After we converted the image again, we applied a new filter with our tools to make it look like it was from a comic book.
Transforming our Photos with Digital Tools
This week, we took a detour from our usual land-based themes and cruised into a bit of history! We’ve been working on a lot of photography and storytelling this summer, since our last fall and winter program. We all took hundreds and hundreds of different pictures with phones and digital cameras to collect them all. This month, we have been learning to edit and change them around, using new tools and filters. We build our own tools for some of this stuff and it was a fun way to test them out.
I started with this awesome photo of vintage cars on Donald Street where they were filming a tv series. I thought it would be so much fun to bring it to life in a new way. I wanted to make it look like we’re not just looking at a picture, but actively stepping back in time. This summer we have been playing with filters and digital tools to really make our photos pop, and this was one I really wanted to do. The cars were really old fashioned, and the old buildings in the Exchange District made it look even older.
Here’s my original photo image:
The cool thing about working with an image like this is how it also connects to the bigger picture of oral history and traditional knowledge, even if it’s a different kind of “tradition.” We mostly do traditional knowledge stuff on the land, but there is also a lot of traditional knowledge in the cities too! Like Winnipeg. It makes me think about the stories these streets could tell, the people who drove these ancient cars, and how much life has has changed.
That’s a big part of our learning this summer. We have been experimenting with different digital techniques, from converting photos to drawings, and then giving them different colours and textures. It’s been a really fun way to explore digital and visual arts from a new angle.
Our summer program is almost done and we wanted to pass on the news about our Fall and Winter program starting in October,
I’m excited about how these diverse skills will come together. We’re starting to spread the word about how we’re going to use everything we’ve learned this summer, from our outdoor photography and storytelling to our digital art explorations, to create our own storybooks and publications.
Imagine using these techniques to tell stories that bridge across different generations!
We meet in-person and online every Wednesday and Saturday.
Thank you to our supporters:
I would really want to thank The Arts Incubator Winnipeg Hub, Art Borups Corners, the Ontario Arts Council Inter and Multi-Arts Projects program, the Manitoba Arts Council Indigenous 360 Program and the Minneapolis College of Art and Design Creative Entrepreneurship program for their support. Thanks to all these different groups and partners, we were able to connect across regions from our different hubs and learn a lot from each other. This year has been a lot of fun and we’re excited for our next program, which will be about publishing and storytelling in more advanced ways. We’ll have more on that soon.
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