Intersection
09.01.2020
For the past six years, this intersection has been a place that I pass everyday walking, on a bus, or with a car. It’s a road that takes me home, a connection to downtown from my isolated home, and a beautiful walking area with a view of a stream and sunset.
It’s where Baeul 2 road and Gwanpyeong riverside road meet, where the quaint and busy sides of this suburban town meet. It takes people from school to home, from home to restaurants.
On a Thursday morning like today, the intersection is empty, with barely any cars or people crossing. Later in the afternoon, it becomes easier to spot students who are returning home from school and extracurriculars, bikers, or parents with heavy grocery bags in their arms. It is more difficult to spot working population, possibly because they would travel by car or public transportation. Unlike other complex intersections, this one is free of excessive traffic noise, and one can even hear birds chirping at an idle time.
Although the demographic of this city (Daejeon) is quite homogeneous, this small town in particular has a lot of foreigners because there is an international school very close to the intersection. It is common to meet one of my high school teachers or their children while passing this road.
The atmosphere of this intersection changes significantly based on what time I visit it. At noon, the intersection seems nothing more than empty roads. However, at sunset, the spot becomes a great viewpoint of the beautiful suburban environment.
The intersection is an effective representation of this town (Gwanpyeongdong), which is spacious, and has a balanced combination of vegetation and infrastructure. It is this speciousness
I noticed that there were a diversity in the medium that create the intersection, including tiles, bricks, and cement. Because the intersection provides paths for pedestrians, bikes, and cars, there were a variety of textures that indicate and define the paths.
I revisited the crossroad around 7 PM, and there were significantly more movement occurring at this time than at 1 PM.
The vegetation in the different sides of the intersection was also an interesting viewpoint, as on side near to the river, there were more hardwood trees, and near the apartment complexes there were more softwood trees like pine.
While observing the intersection, I noticed the differences between the amount of traffic in the two crossing roads. I realized that vertically (Baeul 2-ro), there are more buses going straight across, and horizontally, there are more personal cars going the horizontal direction or making turns. There were more passengers in the left vertical crossroad.
09.07.2020
Today, unlike my two previous trips to the intersection, I took a walk to my location early in the morning at around 9 AM. Similarly to last time, the weather was very clear and breezy. Whereas previously I observed the more general movement and the shape of the intersection, this time, I observed more of the functions of the intersection and their purposes.
- Informational; passenger-priority
As I made myself comfortable sitting in the corners of the intersection, I began to notice that the intersection was very informational, providing necessary cautions and guide for the various types of passengers such as pedestrians, bikers, the visually impaired, and children.
Because the intersection connects many apartment complexes to stores, parks, school, etc., there are many pedestrians crossing, this intersection seems to make clear communications with passengers to ensure safety.
In one corner of the intersection, the floor is covered with multiple types of tiles and medium such as cement to distinguish the lane for different types of passengers (bikers, pedestrians, etc.). At the edge of the corner, there are polls set up to prevent passengers from standing too near the edge as they might be hit by vehicles taking a curve.
At the edge, one can also find braille tiles that help visually impaired passengers to identify the edge of the sidewalk. Because the level of passenger sidewalks and the road is not distinguished with different heights, these means of protection would significantly help prevent car accidents.
The direction and side to which passengers should walk across is also given in the form of arrows. Because walking on the right side is encouraged in Korea, the arrows are placed on the right side of each crosswalk.
Another feature of this intersection that prioritizes passengers is that on every corner, there are trees that provide shade. Especially in summer, the vegetation in each corner of the intersection provides a cool shade for passengers that are waiting, and also separates the road from the apartments nearby.
2. Angle of the curve
The angles that form at the corners of this intersection is wider and steeper than other intersections in this town, because the intersection doesn’t occur in a right angle.
I realized that this is because the vertical road (Gwanpyeong riverside road) was built to parallel the river on its east.
After today’s visit, my perception of the intersection as a less active part of the road changed as I began to see how deliberately the signs and the road marks were created. I realized that this intersection prioritizes the crossing of passengers more than vehicles, which could be the reason to why there are less cars seen than in other intersections in this town.
09.10.2020
From the past sessions of shooting pictures of my chosen intersection, one of the biggest challenges that I encountered was that capturing the accurate shape and features of the intersection was very difficult because the two roads intersect in an X shape and not perpendicularly. This key feature of the intersection made some of my pictures seem like images of one very wide road when taken at certain angles.
In order to capture the intersecting angles in an accurate way, I decided to narrow the width of my picture as making it horizontally wide tends to focus more on capturing a flat surface of the roads rather than embodying the depth and the angled intersection of the place.
By taking a few steps further from the corners of the intersection, I was able to capture the curved angles of the corners as well as the point of intersection between the two roads.
After deciding on the location to shoot, then I began to experiment how to embody the moving objects (vehicles, people, animals) from my chosen point of view. During my last visit to the intersection, there were mostly just cars and not many pedestrians present, so I began observing the size and the direction of movement of vehicles that would best accentuate the key features of the intersection. In my case, I was focused primary on emphasizing the non-right angle curves of the intersection, so I took some pictures in which cars were making a left or right turn at the intersection.
Considering that the small details in my photo would be simplified in to shapes, I decided that taking a photo where the size the direction of a driving car is easily recognizable would be optimal in showing the movement occurring at the intersection.
While translating the components of the photos into a relief, I was initially confused in setting the levels or layers as the more layers of card stock I use would create more depth (from surface to the eye). While the sizes of the moving vehicles show the depth of the intersection, I thought that using 3~4 layers of positive relief for the objects in the very front would best describe the depth of the image.
