Explorations

“How can you find explore, and/or expand your passion?”

For the explorations project we were assigned to tap into our imaginations and passions and to create our own project that would further improve on a 21st century skill. I chose to do my Explorations Project surrounding photography, which is something I have always been super into. I included my 21st century skill of visual literacy which I incorporated into my project by having a message that I am trying to portray through my photos. I chose to create a collage centered and based upon the word serenity and what that means to me.

My explorations process consisted of taking many photos. In the beginning I didn’t have a set location I wanted to just get images that portrayed serenity. After shooting in my backyard, local locations, and the beach I decided that it would better tie together my theme of serenity to focus on one place. I went to the beach a total of two times to capture images and to make sure I got a variety. I ended up with about 1000 photos. I then went through the long process of narrowing down my photos and ended up with 21 final pictures. I edited each of those final images in photoshop enhancing and brightening certain things about each photo. This let me get more in depth of what I was really capturing and what message I was sending. Originally I thought I would end up using all of those photos in my collage but when trying to put it together I realized it would get too cluttered and also that some of the photos were just too similar to fit together correctly in the way I had envisioned.

My final production ended up being this collage. I was super happy with it even though it took hours. I worked in Adobe InDesign to create a layout to work with and get the pictures set in stone. I experimented a lot along the way of this final production and ended up using some pictures that were similar but different to put them together to make an ongoing picture in some spaces. In other spaces there are more close up images of animals or creatures and plants that I found on the beach. Overall, I am super happy how it turned out with the colors super rich.

I loved the Explorations project. There was a lot of independence in the project as far as what you did, when you did it and how you did it. Some people can view that as uncertainty but I choose to view it as freedom. There are no wrong answers or something that is not good enough for this project as long as you try and put in effort. I thought it was a great way to end the year and I really did enjoy seeing what everyone created. This challenged us to tap into our creative sides which I valued. I benefitted in many ways being able to improve my time management, my planning skills, and of course my visual literacy skills. I also valued how much I wanted to do this and how much I got into it and ended up enjoying it.

In addition to the Infographic and Final Production piece for the Explorations project we got to make a video going over the process and experience that we had during the Explorations project. My video surrounded serenity and visual literacy and how one can find peace in themselves.