner. It was nice to et to know another person at the brain fitness club and learn about his life and his stories.  I will be working with my partner T next session on putting labels onto the photos.

Assignment 3: Photos

Assignment 3: Borrowed Photos

I have always been interested in the concept of home. For many people, when you say the word home they immediately think of one place in particular. For me when I hear the word home I just think of all the houses that I have lived in while moving from place to place. This is why I chose to take google maps photos of all the houses or apartment buildings that my family has lived in or owned. This is the first picture of my “Home” series because it makes my overall theme of the series obvious right off the bat. For this picture I arranged the houses in order of when I lived in them. Each photo then has a amount of time that was spent in each place and it is right in the middle of the photo. By just taking a snapshot of each map and adding the text to the I feel as though I have transformed them to have meaning instead of just being google images of houses.

My second image of the sequence gets a little bit more conceptual about different types of homes. I combined an image of a slum with an image of a nice small home and connected them via their doors. I did not do this image to say one is better that the other I did it more to show the contrast of different types of homes. These images were cropped and adjusted in order for them to fit together better.
The third Image of the sequence gets even more conceptual because it shows a contrast between sleeping at home and sleeping homelessly. I connected these photos by connecting he torso of a person sleeping on the street to the torso of someone sleeping at home. These images have changed from being just pictures of people sleeping in their beds and on the street to a contrast photo showing the big problem with the growing homeless community. I think it is very important to think about the homeless population when talking about “home”. I always wonder how some people got to be living on the streets. Did they have a place called home? Have they made the streets their home? 

The Fourth and Final image of this sequence gets back to the broader idea of home. I took photos of different types of homes that fill one city block. This photo includes suburbs, slums, an RV park, a farm/ranch , a city, and a mansion with property. These photos separately have different meanings but when they come together they all represent different ways to fill one block with homes or a home. I made this image in black in white so that all the images would flow together better. I also didn’t want people looking at it to be distracted by the colors and not think about the concept.

Reading Response: Roland Barthes' Camera Lucida excerpt

This article was very interesting and kind of difficult to read and understand. I had to read it over a few times just to understand the main concept. I think it is interesting how we all immediately  start analyzing and interpreting photos when we see them whether we mean to or not. This article helped give words and categories to how I analyze photos that I see. The Studium is just the overall enthusiastic commitment to the photo. Then the "coded" aspects of the photo are more specific things like the details of the photos. This answers questions like Formal/informal? color/Black and white? etc. The Punctum then brings in the personal connection that comes with photos. It describes when a photos links to something of our past.

Brain Fitness Debrief #6

During my session with T at the brain fitness club, T brought in several new photo albums for me to look at. I urged him to hold off and take time to go through the photos that I have already taken so that I could get some more details but we decided to go through more photos instead. I took photo s of the descriptors that were on the backs of some of the photos so that I can work on the annotations of the photos later.  I have so many photos from T and now I just have to narrow them down and choose the top ones. I wish we could have gone through the photos that I had narrowed down but I have learned to go with the flow.

Reading Response: Collective/Cultural Memory & Appropriation

All of these videos and articles have the common themes of using others photographs and changing them in a way to portray meaning. While I was watching the videos on the contemporary Native Photos on the Native American's I had to think about how I define people as Native American. I feel like there is so much more to their culture that hasn't really been brought to light and I think that is what the show was about. My favorite piece that they talked about was the one where they did the cutout of the previously photographed men and this was done to "give them their power back".

Another Video that caught my eye was the one by Kevin J. Miyazaki.  The photos that he used helped him to understand his Japanese/ American history and they also helped bring people together who have had similar histories. He was not creating any new pictures for this project he just simple created a way for them to all come together in a cohesive manner.

Are they giving credit to the original photographers?
would the photographers like their changed pieces of work?

Reading Response: ETHICS & ISSUES AROUND REPURPOSING PRE-EXISTING PHOTOGRAPHS

All of these articles reinforced the fact that it is unethical to steal other artists works. If you are using another photographers photos it is very important to give them credit for their work. I would like to think that if someone were to use my photos that they would cite my name and give me credit. While I was reading these articles I had to think about the fact that I have used so many random photos from the internet for so many projects and never cited them. I never really thought about whether or not I was stealing other peoples works. If I decide to use photos from the internet for my project or for my photobooks I will for sure give credit to the original photographer.

Brain Fittness Debreifing Resonse #5

During my time with T we talked about several of his photo albums. We talked about several of his trips and vacations that he went on with his wife and family and he showed me several albums. WE were unable to talk about the edited down photos but I did tell him that that is what we are going to go through next week. The plan for next week is to go through the top photos that I pick and talk about labels to put on them and specific memories that go with them. We will also talk about who is in each photo and where they were taken. I have decided to do one large photobook rather than doing two.

