Plan:
I am planning to take photos of lots of different road signs and then put them together in slices like a pizza so a bit of each one can be seen in the full picture. I want to take at least 6 photos to put together, or another even number, making it easier for all the ‘slices’ to be equal sizes. I am also wanting to find circular signs to do this with as I think it will look a lot better than with any other shape.
Shoot:
These pictures were taken on the streets around college so I travelled a bit on foot to take each one. When I was taking these photos I made sure to use a focal length of 55mm and took photos from different distances. This was so it would be easier to match the edges of the signs to make a perfect circle and still have them all in a square frame. I also continuously changed the aperture for some of the photos so none of them would be underexposed or overexposed as the sky was quite bright when I was taking photos.
I started off by making 6 different layers in photoshop-each with a different sign on it-and noticed that because I had taken the photos from a lower angle than the sign was at, most of them looked slightly oval shaped but that was okay because it was still fairly easy to match up the edges of each sign.
I decided to make 3 different versions of ways to edit these photos together; One with a grid of four squares, one with 8 triangular slices and one with 6 vertical strips of each sign.
I really like the first grid of 4 signs I did because of how the signs I used all contain the colours red and white, creating a sort of colour theme and making the signs look like they could go together even though they don’t.
The picture with 8 slices would have to be my least favourite because I think it is too hard to figure out what types of signs have been used as it looks too chaotic.
The combination of photos that I like the most is the last one with the strips of signs, as it is the photo where it is easiest to tell which kinds of road signs have been used. I also like how the red bar is on both sides of it as it makes the whole photo look more balanced.
I think this shoot links well with Journeys (by road) because of the use of signs that are most commonly seen on streets. They also show time passing as they were all taken at slightly different times during the day.