So last night I wrote that my students were really inspiring me right now. After creating that post here on Ruminations, I began scanning Michael Todea's photos so that I could show them to future students for the "Image and Text" assignment, and thought it would be great to post my student work here.
Michael did this incredible series of Macro shots. One of the things he did that was really awesome, was that below his photos he also pinned a little baggie to the wall that contained all the tiny text scraps he'd shot with. It was wonderful because it gave a real sense of the degree of magnification. The asterisk, for example, was so miniscule that I might never have even seen it if it had been just loose somewhere.
Just in case you can't tell what you're looking at...
The first photo is the surface of a leaf. The second one down is pretty obvious, I think...note the detail of the water drops!! The third photo is a single sugar crystal -I love the horizon line and the way the letter recedes into the background. The fourth photo is not mysterious.
One of the things that I so loved about his project was not just the way the photos look, and the technical sass of them, but I also really liked the ideas about symbols contained in his work. Text and words are just symbols of the things they represent. What I extract from these photos is something like this: "L is for Leaf" so the letter L is a symbol of a symbol of the symbol (i.e., the photo is also a symbol) of a leaf. OK, yes, that does sound confusing, but I think you catch my meaning...maybe.
If you would like to see more of Michael's photos, you can check out his Facebook page!