Typology Mania

This week in my Fundamentals of Digital Media class we learned about Typologies. According to The Free Dictionary Typology is the "study or systematic classification of types that have characteristics or traits in common." We did some reading on Bernd and Hilla Becher's typologies of industrial buildings and structures that were organized in a grid fashion. When first reading about the Becher's photography, I was completely overwhelmed... once again taking the lesson too literally; where was I going to find something unique, large and interesting to take a picture of?! Luckily my professor posted some really great examples from her previous students - like coffee mugs, scarves and bottle caps. Oh, duh... I immediately knew I wanted to make a typology of some of my rocks.

I've been collecting rocks all of my life, sometimes I tumble them and other times I like the natural roughness and leave them be. It's always nice to go on a trip and to be able to bring back a little piece of that place with you. I particularly adore my rocks from India, two of which are featured in the grid below.

I thought that my weathered back deck would make an interesting backdrop to the rocks, so I started there. Once I had all 16 pictures ready to go, I used Pixlr's Advanced Photo Editor to adjust the levels, crop the pictures into a square and then to resize the pictures. I then created a new document, adding each picture as a layer and evenly spaced them before flattening it down into my completed image. Here's a handy tip: don't freak out while using your new laptop and accidentally close the browser when you are thisclose to finishing the project... it isn't fun to start all the way over... Anyway, I hope you like it, I adore it and I think I'm going to have it framed.