SURFACE LEVEL

I decided to film my final collage, to demonstrate the photo collage process from start to finish.

As you can see, first, all of the printed photographs are sorted into piles of varying degrees of distances: farther away shots of the subject, regular bust/portrait shots of the subject, and closeup shots of the subject. Once all the photographs are sorted, I then look through the pile of bust/portrait shots to find the photograph that will become the base of the entire collage as the topmost layer.

After selecting the base photograph, I begin cutting. I start by cutting along the outline of the subject's face and body, leaving hair, articles of clothing, and other external non-bodily elements out. Then with this base piece, I go through the stacks of photographs again, overlaying it on each photograph to find one that fits best, while simultaneously looking for features such as eyes, noses, and mouths, to incorporate in certain layers along the way. When people look at faces, they predominantley look at the eyes first, bouncing back between the eyes, and then look at the mouth, the nose, and along the outline of the face. I felt that it was important to incoporate these features to ensure that the photo collage portraits are still registered as faces to the viewer, and not just an abstract pattern or object.

Surface Level (5)

Last weekend I decided to switch gears and try shooting in a studio, just to see how they look compared to my other shoots that I’ve been doing outside. After showing my last two collages and photographs to some friends and professors, a couple people said that they thought a plain, studio background would be better and would keep the focus on the subject and not the background. 

But after taking these studio shots, I definitely like the photographs taken outside better. I feel like they look and feel more natural, and I can also play with variation in terms of light and background. I think because I’ve been shooting with a pretty low aperture, the shallow depth of field really helps to separate the subject from the background and keeps it from being too distracting. 

I’ve started working on the second collage over these past couple of weeks, and have been encountering some difficulties that I didn’t have with the first set of photos.

I wanted to incorporate the subject’s smile as a part of the piece, because she’s a very happy and smiley person, but I think it’s also what was making things a little difficult. Most of the photos I had printed were fairly closeup photos of her smile, so in the collages that I tried her smile, mouth, and teeth, became a very prominent feature. It became the first thing you notice and I didn’t want that to be the case, so I played around with a couple variations but I was still unhappy with the outcome. 

I had my second shoot this past week with my friend while I was visiting Los Angeles, and although like the first set of photographs these were shot outside, these photos came out much more light and bright due to the sunny and warm weather over there! 

My subject was my friend who is also half Japanese and half American, born in Japan but currently living in America, with a very similar background to mine. Hearing her side was interesting, as she sees herself as being more asian than caucasian in appearance, due to her dark features and hair color. She said that it’s probably around 50-50, the number of people that guess her ethnicity correctly, although some also mistake her for being hispanic or pacific islander.

Instead of the natural background I had from being in a park for the last set of photos, these were taken more in the city with an urban landscape, providing for a simple backdrop. Like the first photos, I shot her with my DSLR with a 50mm lens with an aperture of f/1.8, allowing for a very blurred out background that comes from the shallow depth of field, successfully separating the subject from the background.

I started my first collage this weekend with the photos I took of my friend last weekend, and so far I’m liking how it’s turning out! 

After editing, I printed about 35 photographs of my friend as well as some shots of our surroundings during the shoot that I thought could be interesting to incorporate into the collage perhaps between the portrait shots for some variety. Realistically, I was only planning on using around 15-20 photographs in the actual collage, but I wanted to have a lot of options in angles, distance, lighting, etc. to play around with in the different layers of the collage. 

I started first with the topmost layer, a more standard portrait framing, to be the base of the collage. I decided to cut out the majority of his face and body, leaving only his hair, ears, and a little bit of his clothes. From there, I placed the cut out photograph over every single other photograph I had printed in order to see what would look best. This was kind of difficult, and I decided I needed a little bit more of a plan or vision as to what I wanted the final product to look like. 

I felt that the final collage should have a set of eyes, as without them I thought you would lose the sense that it was a “portrait” and because our brains extracts the most important information for face recognition from the eyes. So I wanted to have two eyes somewhere included in the layered collage, and from there I began to continue the process of holding the cut out photograph over every other photograph to find the right set of eyes. After finding the photograph that fit best, I cut it out following the cut-out of the photograph the layer before, leaving a centimeter of space. I repeated this process over and over, and will continue to, until there is no longer any space to cut out.

I began test shooting this past weekend, just to help figure out exactly what kind of photographs I want to take and will be needing in order to make my final collage pieces. 

I took advantage of the nice weather, and shot outside using natural lighting on my DSLR. My subject was my friend who was born here in New York City, to Japanese parents, and lived here until his 4th grade at elementary school. We’ve always talked about how we’re complete opposites-- he’s Japanese but born and raised in the United States, while I am half white but born and raised in Japan. We’ll jokingly talk about how I am “more Japanese” than he is, and he is “more American” than I am, as I have never lived in American until college, although when strictly looking at our races he is 100% Japanese and I am half white. 

This is something that’ll be difficult to portray just through the series of portraits I took of him, but while shooting, I tried to get different angles, emotions, and lighting, to have enough variety to pull from later when I compile them into one portrait collage. I think this first test shot and talking with him has confirmed my idea of accompanying the final pieces with an audio clip from the subjects I shoot, to better understand what their identity means to them.

For my project, I want to attempt to encapsulate a person’s identity with photographs that show more than just what’s on the surface. Traditionally with photographs, you’re forced to judge them based only on what you see in the frame, regardless of what might really be going on. Similar to some inspiration I’ve been posting on this blog, I want to take multiple photographs of a person and some how compile them into one piece through collage and mixed media to better depict that person’s identity. I’m also interested in maybe accompanying these pieces with audio recordings of the person’s voice talking about something relevant to their identity.

People are so much more complex and different than what first meets the eye, and it’s important for everyone to be able to see that, as there are all different kinds of people in this world who are all uniquely different. By opening up this kind of perspective on a person’s identity, people can be relieved of the pressures that come from trying to single themselves down into one distinct identity category.