Blogpost #3
Eye Tracking
The blue lines show the contours and the red, green and yellow lines show the eye movement in the three viewings respectively.
Imagined Photographs
Pouya and I found a way to share our visions together, although our visions for the images were much very different from one another. Since as long as I can remember, I have been fascinated sunsets and sunrises, and how they paint the everywhere in their image. In spirit of this fascination, I have become very adventurous with color manipulation (i.e. color grading, masking etc.) and I was thinking of using it in my photographs in some way. Pouya on the other had much different idea in mind. He was interested in the natural contrast of two different spots on Massachusetts Avenue. The backstory here being that on one side of Massachusetts Avenue near Boston Symphony Orchestra you can see aesthetic colorful buildings, The First Church of Christ, and Northeastern University while heading down south this bright sunny neighborhood gives its way to neglected neighborhoods, with an array of chaotic elements, including a vast number of homeless people.
Although seemingly having nothing in common, our visions ended up merging together better than anything we could have hoped. We decided that we would take two photographs. The sunrise and its warm colors are a symbol of new beginnings, hope and prosperity, going well with the upscale neighborhood picture. The sunset with its ominous red give visions of frailty, ends and lost opportunities. Below, we outline the details of these two pictures.
The picture of the upscale neighborhood: We decided to take the picture either near the Newbury st. or the Boston Symphony Orchestra. The pictures would be taken facing northeast half an hour after sunrise, to create a nice well-lit photograph, with the sunrise basking the neighborhood in its light. Ideally, the photograph would have clear sky, with little to no clouds. There would a lot of open spaces in the photo, with only one or two people present in the picture, all spatially well separated. They are indifferent to each other, as if consumed by their own livelihoods. They either don’t express emotion, or express joy to a small extent. Ideally, one of the subjects would be walking their dog or carrying brand shopping bags (to better portray the upscale neighborhood). The ‘Mass Ave’ sign should be clearly visible in the picture, and it should be large enough to attract the viewers eye to itself easily. The picture should be slightly over-saturated, to better elicit a sense of livelihood. Lastly, the image would be in full focus.
The other picture: This picture will be taken on the other end of Mass Ave, across the fire department building. The image would be facing southeast clearly a homeless community sitting with all their belongings (e.g., shopping carts full of clothes and plastic bags) in the picture. This picture must have small bits of sky, ideally cloudy, and should be more cluttered with the chaos of the community (to elicit a sense of claustrophobia). There would be a dozen people in the photograph, close to each other and to the camera (or at least not far away from it). They would portray the chaos we are aiming at, while also showing a sense of togetherness, a trait lacking from the counterpart picture. Their emotions are mostly a mix of fatigue, anger and care. The setting sun would ideally cast an ominous red shadow beneath the clouds, adding the intensity of the picture. Once more, we would want to have the “Mass Ave” sign to be clearly visible in the picture to help the viewer understand our vision. The picture as a whole would be vastly undersaturated, creating a chaotic and cluttered image full of washed-out people and buildings; with the only exceptions being the red from the setting sun, and the bright green of the “Mass Ave” sign, further guiding the audiences eyes to this part of the image. The image should be out of focus, with only the sign (and perhaps the homeless people) being in the focus, to create a hazy result.
We were extremely happy with how our ideas turned out and we think these images will fully deliver the message they are intended to entail. That being said, we do acknowledge that these pictures are conditioned on a good amount of ideality and opportunism, but we believe that the combination of people, symbolism of the sun, the extremist color palette and framing will deliver our vision.