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Photo of the Week: The Testing Puzzle May 15, 2007
This one was kind of fun. In case you don't recognize what that is, it's a standardized "fill in the bubbles with a No. 2 pencil" test. Like the SAT, GRE, or what you may have to take to get some jobs. I created it mainly as a test shot for submitting it for the cover of TIP magazine following their recent call for photos. Also, it seemed like a neat idea.
Since pre-employment tests aren't a popular subject for jigsaw puzzles, I made it myself. I started by going to a children's resale shop and finding a puzzle that was about the right size. Finding the right size puzzle was actually the hardest part; most were too big. But once I had it Sam and I put it together:
Then I took a blank answer sheet like this one:
And then I married the two together by flipping the puzzle over, smearing some "Mod Podge Matte-Mat" on it, and laying the answer sheet down. I think regular craft glue would work just as well. I pressed it as flat as I could, rubbed out all the wrinkles and bubbles, then let it dry. When it was dry I took an exacto knife and, working from the bottom up, started to cut out the puzzle pieces:
This was tedious, but I quickly realized that I didn't need to cut out ALL of the pieces, just the ones I wanted loose for the final shot. Speaking of which, I arranged the pieces and took the final pic in a DYI light box using two halogen shop lights and a tripod:
I'm still not 100% happy with it and may play around with it some more (maybe try adding a hand holding one of the puzzle pieces to the shot), but it was fun. I also may try doing it with some other kinds of documents (color pie charts, etc.) to create something more generic.
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Tags: I/O Psychology, Photo of the Week, Photography
Comments
Posted by David Morris on May 18, 2007 12:48 AM:
I like it. I saw the TIP announcement and was hoping you would submit something. BTW, now that I have your SS#, what is your DOB again? I don't have a job anymore so I was thinking of stealing another person's identify.
Posted by Jamie on May 18, 2007 3:51 AM:
Well, I can tell you that my DOB wasn't yesterday, because that's not my SSN. It's the one from some poor guy's wallet I stole.
Posted by Brent Smith on May 18, 2007 6:53 AM:
This is totally cool...but, clearly, you have too much time on your hands!
Posted by David Morris on May 18, 2007 10:01 AM:
Did you upgrade your light box? This one looks much more advanced than the one you built and showed a while back.
Posted by Jamie on May 18, 2007 10:43 AM:
Brent, I can provide a long list of witnesses that say this isn't the case. :) It actually took me weeks to go from idea to photo on this one.
David, yeah. That one is built from foam board following this tutorial. I actually built a third one last night following this one. I've yet to find one I really like in terms of how it handles the light.