Photo-Letter Composites

Using Photoshop, combine a black and white photograph with a letter form to create two elegant photo-letter composites. Here are the parameters for this assignment:

1) Your composite must conform to the dimensions of 14x14" with the image and the letter form each being 7x7" Your final print resolution should be 300 dpi.

2) Your final design must use a pre-existing typeface, serif or san-serif. If you decide to use a more expressive or hand-drawn typeface, get approval from me first.

Tips for Success:

1) Cropping is key! Your compositions will be square, so you must crop your image carefully.

2) You may edit or alter the typeface in your design, but make sure it's consistent. Use the transform commands in Photoshop to make changes to the letters appearance.

3) Make the connection as seamless as possible, use your sketchbook as inspiration for your ideas.

4) Choose an appropriate typeface. The letter is half of the design, so the kind of typeface you use must integrate well with your image!

5) When finished, save a psd. file (with layers unflattened) and a jpg (w/layers flattened) Upload the jpg to the Flickr discussion pool to turn in.

Final design due on Flickr group pool by: Wed. 12/9

Click #4 Reflection Winner: Renee Higdon

Reflection, by Renee Higdon

Alternative Process #1: Cyanotypes!

Now that you've accumulated a ton of negatives to work from by shooting four rolls of film in the 1st quarter, it's time to use them for something totally new...the alternative processes! I'll demonstrate the process for making a cyanotype this week in class, but in the meantime, start to think about negatives you'd life to work with.

A brief overview of the cyanotype: Discovered by Sir John Hershel (1792-1871) in 1842, a mere 3 years after the “official” announcement of the discovery of photography, the cyanotype was the first non-silver iron process. This alternative process provided photographers with permanent images in an assortment if blue values. A cyanotype is an ultraviolet (UV) sensitive contact printing process that requires, as do most of the non-silver processes, a negative the same size as the final print. Of course you can use transparent, translucent, or opaque objects to make a cyanotype photogram. Combining both processes of using a negative and various objects (like photograms!) to print can allow even more freedom in the printing!

When making a cyanotype, you will need a negative the same size as the final image. This means that you will be using your ortho-litho film to create large negatives, up to 8x10" large. You may even want to tile several 8x10" ortho-lithos together to create an even larger cyanotype! Check out the slideshow below to get some cool ideas for things you might try with this process!