For my semester long project I want to tie in pictures of American and Japanese culture together. While I was in Japan for study abroad I taught students from primary to secondary school about Washington D.C. using a picture book of DC. Just as the DC photobook showed famous sites of DC, I will show famous (or at least significantly important to me) sites of Akita, Japan and Happo_cho Japan. I am thinking of having a picture of the district on one side and then a picture from Japan on the other. These paired pictures will either compliment or work against one another.
The concept is still in its preliminary stages but this is the main idea.
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I am debating whether to include St.Mary's along side Washington D.C. Recently I was looking through the pictures I took in Japan and I thoroughly enjoyed a series of picture of a body of water near Happo-cho at sunset. It reminded me of the St. Mary's river. Now I can take pictures of the Anocostia river but I am not sure I want to. I am hoping I can get all my pictures of Washington in a day but it's going to be very hard. I think I will have to take another trip. It's difficult and maybe almost impossible to get a semester worth of pictures done in one day. Before the break I will be picking out at least 35 pictures from the pictures I took in Japan and try to capture something similar in my trip to DC. Just because I picked these 35 photographs does not mean that I will completely exclude other pictures. These 35 pictures just serve as a jumping point for inspiration. I will later dwindle this number down.
ReplyDeleteSpring Break is finally here and my trip to DC to take photographs is just around the corner. I have planned to expand the trip to DC to hopefully 3 trips. The first would be on Spring Break, the second at the cherry blossom festival (Japan and US festival...seems perfect) and the final one on the art department field trip. Since the last two trips would be near the Smithsonian area, I want to go to a part of DC that is less traveled by tourists.
ReplyDeleteEarlier I mentioned about including St. Mary's campus. I will continue to go that direction. I was sorting through my Japan pictures and found a recurring theme of temples. It reminded me of glimpses of the past. This can be echoed at historic St. Mary's. Therefore after break I will go to historic for one day and take pictures that I can relate to Japan as well.
All of this may seem to be pulling from a huge pool of pictures and places but I want to shoot as much pictures as I can so when I do narrow it down, I will have a lot to choose from to fine tune.
Earlier this week I sorted through my Japanese pictures and organized them. I came up with two groups, and two sub groups and finally found the main theme to my work. It will be called the two worlds. One "world" will be Japan while the other will by my narrow conception of the US. Inside these worlds are smaller groups. One is called nigiyaka (にぎやか) that translate to lively. It is not used for living things but describes the liveliness of places. The pictures in this group will mostly be shots of the city (秋田市 Akita City, 新潟市 Niigata city, and 京都 Kyoto.) For the US it will be Washington DC but I am considering including Baltimore or some other metropolitan area. The opposite of nigiyaka is shizuka (しずか). This means calm. This group will include (St. Mary's College of MD, AIU (study abroad school) Happo-cho (a small town) Historic St. Mary's and several of the temples I visited.
Format: At the moment the forum may seem a little confusing, so I will explain it in better detail here. The book will be split in half. The first half will be nigiyaka and the second half shizuka. Both sections will begin with at title page that has the word first in hirigana (the Japanese letter system), then in romanji (how it is written in English) and finally the English translation. Inside of both of the groups will be plenty of pictures of the subjects I recently talked about. The format for each picture will be the same. The pictures from Japan will be on the left and the pictures of the US will be on the right. The book will be in a horizontal format. Majority if not all will be in color.
Finally, there have been some issues that have come up so far. Majority of my city pictures (all for Kyoto and Niigata) are taken at night but I will probably be unable to take pictures of DC at night because of personal issues.
I have been think of a few ways to get around this problem. The first would be to alter the picture so it could look like it's night time. However this may appear to phony. The second thing I could do would be to alter the photos but then convert them to black and white to hide their truth a bit more. I do not like this solution because I want most of my pictures in color. The final option is to ask my friends from DC to take the pictures for me. This may be my best option for now.
Another problem is the format of the pictures. Some of the Japanese pictures are portrait instead of landscape. If I stick to my horizontal format I will have to change the layout of these pictures.
Finally I am still confused about the gutter. I need to see what happens to a picture when it's in book format. I need to physically see how much it takes off or I will not be able use the gutter to its full advantage.
I think that is it for now. Next time I will post possible spreads for the assignment.
The other post I tried to send a week earlier but it wasn't submitting to the site. So I reposted it today. I have already been to DC however to take the photos. It was a really nice day and I walked from Union Station to Georgetown. I took photos of all different subjets.I avoided the Smithsonian like the plague because I have seen it too much. I wanted to see the other side of DC. I took a lot of pictures of Churches because it reminded me of temples. I sort of solved the night problem because I went to DC very early in the morning (6 am.) Not sure what else to post. I can't put my pictures online yet because my laptop is sort of unconscious. I will try to post pictures to this blog when I return to school.
ReplyDeletePROJECT 2 RESPONSE
ReplyDeleteIt felt weird holding the book. I knew that the images that my group put together would eventually be in book form, but holding it in it's final form was an interesting moment for me. Overall, I liked my section in the book. There are only three problems that bother me. The first is the misplaced line that I had been having second thoughts about ever since we would put the pictures in iphoto. It's on the first page that belongs to me. I did not take it out so I pay the price of having it remain there after it was printed. It surprised me how dark some of the pictures came out. This was mainly the brick wall and the first picture that I recall looking slightly different before it was printed. I wonder if thinking that it was different before, is just something my mind made up. I don't know. The last issue is that one of the pictures is not the quality I wanted it to be. Again, I blame this on myself. I must have not checked the dpi on that one. I will make sure I will not make the same mistake again.
Looking through the whole book it really does feel as if it's 4 separate books by completely different authors. I really thought the song would unite them together, but because each group member translated the lyrics so differently it falls short. The final result is not a bad thing. It just becomes a collage of different voices. I am happy everyone got what they wanted even if the book does not feel completely united. One of the first things we did when decided to create this book was to work together but apart. The result is as followed. I shouldn't expect differently.
I wonder what future photobook students will think of our book...