Behind the Photography

uring my second quarter at AI, I decided to take the one required photography class for my graphic design program. At the time I wasn’t really sure what to make of it, I was excited because I had always loved taking pictures, but believe me, eleven weeks is not even remotely enough time to learn the intricacies of great photography, and as most of my graphic design teachers recommend that we shoot our own photos to avoid any kind of copyright mishap, it’s unfortunate that we’re only required to take the one. That said, it remains to this day one of my favorite classes I’ve taken thus far. The final project, which would be a culmination of photos taken throughout the quarter was, I believe, a set of 20-50 photos that represented us. Some people took photos of cars, or fashion, but me? I took photos of my writing. Stacks of it, from over the years. Piles of information, mostly, one would presume, Secrets of Witches since it’s been my longest project to date and continues to rack up the most amount of pages in my life, hardcopy or otherwise, but it also included a few choice photos of my laptop, and one of my desk with a random smattering of papers.

For a long time after I never knew what would become of the photos, they merely sat on my external harddrive, collecting digital dust as it were, and then, nearly two years ago sometime in mid-February perhaps March, I found the photos again, while attempting to clean out the harddrive. They were even more beautiful than I’d remembered and I knew that I had to do something with them, particularly in a design sense. It started, with the quotes series. Older readers, who have been around the site a while would remember those, while some of my newer followers probably wouldn’t, as I sort of stopped making them in spite of the fact that I continue to have plenty of quote inspiration to draw from. I still collect my favorite quotes, that maybe again I”ll start using for the quote-a-day series.

So, for those curious as to why I continue to use these graphics for each blog post, and my page headers, you must understand the story behind them, how each photo represents myself in a different way, and the design aesthetic as a whole represents what I love in design, and to a larger extent, myself as a designer.