Reading Response: Editing Handout

I think that this sheet was helpful in the process of organizing my thought process when editing my photos. I like that the author called editing the creating of meaning. The author sttted out by talking about the photo taking process and about how taking a photo I see a house and that it is an expression of value.
The article then went on to talk about the methods of the photo editing process. It talked about how to make a good proof sheet and it also talked about how important it is to print out the proof sheet in order to see how the photos will print. This helps the artist to gage how the photos will be printed on larger scales. When I read this I kind of thought that it is a waste of paper to print out all the proofs but then I thought about the fact that I have had to re print my larger photos because they didn't turn out how I wanted. So, maybe next time I should print out proofs. 
The author talked about how important it is to take time to make a descent proof sheet so that you can really look through and edit all of your photos. The article also talked about the fact that you cannot just take the perfect photos but sometimes it is in the imperfections where the beauty lies. the process of making images is very different from evaluating and editing them but the initial edit is choosing what to capture. When taking a photo you want to show your intention in a photo without being too obvious or being too mysterious.

Overall I found this handout very helpful in organizing my plan for editing my photos.

Photobook Assignment #1

HUSTLERS by Eve Fowler

This book has a series of photos from the "streets". The men in these photos have a grunge look to them with a gangster feel. They are all pretty young and their photos are quite explicit. All of these guys are for sure trying to look cool in their photos either by wearing sunglasses, smoking cigarettes or being shirtless.

The photos in this book go from intense and closed off to more soft and relatable. It starts off with photos that are in black and white. This section contains a short story which helps the reader put the rest of the book into perspective. The following photos are all in color. The photos of the men start with more intense and serious photos. These photos are more closed off to the audience. Then towards the middle of the book I saw a change in mood. The photos started to look more relatable and these guys just looked like average men just living life.

Some of these photos only take up one page and then the other page is left blank and others take up a full two pages. Almost all the two page photos were taken landscape but there are a few portrait photos which were put on two pages as well.

The author also repeated similar photographs and repeated subjects throughout the book which I found very interesting. It gave some familiarity to the photos that I was looking at even though I didin't know any of these men. I think this is a good strategy to use for my photobook. I want to repeat people throughout the books in order to show familiarity. I think that by doing this I will help my partner at the Brain Fitness Club remember his family and friends.

Brain Fittness Debreifing Resonse #4

During my time with T we talked about several of his photo albums. He went through a lot of his ad ventures that he has been of and then took me through a lot of his older photos. I got to see an album with pictures from his childhood and it helped me get to know him a lot better. We bonded over many similarities in our lives and talked and laughed about some funny photos. He showed me photos of his huge family and the photos helped him start to talk about them and the stories that he has with them. He has such a large family and I fear that it will be hard for him to remember all of them in later years so I know for sure that I want to include them in the book and maybe their names and descriptions as well because I know how passionate he is about his family members.

I had a hard time deciding what the themes of the two books will be but I am starting to narrow down my topics. I am going to continue to create specific photos that I want to ask and start to narrow down the topics. The problem with this is that I am still getting a lot of new information from T about his life and there is so much that I still have to learn about him. I really want to make these photos good for him and actually useful so I am really trying to put a lot of thought into them.

Brain Fittness Debreifing Resonse #3

During my session with T, we talked for so long that I ended up being the last person to leave the facility. I enjoyed our conversation so much and I wish that we had more time to talk. T brought several photo albums to our session yet we were only able to go through one of them because he talked about each and every photo. The photobook that he showed me was of his trip abroad when he went to his sisters wedding. At first he had a hard time remembering specifics but then he was on a roll and kept talking about all the places that he saw and all the activities that he, his wife and family did. It was really cool to see!
As we were talking I would take photos of pictures that he showed me that had significant memories attached to them. I also jotted down notes of specific things that he told me. At the end of each session I look back at my notes and write down questions that I want to ask in during my next session.

Seeing Photographs Response

This reading helped give me some insight into what details I should be looking for when analyzing a photograph and it helped me think about the different strategies I can use in order to show meaning in my photos. This last week I have been having a hard time trying to convey meaning through my photographs. Reading about the different approaches then heled me to make them more meaningful. When I wanted to emphasize one thing then I would try to blur out the rest by changing the focus, or I tried to contrast different colors and changing the angels. I also thought about whether the photo would look better in color of in black and white. For the photos that were taken in my room, I worked with the different light sources. I turned my main light on and off and played with my tinkle lights in order to get the perfect lighting for my shot. After going through my photos I started thinking about how I wanted to crop some of the shots in order to get the right framing. I still have more photos to take but I am excited to work with these different approaches that I learnt about order to help with my assignment and to later on help me make my final photobook.

