bon mardi: dsdn 144 | project 2 hand-in

Project 2 started out as an exploration of the growth and development of my three year old. I was going to do a stop motion video of her clothes but when I started to shoot it I was not very inspired and it didn't feel like I was going anywhere with it.

I had some really great images from my infancy that I was interested in incorporating into my design work so after seeing some interesting precedents and discussing my ideas with Matt and Linda I decided to work on a collage process. I was inspired by Ava Seymour and Fra Angelico (see below in presentation)

Touching up the original photos particularly the 3^rd birthday one (where many of the objects were very familiar) felt like I was touching objects and people long lost to the past. It felt like a form of time-travel. Hence the name of my project.

Technically I had a few hitches with my first attempt. I got a bit trigger happy with the blend options in Photoshop, especially on the interior shots. Here are some process images to illustrate my point. It wasn't right and I needed to choose between 'in-your-face' collage technique and 'Photoshopped-to-death' fake snapshots. I then received some helpful feedback from Matt that got me back on track.

The most successful image at that stage seemed like the newborn image of me with my dad (and Rory's face placed over mine) but I needed to incorporate an element of something shot specifically for this project so I kept going with my quasi-religious theme and incorporated an outstretched hand. (Which was mine.) Even though I tried to inject humour into my images, this immediately felt a little poignant for me since working with this image made me feel a bit sad about the fact that my dad and Rory will never meet and yet, after a little digital tampering, here was my dad as he held my little girl. I am a self-confessed agnostic and therefore do not identify as a christian but I like the idea of angels and feel like this image expresses the idea that my dad and daughter are MY angels. I stopped short of giving dad a golden Fra Angelico-esque halo though... I am sure that would've been something he would not have been comfortable with.