Since the guidelines for this project required me to stay on South Congress while taking photos, I used the Gestalt principles to place emphasis on the different kinds of rusted metals. I wanted to displace the viewers perspective and make them unaware of the location of the photos. The most prevalent principles throughout my photos are Closure, a suggestion or implication that the human mind completes on based on context, Proximity, the distance between visual elements, and Continuity, the fluid connection among compositional parts. While the viewer may devise that the first image is of a bike from the small part that is represented in the image, there is closure in the presence of the wheel’s shadow on the sidewalk, assuring the viewer that the object is, in fact, a bike. There is also continuity throughout the image in the curved and straight lines and shadows that guide the eye from left to right. Similarly, in the second photo, there is closure implied by the metal chairs in the background because the rod going diagonally through the image is unidentifiable, until one realizes it is part of the frame of a chair. This photo also displays proximity through the decrease in the chairs’ size as they get farther form the camera. The combination of shadows, ridges in the wood, and the metal structures bring continuity and guide the eye from top to bottom and from right to left. The third photo is a demonstration of continuity as the ladder ascends and leads the eye toward the light, and there is repetition in the sequence of rungs. Proximity and continuity combined guide the eye, in the fourth photo, from the closer part of the rusty pipe to the farther end that curves up and around to the left. In the last two images, proximity and containment are the two leading principles. The base of the table is closer to the camera than the chair, making a frame in which the chair is not completely contained. In the same way, the framing created by the stairs and the rusted car window form a sort of boundary for the plants to stay within, demonstrating containment as well. As a collection, my images consist of related content and multiple Gestalt principles that work together to create a cohesive sequence of photos.

 

Screenshots:

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Lightroom collections, keywords, and metadata

 

Folders of RAW, JPEGs, and TIFFs