At the start, I had zero clue as to what my subject or story would be for this essay. After seeing the examples used in class, I took a heavy inspiration from "Books from my mother." Instead of looking at books or movies or any other collection of a medium that was shared to me, I instead looked to comic book panels and how even a single image could capture the tone of the story it was in. This idea quickly evolved upon learning that it needs to have a real story behind it, so summarizing each book based off of one image wasn't going to work.
My idea became more focused on myself. What do I want to say? What do I have to say? This can't be a review, so what will I say? After some time thinking on these things among others, I found what my subject would be: the evolution of my taste in comic books, and how my critical eye towards them has developed over the course of a decade (gosh, its been that long?).
My initial list, as you can see in a separate blog post, is pretty different from the one I ended on. Some of my selections didn't quite make the cut, as I either had nothing to say about the book or if I felt like I would be repeating myself. Other changes, like Bone, were added because I had forgotten about them, yet upon remembering I saw just how much it impacted my tastes.
I started out with that initial list finding images of the panels and pages I was looking for online. Some, like the one for Low, were extremely low-res to the point you couldn't make out what people were saying. Then another constraint came in: all pictures must be your own, and they should all have a consistent aspect ratio.
This constraint had me worried. While I could easily take pictures of the pages and panels I wanted to mention, most of the issues they are found in are at home, a 4 hour drive away. There were a few that I have digitally, but I doubt a screenshot would be any better than a Google image search. Last Tuesday, a stroke of luck hit me regarding these issues (pun intended).
My parents would be coming to visit my sister while they all went up to the Penn State football game. I asked those loving people if they wouldn't mind bringing up my comic book boxes, and they said yes. I met them over the weekend, got my boxes and a lunch, and came back to my dorm and took the pictures I needed. Out of the ten comic books in my Photo Essay, nine of them have an image I took myself. The only one I couldn't get a picture of was for Bone, as I had no idea where those books went.
The hurdle I was not able to jump was one that's pretty hardwired into me, and that is making these pictures look good. My aforementioned sister, Bethany, managed to snatch up all the natural photography skill in our family's genetic code, I was left with an eye for a good story, one that I still had to train. While the photos themselves aren't too pretty, the art within them is incredible.
Overall, I'm proud of the words I wrote for this Photo Essay, but I know the photos could all use improvements, I just don't know what those improvements would be. They're pictures of pages, how creative can a guy with zero photography experience get with that? Hopefully, the stories found within this essay reach more people, because all of them deserve to be experienced (aside from Reborn, you can live with skipping that book).
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