I've never been a very avid reader. It's always been difficult for me to sit down and try to concentrate on a page full of words (I always liked picture books better ;-) ). Maybe part of the problem lies in the fact that I often have difficulty placing myself in the story. I spend so much time trying to focus on just reading the words that the beauty of the plot and its many characters is lost on me. I do have to give authors a lot of credit though. It's a true feat to be able to put down in words a story you see in your mind's eye. I have a hard enough time writing these blog posts every week!
For myself, I've discovered that I actually get more out of a book when listening to it on tape. By handing off the process of actually reading the words on the page to someone else, I find that I can better focus on the story and I get a lot more out of it. There are a ton of great stories out there, lots of food for the soul and the imagination, and uninhibited by the grueling process of physically reading a book, I can jump right into a story and begin to enjoy the twists and turns of great plots and smile at the witty euphemisms utilized by so many literary greats. This for me is truly when books come alive...
I've made it to week 10! Wow, I thought I would be all out of ideas by now, but here we are, still going strong! I wasn't sure how this image was going to turn out, I had the concept in my mind but no idea on how I was going to execute it. I wanted to create an image that conveyed the idea of imagining oneself as part of an unfolding adventure - an image where books come to life and the course of one's escapades depends upon the turn of the next page.
The most difficult part of this image was stitching the various components together. I took the shot of myself out in the field as the sun was going down (it created those nice golden tones and the awesome rim lighting). I then photographed the books on a desk in the studio using a single strobe and some colored gels to set the scene for our book-reader's journey. Then, by merging the two images together (and adding a few extra layers for the foreground to give the impression of the story "spilling out" onto the table), I created a seamless pathway into another world. It was important to try and merge the words on the page and the image together to further emphasize that it was the story coming to life, so by using layer masks and adjusting opacity, I combined the two elements together so that they are now inextricably entwined (that means they're stuck together forever ;-) ).
This was a really fun project to work on, even though I wasn't sure if it would come together or not, and I think it makes a good point. Stories, whether visual, audible, or written, should draw a person in, should spark their imagination, should elicit emotion, should cause them to ponder. Truly what good is a story when it does none of these things? Such are the books that lie dormant on the shelf, their pages fading, their covers collecting dust. Story is everything, and if it isn't engaging on some level, then it is ineffective and has fallen short of its purpose. At least, that's my theory anyway...
