Photo Project: Rainbow Photo Collage

Well all of my camps are officially over!  Last week I wrapped up the Photography Camp.    I will have to write about some of the fun field trips we took.  In the meantime I want to tell you about a project I did with the kids from Summer Stage Performing Arts Camp in our Photography Workshops.

At the end of the camp season,  there is a small arts festival where the campers get to show off other things they have been doing in camp other than their main production.  I had 2 groups.  Last year they all did self portrait posters incorporating their photos with writing – either a poem, or a story about their lives.

This year we decided on a group project instead of individual ones.  I had a vision of a rainbow collage.  I knew exactly what it would look like in my head.  Fortunately the kids trusted me on this.  We met about a dozen times.  One week we focused on color and color theory.  To translate it into photography, I had them focus on one color at a time.  So, one day when we were out, we had to look for the color blue for example.  They had to photograph anything they found with that color but they still had to use the techniques they learned – like point of view and framing.

During the week of the festival, I went through all of their photos and printed out over 120 in 4X6 size.

A few of the kids from the class were eager to help assemble our final project.

The first thing I had them do was to look through the photos and separate them into 6 piles – red, orange, yellow, green, blue and purple.

As the base we ended up using some extra insulation boards that they had hanging around.  Similar to these at Home Depot.  Using packing tape, we taped the 2 boards together and used purple duck tape around the edges to create a frame.

Before gluing down the photos, we placed them all down to see how it looked.  We were able to move photos around and try them in different places to get just the right look we were gong after.  Some of the photos needed to be trimmed to eliminate overhang.

Once we had the design finalized we started with the gluing.  We did one row at a time and used regular white glue.  The boards were bigger than we needed so once all of the photos were in place we trimmed the board down and taped up the bottom edge with the duck tape.  The final project came out to be about 4 feet wide by 6 feet high.

Wow!  The rainbow collage came out great!  I am so proud of the kids and it was great to see their faces when they saw the final outcome.  They took such pride in their work.  It was really rewarding to be a part of it.

This is definitely a project that can be scaled down that you can do on your own or with kids.   Here are the steps:

1 – Pick a color for the day and when you are out and about with your camera, photograph that one color.  This is a good activity to keep the kids busy. Just an FYI – orange and purple seem to be the more challenging colors.

2 – Once you’ve gone through all of the colors of the rainbow, go through your photos and decide which ones you want printed and at what size.

3 – You can use either a large piece of foam core or even ply wood as the base.

4 – For the “frame” use colorful duck tape or even wide satin ribbon would look really nice.

5 – Plan the layout and then start gluing.

Even though camp is over, the rainbow collage still remains in the lobby of the Riverdale Y.  For how long, I’m not sure but for now it’s a colorful reminder of a fun-filled summer.

Do you have any fun photo projects I should know about?  Tell me in the comments area.