Brain Fittness Debreifing Resonse #2

Today was the start of my journey with my Partner T. He and I both were so excited to get to know each other and to create these photobooks together. Today, T told me about his life and gave a lot of information about his profession. He was a physical therapist for over 20 years and he told me a lot about his journey of becoming and being a physical therapist. Right off the bat we started bonding over our mutual love for PT. I myself am going to school right now to become a physical therapist and he is like a mentor for me. He also shared with me the part of his life that was not his work (which used to take up most of his life). He talked about his wife and told me about how he met her and how they started dating and fell in love. This story was told towards the end of our visit and so for the final minutes we had together I took pictures of the different things that he brought in and we talked about what he should bring in next week. I am really happy with the amount of information I got from T today and I am excited to create these books with him. We are still in the process of deciding what we want the subjects of the books to be and how much information of each aspects of his life we want.

Reading Response: The Photographer's eye , Light and Lens:Photography in the digital age

Both of these essays helped expand my knowledge on photography as a whole and its history in particular. John Szarkowski, author of The photographers eye, started his essay with talking about the radical difference that photography has from all other forms of art. It is completely it own thing. Photography can be practiced by thousands who share no common training or tradition. The author talks about the immortality of the captured moment and how once the picture is taken it is now in the past. I love how he  said that photographs not instant but are time exposures which vary in duration.

 Robert Hirsch, author of  Light and Lens: Photography in the digital age, wrote more about the history of photography and its overall progression. I was so interested in the evolution of the photographic imaging. I though that it was so cool to learn about how past photographers altered their images before the invention of things like Photoshop. I thought it was so interesting how the miniature painters painted directly on the daguerreotypes and calotypes. I cant imagine physically painting each individual picture trying to work on every little detail on such a small canvas. It put things into perspective on how much easier photography is today.

Reading Response: Photography and memory

Many people see photographs as just memories but there is so much to them and these articles have an interesting point on how we manipulate out memories. We the photographers are choosing the exact moment which we want to freeze in time. Sometimes we even edit or move things around in order to change the esthetic of the picture. Yes, this is art but it isn’t a memory because it has been altered and changed. Photographs can bring us back to a certain memory but a photograph its self is not a memory. The author said, “In the case of photographs, we have more power over the process of retaining and forgetting.” This is so true. We have the power to choose what we want to remember about that exact moment and what parts we want to edit out. When I was in Fiji I hiked to the highest point of the island that I was living on and I got to take some amazing photos but the photos that I took were of memories that I wanted to keep. I took photos of the amazing views of the mountains and ocean and I left out the parts like when I had to stop about 5 times to catch my breath or when I was sweating like a pig because of the scorching heat. I chose what parts I wanted to remember and left out the other parts because they were not as pleasant. In several years when I look back to the photos I took all I will remember is how beautiful the views were and I will start to forget about the rest because they were not photographed so I probably will start to forget some of the stories.

Brain Fitness Debriefing Response #1

Going to the facility was such a great experience and I am so excited that I get to go there more. I am very interested in the type of work that the brain fitness club does. The 4 men that we met were excited to hear about our lives and who we are and they were all so excited to just be able to share their experiences that they have had and tell us about their lives. I really think that deep down they have this need to share their knowledge and learnings with others in fear of loosing it themselves. I am really looking forward to working one on one with one of these men to help him solidify these memories in a way that he can keep them and look back to them and help him remember as long as possible. I couldn't imagine going through what the members of brain fitness camp are going through but I am glad that I am going to be able to help someone keep their memories.

Mini Photobook

This little booklet is filled with 19 photos that help to describe me as a person. The order that the photos were placed in the book was strategically done in order to show the different categories that describe me.

I started the booklet off with some fun facts about myself which are my favorite animal: Pigs, and My biggest fears: People in costumes and Butterflies... yes Butterflies. I then continue the booklet with pictures of my family and I. We moved all around the states and the world together which made us a very close family. My dog came with us on all of our adventures and she has been with us for the last 14 years. I then showed a picture of me and my soccer team and another picture of me with my mom who supported me throughout all of my sporting events. Throughout high school I went on many different service trips with my friends, family and school. I got to go to a lot of different countries and work with/meet all kinds of wonderful people. I also traveled a lot while I was living overseas in Geneva, Switzerland and Singapore. I shared some of my favorite travel photos, moments and adventures in this booklet. To end the booklet I talked about my life here at Rollins College. I showed a pictue of my Sorority (AOII) and a picture of my lab partner and I. I am a Biology Major on the Pre-Physical Therapy track and Science classes and labs take up most of my time here.