Week 13

Week 12

Happy Thanksgiving.

Week 11

Week 10

Craft: The fact is that this is poorly crafted. This was by no means what I was attempting conceptually. I do see this as a huge problem. By the next week I need to fix the right half of the image. Perhaps adding a picture to the bottom.

Concept: In my head, the idea behind this layout was to have a giant picture on one side and then the other side have text. I need to have the other two pages still. I will most likely follow the same layout.

Composition: Physically, the layout has text coming down three fourths of the page and an image taking up almost the entire page. I also plan to have the same consistency in the following two pages.

week 10

The Riviera Apartments, are located on 97th and Kedzie. A close friend of mine lives there and I end up taking a walk down there quite often as of late.



It took a great deal of time to arrive at the "areas of expertise." I figured that since I eat in the cafeteria, just about every day, I do know a lot about it.



The library at Saint Xaiver University is a place where I have been spending a lot of time as late to think and get my mind off of a lot of my problems.




This is probably my true expertise, O'Brien Hall. Last year as a Freshman, I spent a lot of my time here, but now that I live there I spend even more time there.

Special Edition

Week 9

Protecting-The security guards serve the purpose of protecting the guests and the biggest landmark in Bridgeport, US Cellular Field.



Transporting-One popular method of transportation to arrive in Bridgeport, is the CTA Red Line. The stop, Sox 35th, will arrive down the street from US Cellular field.



Parking-While there is a lot of parking in Bridgeport, during Chicago White Sox baseball games, it is unlawful to park on many streets of the neighborhood.

Week 8

Week 7

The colors in all three works of art remain constant. The foreground is red while the background is blue. The different types of red and blue are left up to their respective artist In the first one, the roses are the main focus. The bright red against the darker blue really gets the attention of the viewer. The only problem that I have with this work is the lighter blue. I find that to be very distracting to me, but the artist does direct the viewers eye to the center.



In the above abstract work, both colors are way too bright and distract me quite a bit. When I change the colors in my project, I am going to be careful about the closeness in relation to the colors. The red is the first thing that I see because it is an object. The bright blue is an after thought, but is still seen as distracting.

I feel as though this piece is the best of the three. The colors clash very noticeably, but still make sense together. The red is a darker red than in the previous two and the blue is a bright blue. The background is less noticeable partially due to the positioning of the red. This color scheme works particularly well. I hope to see the same effect in my project as we go forth.

Week 5

Craft: Carefully, I cut out the two images of people and resized the background. After cutting the images out to my liking, I copied the people multiple times and pasted them. Once placing them into a position that I liked, I dimmed the background to draw more attention to the bright green vests worn by the people in the piece. I probably should have filled in the negative area at the top.

Concept: The neighborhood I chose to do is Bridgeport. The major landmark in Bridgeport is US Cellular Field, home of the Chicago White Sox. I decided to use that as the background for that reason. The people that I collected photographs of were traffic officers. I placed them into the parking lot of the background photograph.

Composition: My goal in this piece is to have the viewer’s eyes be attracted to the people. Not any one specifically, but the people in general. I believe I accomplished this by taking the color out of the background and leaving the color in the people.

Week 4

Craft: Through careful use of the program photoshop and tools necessary to accomplish this task, I cropped out the background of the 4 images above and arranged them using the move tool.

Craft: After opening the first picture, I began to adjust it to give this image. I used the transform (command t) tool to increase the size of the lion statue and decrease the size of the other objects.

Craft: After opening the original document, I began to copy the layer of the Asian Man by dragging the layer down to the copy layer tool. After making many copies of the layer, the above picture was the result.

Craft: Starting with the original document, I adjusted the color of everything except for the resturant sign. I unsaturated the colors by using the drop down menu in each of the images in order to have the sign be the main focus.

Craft: In order to accomplish this blurred image, I had to start from the original and work my way to this. After opening it, I used multiple blurs until I discovered this one which seemed to work very well in this instance. I blurred all of the images and placed them in a very distinct order using the move tool.

Week 3

Craft: Through careful use of photoshop, I cut out the photographs of the Asian man, the restaurant sign, and yellow banner. It took a while to find the right place to put each of them, but when I finished I was happy with the placement.

Concept: Chinatown tends to get a reputation of being a stereotypical home to only Asians. When one thinks of the stereotypical Asian, one pictures an elderly male with the beard. Chinatown is not just home to elderly Asian men, but all sorts of people of many races. By taking this photo and having it blend in with the other people in the picture, I am attempting to convey a sense of assimilation. Directly above his head, lies a yellow banner. The yellow banner has Chinese writing on it. The restaurant sign located on the right hand side of the screen is brighter than the other two photographs and probably the most noticeable. When someone thinks of Chinatown, they picture the Chinese writing, restaurants, and stereotypical appearance. Through this project I was trying to convey that those can go seemingly unnoticed. They have also become a part of everyday life for those living in Chinatown.

Composition: The three images I chose to place in the background have been shrunk a little bit and have been blended into the background. The first and perhaps one of the least noticeable is the elderly Asian man at the bus stop in the lower left hand corner of the image. The reasoning behind this was to attempt to have the Asian man not stick out and continue with the concept I was trying to get across.

Week 2

The photograph was shot in Chinatown, IL. The day the photograph was taken, a few people and myself decided that we were going to take a trip to Chinatown. I saw this as an opportunity to take some photographs for this assignment. Chinatown is a very original part of the Chicago area. We got on the bus at the Corner of 103rd and Pulaski and traveled until the Station. Once arriving there, we boarded the train and traveled until the Chinatown stop. After being assigned to go out and take 20 more photographs of another neighborhood, I took 20 photographs of Bridgeport. Those photographs have yet to be uploaded. I went to the White Sox game with my father via a car and showed up a few hours early to take a few photographs.

Craft: I looked for a good position to take the photograph of Chinatown and the City in the background. After a few trials, I determined that this was the best of the few that I took.

Concept: The reasoning behind this photograph made a lot of sense to me at the time I took it. I saw the Willis Tower in the background as we were walking back from Chinatown after fulfilling the required 20 photographs. I saw this as a good opportunity to contrast the typical city view to that of Chinatown.

Composition: In the photograph, many different colors are most own, but the one color that is the most prominent is red. A viewer can easily see red in the buildings as well as many of the signs. The middle of the photograph has the red entry overhang which on the other side reads “Welcome to Chinatown.” Red is seemingly appearing many times in many of the photographs that I took.

Week 1

Name: Michael Brennan

Major: Business-General

Passions: Baseball, Football

Hobbies: Collecting Sports Memorabilia

Cubs/Sox: White Sox

Extracurricular: Work, Writing

Where are you from: Hinsdale, IL

What kind of music do you enjoy: Country, Punk/Pop, Punk Rock