On Friday the 17th, I went into building 20 with my DSLR to collect some images for my piece. I had a list of images i needed to get, but most of the images I needed were from the courtrooms, which were being used for meetings. I walked around and found other images for a while, but was approached but someone came out from their office and asked whether I was staff. I explained that I had permission, but it still made me feel I was intruding. I went back to the courtroom to find the meeting was still going, but now the door was closed. It probably wasn’t because of me, it may have been, either way I decided to go back another day. Hopefully when less important things are happening and when the spaces are free.

After looking through my images, I saw the only ones I still had to collect were from the courtroom. So I went there on Tuesday the 21st in the early afternoon. Luckily the courtroom was empty and open, so I was able to quickly take the photos I needed as well as getting a good feel for the space and what was in it without disturbing anyone.

On Wednesday I spent the evening creating my mock up compositions on Photoshop. I left all the huge, high quality layers on the composition, even if they had been covered over, just so when I have to print it, I can print all of the individual layers without hunting for my required images. Of course this requires a lot of memory from Photoshop, and with each save more huge files piled up on my laptop. I had to keep watching the memory on my computer to make sure I still had enough space to save. If not, I had to close the program to restore the memory. It wasn’t too painful though, just another thing to monitor. It’s not like the program or my laptop was running slowly at all.

After making up my compositions and editing the images, I found I wasn’t happy with one image. The picture of the RMIT sign. It was on a slight angle and the light wasn’t catching it well, making the rusty, brassy plate look muddy. So on Thursday I went back and took some images of it on my iPhone. The picture looks much nicer and after putting it in Photoshop, the quality appears to hold up against the DSLR images.

So I am quite confident I have all the images I need to do the collage. From here I just need to print the Photoshop layers, gather materials, and build it. Hopefully over the next 2 weeks.