09.15.2020
<Grayscale Composition>
The second task to complete in developing an in-depth understanding of my intersection was to create a grayscale composition of the space with card stock. Because my final composition shows the two intersecting roads in a portrait frame, the the perspective narrows down very steeply, making the lanes continuing in the background very narrow for both roads.
In order to show this depth in my grayscale composition, I decided to use the different tones of gray to demonstrate distance. By expressing near objects with greater value and faraway objects with lighter value of gray, I planned to express depth.
While grouping the objects to represent in the same shade of gray, I initially planned to categorize the objects from the actual distance from the point where I took the picture — to use different shades for all four corners of the intersection — but I realized that would require too many different values of grey, and would hinder me from developing my understanding through reduction and simplification.
I decided to group the objects that are within the same y-axis coordinates when seen from a satellite view, with the horizontal road being parallel to the x-axis.
However, while using only 4 shades of gray, I realized that I had not distinguished the value of the sky and the roads, which made the buildings and tree seem like they were floating objects. Also, I had an overall perception that without using black, the distance between the background and foreground were not well expressed in my composition.
Therefore, I expressed the road with a medium-high value of gray and expressed the nearest objects such as the tree, posts, traffic, vehicles, etc. with black, which created a much stronger contrast between the foreground and background items.
Instead of layering the paper for overlapping areas, this time, I tried to cutout the overlapping areas to prevent irregular thickness in the layers of paper.
09.17.2020
<Color Composition>
I hadn’t tested the values for the greyscale composition before I actually worked on it, and I had to recreate many of the objects because the values did not meet my anticipations of showing enough depth. In the greyscale composition, I used all five values of grey to show the long distance between the nearest object (tree) and the farthest object (apt building).
Contrarily, for my color composition, I wanted to recreate the atmosphere and mood of the space rather than to accentuate the sense of depth, so I decided to reduce the number of greyscale values used to four, excluding the darkest shade of grey. By eliminating the shade that attracts the viewer’s eyes the most and adding a different color, I wanted the the composition to blend together as one piece rather than having specific areas that pop too much.
Through the use of color, I wanted to accentuate the curved form of the intersecting roads that I captured in my photo. In order to do so, I thought that I would have to add colors to the following objects in my composition.
- The four corners of the intersection
By coloring in the four corners of the intersection, I anticipated that the viewer’s eyes would be naturally drawn into the negative space, which is the intersecting roads. Also, by distinguishing the color between the sidewalk corners and the road, I would be able to inform the audience about where human activity occurs and where vehicles move through.
2. The intersecting roads
By coloring in the road, I thought I would be able to fully yet simply outline the curved form of the intersection captured at the viewpoint. Also, as the color covers the bottom 1/4 of the area, it gave a sense of stability and solidness, which I wanted to convey as the intersection serves as a very solid ground for both vehicle and human activities within this district, connecting architecture and nature together.
Although the first use of color accentuates the angle of the viewpoint in the picture and could be seen as more interesting with objects of various heights are highlighted, I thought coloring the road would more accurately describe the peaceful mood and the orderliness that the intersection provides to the viewers.
<Selecting Color>
In selecting the colors, I picked colors that provide a sense of calmness and coolness, that would well describe the atmosphere of the intersection.
Using sky blue as a ground color made it seem like the cars were floating on water due to the preconception that blue ground surface is ocean, so I thought that using blue would be ineffective decision. Using turquoise lessened that effect, but it was a color that was too strong that stood out from the greyscale background and did not blend into create the calm effect. Therefore, I decided that using a lavender color would best suit my intentions of creating a calm yet blending color. Using a subtle color that does not have a strong visual presence allowed me to convey the relaxed suburban atmosphere of the intersection into my composition.
09.22.2020
I received feedback about the work I presented last class (left), and I decided that adding more detail to the buildings and especially the roads would make solid lavender fill seem less monotonous and a more accurate representation of the intersection (right). By cutting out the crossroad prints and engraved printing with a bone folder on the surface of the main building. To emphasize depth a little bit more like I did in the greyscale composition, I highlighted the two nearest objects with the darkest shade of grey.
Also, compared to my greyscale composition, I added more details to the obscured objects in the mid-background by giving them distinct shape and color, which helped me define the corners and the intersecting roads more clearly.
In this project, translating images into simpler shapes, values, and color helped me gain a new perspective of the space. From the relief composition, I was able to understand the layering of objects and the concept of foreground and background by eliminating all components but the layered forms.
From the greyscale composition, from the way I chose to use the values, I was able to capture depth and thus express the distance from the foreground to the background. Expressing depth also allowed me to communicate the direction and the perspective more clearly, so that the movement of vehicles and the orientations of objects were easier to identify. It was a challenge to set categorize different objects into a small palette of greyscale colors, as depending on how I choose to group them, the viewer would perceive the distance differently.
By adding a tint of color in the greyscale composition in my final piece of work, the calm and subtle tone of lavender set the mood of the calm suburban atmosphere, blending into the greyscale composition. I realized that selecting a particular color is effecting in establishing a mood for the composition, but it may create biased responses based on who looks at the work.
Post-Unit Reflection
After hearing about everyone’s opinions and responses to the questions in reference to our works, I was able to learn the different ways to use color, point of view, depth, value, etc. Particularly, I realized that I have been using and thinking about color as a tool to replace value in the greyscale, and I learned that I could have thought about using color uniquely in ways that only color can achieve, such as expressing a certain emotion through color, like one of my classmates suggested.
The feedback session was a time for me to see how the different elements to create composition (orientation, color, POV, etc.) and the ways in which they are incorporated can tell completely different stories. By tweaking the size of objects or changing the orientation of the frame, the creator is able to instill a certain perception or encourage the audience to interpret the work in a certain way. I was able to understand how every design decision needs a purpose and goal to successfully achieve responses from the viewers.
