Visual Studies I with Alex and Joe

My project started quite roughly, without any idea as to what I was trying to do or say with my work. I first started with photographs of flowers, but found that flowers seemed to be generic. Everyone takes pictures of flowers, and South Congress wasn’t exactly known for its wide variety of colorful foliage anyway. I wandered, confused for another few minutes before realizing that my subject lie in reflections. Seeing the trees, buildings, clouds, and cars, translucent against the shop windows showed me a new world. One where nothing made sense. One where the cars sat in diners and giant, ghostly chandeliers floated ominously above buildings. The further I looked into my photographs, I began to notice more. I saw the patterns within my images and began to apply them to Gestalt, finding that many of my images contained closure, proximity, and similarity. As I edited my photos, I always found myself preferring bright, saturated colors. Many of my images were taken specifically for their color, and as I edited them to make them more vibrant, I began to notice that the Gestalt principles became more obvious as well.

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I didn’t really know what I was shooting until I uploaded all my pictures the last time. I realized I was taking a lot of pictures looking up light pole and trees. After editing them, I was able to create a preset in Lightroom that made the colors look similar in each photo. I just tried to create something I thought looked cool.

A lot of my photos focus on Repetition, Containment, & Proximity.

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The first time I went to South Congress I didn’t have a specific idea about what I want to shoot. So, I started shooting randomly. I took photos for everything I saw, people, sky, trees, flowers, signs, buildings…etc. Later, I found that it was difficult for me to find one theme for all these random photos. So, I narrowed photos from 141 photos to 6 photos to help me focusing on things that I actually like about theses 6 photos. Also, I had to keep in my mind that these 6 photos should meet the requirements for the project. I found that details interested me. So, I decided to take photos for details of roads. In other words, taking photos for cracks on roads.

I was tasked for this project to go down to S. Congress (between Oltorf and Cesar Chavez) and take photographs, using gestalt principles to help us find a point of view. Now S. Congress is a very busy street, with a mass of people, traffic, and shops. I tried not to focus on this aspect. Instead I tried to see the calmer side of the street, looking towards nature or quiet looking areas. Using the principles of gestalt I did find that a lot of the principles are in literally everything (especially repetition). The more difficult part was capturing this in a photograph that would show my point of view of the world.

To start the project, I went to South Congress a few times and shot what I found interesting with no overarching themes in mind. I had to do this a few times, because I had trouble formatting my cameras to shoot RAW files. Then, I began to organize my work in Bridge to find common themes before going out to South Congress with a more narrowed scope of what I wanted to shoot. While taking pictures, I found that I primarily focused on the ground. I liked photographing a place people do not often notice and making an interesting compositions out of it. I narrowed my focus to the various drains found along South Congress, because I felt they could best exemplify the different methods of Gestalt that we discussed in class.

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Gestalt

Taking photos on South Congress is something almost everyone in Austin has done at some time. So when we were constrained to shooting only on South Congress I wanted to try and not focus on the iconic soco spots. Instead I tried to only photograph things that I had not seen before or things that were not going to stay in place (birds, cars, people). When i go out and shoot on my own i usually don’t set rules for what i want to shoot, i just go out and see what i run into. Setting these rules for the project helped me to focus on the subject and not spend as much time taking photos of random things. My photos are mostly characterized by bright colors or sharp textures, helping them stand out and pop.

Continuity

Repetition

Containment

Proximity

Repetition/Grouping

Closure/Containment

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The question for our first project asked was “how do you make an image?” I really took this into consideration while on South Congress trying to figure out what to focus on in my images. Anyone can really take a picture but the most difficult part of it to me is figuring out how to frame the image. That’s what I really played with throughout this project. I tried to have simple subjects but focused on one specific area of what would typically be framed. I stopped at one area on South Congress and took several pictures at different angles and points of view. This caused me to even cut out some of the main subject which can seem unconventional, but I think worked out fine. This helped me incorporate the principles of gestalt for the assignment.

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