Yes, I took a Food & Art class this past semester. While I have mixed feelings about its value for me at the time I took the course, its final gave me a chance to exercise some urges I’d been having to make something relevant, powerful, and aggressive. Continue reading
Wonderful public-submission how-to site Instructables always has all kinds of contests going on, and with Halloween approaching, they unrolled a whole lineup of Hallow’s Eve themed contests. From costumes to jack-o-lanterns, they’ve got it all. But mostly, the photomanipulation one caught my eye. The deadline’s tomorrow, so sorry if you’re getting late notice, but I’ve been working on my entry for the past two weeks or so. Check it out after the jump.
We had to chose one word from Yuichiro Kojiro’s ‘Forms in Japan’ and Richard Serra’s ‘verb list’, go out and find things off-campus and outside of our regular living spaces that embodied that word and photograph them. My word was simultaneity. From various parts of the city and the Natural History Museum at Harvard, and after two iterations including over 150 images, these are the final batch of 30 photos I came up with.
This assignment was cool. I’m not boasting, but I seem to have a knack for making photographic images, still or moving. And who doesn’t enjoy walking around with a camera, snapping at things they think are cool in ways that make them cooler? So this was fun. 
We had two weeks, I don’t remember what camera I used, and there’s very little Photoshopping going on. Medium to minor curves adjustments on a bunch, a few I doctored a little more, and some less. Overall, the images are pretty close to what was photographed.
Figuring out how to convey a design principle and an emotion using a body in a space was awesome. Having two weeks certainly helped, but from the start I was imagining, planning, I even sketched out each photo before shooting anything. I used color and value as well to emphasize what the images were portraying.
I really liked working in dark palettes and hiding things when I made these pieces, and manipulating a lot of photos to make whatever came to mind as I was creating. I’d literally sit down and find a random photo and just start messing with it and some idea would begin to form, and I’d find new photos to add into the collage to manipulate and make into what I was envisioning (best example is ‘shiny’, the white-and-gray guy looking upward with fireworks in his chest). It was spontaneous and limitless, I miss doing that a bit, it was fun.
The sunset photo is actually two separate images, the sunset was taken outside my family’ apartment window when we lived in Colombia, and the photo of myself looking out at the lake was taken on a weekend vacation when we lived down there. It’s gotten fantastic response on DeviantArt.
