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.