The Unexpected Image

In an effort to push myself this winter I want to start making images less of people doing things like paragliding or skiing and more in the direction of conveying ideas.

I'm probably the sort of person that would benefit from direction and structure so I'm going to try and give myself guidelines to follow. If you have ideas that you think would be interesting guide lines, send them along as well. There might be a series of different guidelines separate, distinct ideas/projects or all the guidelines might meld into a long string of guidelines that end in a single series of images with a single cohesive idea. I'm not sure yet.

To kick things off here are the first three guidelines for the first image we make together:

The image must:

1) Identify a simple and central message to communicate.

2) illustrate what is counterintuitive and unexpected about that message

3) have a sense of mystery in the sense that it provides a question without an obvious answer

So here is my first image idea, following these guide lines: A homeless bum opening and peering into a BFI dumpster in a grimy dirty back ally only to find a white linen table and an elaborate Chef Mortimer style meal laid out before him.

The image of a fancy smancy meal all in a garbage can jumped into my head during a brainstorming session about things that seemed counterintuitive, it further developed into the image of a bum looking into a trash heap and finding a full meal. In my head the image fills requirements 2 and 3, but I don't yet know what the central message is that I'm trying to communicate. Leave a comment and help me figure that out.

I hadn't thought much about the Chef Mortimer name I used until now that I'm going back and reading this post. Hmm... it was a complete accident that I offered up that image alongside his name. Maybe somewhere in the intersection of that image and his name is the answer to guideline #1.

Let me know what you think. Leave a comment, write me an email, FB me. Do you have a set of guidelines to follow when trying to come up with a new image? Do you have an image idea that would fill the three guidelines above? Do you have the answer to how my image idea and guideline #1 work together?

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