Slideshow Critique

I learned a lot from this assignment and I am really starting to appreciate the power of Lightroom. I actually had thought of doing stills to music in a similar fashion a long time ago when I was first contemplating going to college.
 To see it can be done so easily is nice.
My first attempt at producing one was about halfway successful. I shot many images for this before I came up with my idea to use text to touch on the caustic political environment we currently find ourselves in. I am also a huge fan of Hunter S Thompson. I was deeply saddened by his death in 2005 and I know he was a very outspoken opponent of Nixon and later George W Bush. I thought I could tie in part of his suicide note and the other images in a way that made it come together as a whole, but I fell short of this goal. I was influenced by Winston Smith the collage artist mainly, and so I created a background painting and collaged some text onto it for one of the images in a nod to him.
Another thing that weakened the piece was the fact that the images did not change quickly enough. I have to admit I was having problems with Lightroom finding some of my images, even though they had been placed in a collection in my catalog and not touched, when I came back the next day LR said they weren't there. That cost me 4 images, which took away from the consistency and also made the time each image stayed onscreen a bit too long. It irritated me but noone seemed to know what the problem was, and that is one aspect of LR I still find very frustrating.
Overall I was fairly pleased with this first time effort. I feel I produced some nice images as stand alone and a fairly interesting slideshow. This is definitely something I will use again in the future.

Slideshow Assignment

Objectives: My objective is to use images of text out of context to create a play on words relating to the political division in America.

Method:  I will shoot images of found text and try to put them together in a way that clearly conveys the message which should touch on the divisive state of American politics.

 

Inspirations: The use of image and text is nothing new, and there is a plethora of artists working with text in various ways. I tried to find two artists I had never heard of before. The inspiration hopefully will come in to play when it comes time to tie this together. I have to admit I found these guys after the fact but the have helped me refine the idea.

The first is David Smith, and seeing his book recently influenced my decision on how to approach this assignment on a more sub - conscious level I feel. The influence is straight forward: it was the red and blue text on his book cover.

My second choice is a collage artist named Winston Smith. He uses imagery from 1940s and 50s magazines for his collages. Apparently the Cuban Missile crisis scared the hell out of him because he touches on the issue of nuclear proliferation a lot in his work. He is very skillful at using text out of context and making his pieces look authentic to the period.