Communicative Shapes: Exploring Intersections
San Antonio Road & El Camino Real
. . .
09.01.20 | 1pm
I got to the intersection around 1pm and I was already regretting choosing this intersection. It’s where the two busiest streets near my house, San Antonio and El Camino meet, about a 10 minute walk from my house. Much like driving down this street, listening to it is just as stressful, with the heavy traffic pretty much at all times of the day. It reminds me once again of how recklessly people drive in the Bay Area. The traffic is so loud that I can barely hear myself think, which I was really surprised to a lady sitting on a bench reading a book. She wasn’t waiting for the bus, In the hour I was there the bus stopped in front of her at least 4 different times and she kept reading. I thought this peaceful activity was a really interesting contrast to the heavy traffic and noise surrounding her.
. . .
09.02.20 | 3pm
The next day was just as busy and loud as the day before. I crossed the street this time to the other side of San Antonio to get a different view. I noticed today that the air quality was getting a lot worse with the wildfires. The normal blue skies are hazy and there is a visible tint in the air from the smoke.
The intersection is surrounded on all four sides by strips mall and complexes full of restaurants and places to eat, which is another reason why this area is so crowded at all times of the day.
. . .
09.04.20
I tried going back to San Antonio and EL Camino and this time I was suddenly aware of how vast the space was. I was specifically trying to focus on capturing simple objects and shapes in my photos and I found it hard with how spread out the intersection is. I did notice, however, how much traffic there was once again, like there has been every other time I’ve been there, and this time I made sure to capture it from a certain angle so that there were a line of cars visible and you could see the flow of the traffic.
Because the space was so large, it was hard to capture a lot of simple shapes in one picture, which was discouraging, so I decided to try taking photos at a different intersection. I went to the intersection Mt. Hamilton Road & San Antonio Road and there was a produce stand on the corner that looked interesting to me. I really liked the shapes and colors of the fruit.
. . .
09.09.20
I decided to make a mock relief using a photo I took at San Antonio and El Camino, the original intersection I went to. Despite the open space, I thought that the cars and the flow of traffic in this photo made for some interesting shapes.
I had a really hard time when cutting out the shapes for my composition because of all the thin lines from the lampposts and traffic signs. I found it hard to cut completely straight lines with these objects. However, I thought that the line of cars turned out looking very interesting, with the papers overlapping each other. I thought that the line of trees in the background came out well, although I had to simplify the outline of the leaves quite a bit.
I learned that having lines or shapes that intersect and go in opposite directions (for example, the car on the far left intersecting with the lines on the road) makes for a very interesting composition. I think next time, I would make sure to have more overlaps like these in my reliefs. As well as some variety in the subject matter, because the only things in the foreground of this picture are the cars.
. . .
09.12.20
I started out by using the same process that I did for the white relief for the grayscale. I used tracing paper to trace the original image and this time I numbered the individual pieces based on the color paper that I would use to cut it out. I ranked the white paper a 0 and the black paper a 4, with the various gray values in between.
I then started cutting out the pieces according to how I had assigned them. I decided to do the most prominent and close up figures, which in this case are the cars, in white and the most far off objects in the background in black. I chose to keep the road neutral, as it wasn’t one of the stand out features. However, I do wish that I had done the trees in the background in a slightly lighter shade so that there would be some contrast between the lamp posts and the trees. In general, I think I should have varied the shades a bit more.
I think that the greyscale composition is a lot better than the white one at communicating key elements of the intersection. Overall, compared to the all-white composition, I think this one shows a more wholistic view of the intersection.
. . .
09.16.20
I started out by using the same process as I did for the greyscale and numbered each of the individual pieces with a number based on the value I assigned for it. I chose to do the three cars driving across in the street in the middle in blue and labelled those separately. I chose these figures because I wanted to highlight the pattern of those cars. I think that the way they flow across the page is interesting, especially because of the way they increase in size as they move along. For the previous reliefs I used a purple glue-stick, which ended up being messy and caused the pieces to not stick well, so this time I used double-sided tape which worked a lot better and made the process a lot cleaner.
. . .
09.20.20
Overall, I learned a lot about how to create an interesting composition that is captivating for a viewer to look at. Studying my photo, as well as everyone else’s compositions taught me how a viewer’s eye tends to follow a page and how to use value and color to make certain elements that you thin are important stand out. I think doing the work manually and having to cut out the paper especially, forced me to focus on each of the individual shapes I wanted to include in my piece and it forced me to simplify it a lot more than I would have had I done this project digitally. It helped me to go through the process of deciding what parts of the photo are important and what parts can be removed.
. . .
09.22.20
From today’s review I was able to pick up a lot about the process of how people decide which areas are most interesting to them and how the process we go through when we are portraying them.
Specifically, in my group’s discussion we talked about perspective and what we were each trying to achieve when capturing the intersection. We realized that we were all drawn to intersections either very busy intersections or very empty ones. I thought that this was interesting because even though none of us have been to anyone else’s intersection, we could instantly tell from the reliefs the feelings that they gave off and whether they were busy or emty.
During our presentation we came to conclusion that while we were at the intersection, we were trying to portray it and capture it in a way that best conveyed how the space made us feel. We focused on the elements that stood out to us the most and that we thought would best convey the feeling of being at the intersection for a viewer who wasn’t actually there. While we weren’t consciously trying to do this while we were at the intersection, we realized this was something that we all subconsciously tried to do while we were taking photos, cropping our images, and decided which elements to emphasize in our reliefs.
