Beginning with the subway photographs, and drawing ideas and questions from there, I let my mind flow for a few minutes. Then at the end, I would try to identify the overall theme or mood of the stream of consciousness I just penned down. The overarching themes i found in each of the five stream of consciousness were, in short, “Life Choices”, “Energy”, “Community”, “Nature”, and “My Future”. I intended to do a series of five photographs, each representative of one of the five streams of consciousness. Some were more literal, and some were more interpretative in my approach to this project.
For example, my first was the longest stream of consciousness i wrote down. In the end, I found the dominating theme of the thought process to be questioning life choices. How have I reached the point that I am at now in life? What if I had made different choices that would have drastically changed my life? What if I had chosen to pursue a career in music rather than Product Design, in going to Parsons? Thus, I approached this one by photographing my guitar with a drumset, somewhat blurred, in the background. When editing the photo, I tried to recreate that feeling of questioning and “what could’ve been” by reducing the exposure of the photo, and adding some emphasis to the highlights. In doing this, I could have the white of the guitar standing out clear and prominently from the background, while maintaining an overall dark photo.
