John Muir Collage (mid-term)

The images used to create this collage all relate in some way to John Muir. All of them have some personal meaning. The only truly important Muir-related area not mentioned or depicted in this collage is Muir Beach in Northern California. I grew up in Santa Rosa and visited Muir Beach frequently with my parents. I regret to say that I’ve only been to Muir Woods a couple of times, but Yosemite is a different matter. I have an early home movie of my parents on their honeymoon at Yosemite in 1935. My ties to that park are, therefore, long and deep. For these parks and experiences and so much more, we have John Muir to thank. Thus, this collage has been constructed in celebration of Muir’s contributions to the American soul.

I’ve used many of the techniques which I’m learning in this class. Most obviously, this image is submitted in duotone. I was working predominantly in color until I added the black and white image of Teddy Roosevelt in Yosemite. The addition of this image was jarring to the color image, so I converted it to duotone, simply to see how it would blend. I like the duotone better, so that’s my submission. I placed the stamps and the map on opposite corners of the collage in order to provide a little balance for those images. The coin is on the rock--solid as a rock, as is the United States monetary system. Roosevelt is placed directly on the John Muir trail, where I was hiking when I took this picture. I’ve tried to blend the image of Muir Woods into other areas of forest in this picture. The two rocks that I’ve “borrowed” from Yosemite are blended in and I’ve reduced their opacity. I made two layers of the quote, changed the font color on one to black, rasterized them, and joggled them around a bit. I know I could have done this differently, but I kind of like the effect of doing it this way. The quote is one of my favorite quotes from Muir. I’ve discovered that by hiking a mile on most trails in Yosemite that I see very few other people, even if the park is packed with visitors. The hiking I’m doing is good for the soul and is helping me recover from quintuple bypass surgery. Visually, I feel that I’ve created a balanced image. The color scheme, duotone, really has turned out rock-like. I’ve balanced the placement of people by placing Muir top left and Roosevelt bottom right. The objects relating to Muir are the stamps bottom left and the map top right. Nevada Falls is centered in the image and there is about 1/3 sky. I’ve used that sky as a backdrop for the quote.