My Latest Creation

It's funny how inspiration comes to one at the most mundane times. I got the idea for this project while driving to work the other day. It was around 4:30 in the morning and since I hadn't gotten a decent night's sleep, I was tired and driving on autopilot. I was in a pretty bad mood and even wearing my grumpy day shirt hadn't lifted my spirits any (for those of you who don't know what this means, my grumpy day shirt is a blue t-shirt with the grumpy old man from UP on it...the idea is that looking at it will make me smile and thus be happy). I really wasn't looking forward to sitting at a computer toning pictures for 8 hours that day (and then another 6 when I got home). My mind was wandering as I drove. I thought of my fight with my family from the night before and then thought of all the pictures I still had to tone from this wedding. I then asked God to help me make it through the day. 

I thought about the times I am most happy, and I realized that I'm most happy when I have a creative project to work on. I love making collages of the places I visit. I wondered if I could do something creative with the photos from this wedding. My mind focused on a picture I had shot of Mark and Sarah by the arch. I had already saturated the color of the picture to make it look cool, but could I do something else with it?  All of a sudden it came to me; I could make that the center and main photo, and then make the other photos black and white and create a border around the arch photo. 

I immediately became excited and started figuring out sizes in my head. The whole thing is 16x20 inches. I figured they could make it an 8x10 if they thought 16x20 was too big. The photos on either side are 2x2 and the photos on the top and bottom rows are 1.5x1.5. As soon as I got to work, I drew a little sketch of it on a post-it so I wouldn't forget. I wouldn't be able to work on it until much much later.

I ended up starting it that night, laying out the main photos and placing a few other photos. That was around 10 p.m. and as I had to wake up at 3:30 the next day, I figured bed was where I needed to be. I finished it yesterday night and decided to share it on my blog (I sized it down for the blog, this is an 8x10 with a resolution of 72...basically crap quality, so don't get any ideas about stealing it).

I don't think I am going to post all of the pictures from this wedding. There are so many and I have to shoot another wedding Saturday. This is a collage of the events of the day and has a fair amount of the pictures in it. I tried to keep it to pictures of just the bride and groom since it was their day. I plan to give it to Mark and Sarah, and I really hope they like it. My siblings think it looks like a movie poster and could use a title scripted across the picture. Any thoughts?