Photo Challenge: Picture Your Words

I once ran across a photography website and saw one of the coolest ideas I'd ever seen. The photographer, Abba Richman, had done a scavenger hunt to create a photographic alphabet made from everyday items like wheels, bricks, light posts, architectural curves, trees and so much more. It is simply amazing to see.

For this month's photo challenge, I challenged several ladies to this creativity task: Spell a word or write a sentence using photographs of letters, words, and objects found in your environment.

To prove to myself that it could be done quickly, I spent a few minutes in my own house looking at our furniture and decorations a little differently. In just a few minutes, I found what I needed to create the following "STEED" collage:

Michelle Fulton took the challenge to create this photo collage using the letters in signs around her neighborhood:

On the way home one night, I took a close look at my surroundings and all the different ways I could possibly spell my name with pictures. These are my results:

M - Outside the local Romano's Macaroni Grill is some landscaping that includes bushes trimmed in the shape of the initials - RMG.

I - This is the "I" from the local IKEA store. I selected this because of the bold yellow color.

C - I'm one to think outside of the box, so I decided the perfect way to do so would be to take a picture of one of the letters in sign language. And...since a portion of the playground near my house has a panel with all the letters in sign language and Braille, it wasn't hard to find.

H - Yes, I stood in the middle of the street and took this picture, so I could use the "H" in the "school" warning sign painted on the road. I'm sure I got a few puzzled looks, but I wanted something different.

E - There is a new neighborhood going up a few miles from my house and the construction workers spray-painted, and then outlined, the name of the new development on a piece of wood. Again, I was looking for something different.

LL - I spell my name with two "L's" and wanted to take a picture of something that already contained the double-L. It wasn't my first choice, but I ended up using the "All Way" notice under a stop sign.

E - This was a two-for-one while I was at IKEA. There was a stencil on the road for a fire lane and this is the scuffed up "E" in lane.

Kayla Richards took a black-and-white approach after collecting the photographs she needed to spell "photography" at a tractor pull event:

This photo challenge was great because you can literally create this anywhere! I was at a tractor pull one day, and was bored out of my mind, so I decided to give this a whirl. My letters are snapshots of tires, the sides of trucks, a license plate, a food package, and a parking pass. I knew I would be cropping them to create my word, so getting the perfect shot wasn't necessary; I just had to make sure the letters were in focus and would be large enough when cropped. I chose the word "Photography" because it's something that I have a great interest in, and I can easily put the word into a frame and it's an instant conversation piece.

Jacqueline Daigle describes the process she took for creating this framed piece of art for her brother and sister-in-law:

I got the idea from a poster our ad agency did for Memphis in
May Festival, where all the letters were photographs from landmark
restaurants and bars in Memphis.

In my case, it was more an opportunity to explore the new city we had just moved to (Athens). So I spent a few days exploring. UGA (University of Georgia) offered lots of photo ops with lots of big signage, as did the downtown Athens area. (The "W" for "Will" is from Wuxtry, a famous vintage record store!)

I used a digital camera to shoot the photos. I then used Photoshop to change them to black and white because overall they looked more balanced than if one was a really bright color and others were from older, duller signs. I tried to get multiple choices for each letter, both lower and uppercase, so I could play with them later.

For some of them, I had to do a little creative cropping in Photoshop (if letters in a sign were very close together). Finding signs with HUGE letters spaced out is actually really more difficult than you'd think. IKEA is a great example. Kroger, on the other hand, is bad: letters all squished together. Then I sized them to fit in the frame, increased the size of some, and shrunk others, so that the overall look was cohesive.

Rachel Myerson took a different approach altogether and created the letters herself using her son's toys:

Whether you use photographs of letters, complete words, or different objects to represent letters, this activity is sure to stretch your creative brain. It's fun, and the resulting images might just inspire a layout, album, or decorative display. Give it a try and show us your results in the Photography forum here at Scrapjazz.com.

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