10 February 2011

MCP Project 52 Week 6/52 - Words


'Sticks and stones...
...may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.'




I went for a slightly alternative approach to this theme! I had so many ideas for 'words' but wasn't able to find the things I needed to photograph. 
  1. The first idea that immediately came to mind was to photograph words from road signs and shop signs and then make a collage of them to spell out a phrase. I had a few possibilities – ‘beware the power’ (as in the power of words!), ‘choose yours carefully’ or ‘actions speak louder’. I searched everywhere to find these individual words on signs but had hardly any luck so had to think again. 
  2. I stumbled across some graffiti when out searching for the sign words, and that became my back-up plan. I managed to make a fairly good image for this (see reject photo 2), but wasn’t entirely happy.
  3. Another back-up plan was to take a macro shot of a page from Hamlet – some of my favourite words. I’d seen that other participants had already photographed pages from books so I didn’t want to copy them really.
  4. When brainstorming phrases to do with words I remembered ‘sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me’. It isn’t the greatest phrase in the world but I thought it might make a good abstract photo for the theme! After drawing a blank in my garden, I asked my mum to collect the sticks and stones from hers, and I arranged them on my pink brick patio for a little bit of colour.
I took lots of photos as usual but the chosen close up seemed to work best. I altered the image on Picnik by adding some boost to the colours and then added a slight cross-process effect.

Reject 1


Once I added some saturation to the colours and then a little boost to them on Picnik, I really noticed the green moss on the sticks and the pink bricks. I just wasn’t convinced about the whole image, but when I tried to crop it, it didn’t have the same appeal. I’m sure I could have played about with it more, but decided to use the close-up instead.

Reject 2


What really drew me to this graffiti was that it was written in a bright blue paint on a pure white plain wall. I enhanced this colour contrast with the boost function on Picnik. I also like the way it fits with the 'words' theme, even though it isn't strictly a word. I nearly chose this image for my weekly photo but I thought I might find a better graffiti image to fit another theme later in the year!

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