Chapter 1: Grid Forty Five
![Grid Forty Five is a photographic exploration of architecture and grids.](/assets/journal/45-header.jpg)
I’ve always admired architecture—there’s something about building design that I find really intriguing. I’ve taken photographs of some of the world’s most famous and beautiful buildings, but quite often I find beauty in old, more run down buildings. It’s something about the roughness and the textures that I find aesthetically interesting.
Recently, I was sat outside the Hadyn Ellis Building, which is part of Cardiff University. It’s a modern building with a bold exterior – thick, horizontal metal lines half covering the glass facade exposing the grand atrium. Without even thinking, I took a photograph of the building and naturally took it into VSCO to start editing. After playing with the filters and contrast, I started rotating the image—there was something very striking about it when it was on a 45º angle. This is when I started to experiment. This is when Grid Forty Five began.
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I saved out a few versions of the same photo from VSCO to start playing with the photos within a grid using Instagram’s app, Layout. It didn’t take long until I was hooked, moving and swapping images within the grid started to give completely different shapes and patterns.
My favourite layout was when each image was rotated to a different orientation—this allowed the thick, horizontal lines of the Hadyn Ellis Building to join each point together to create a striking, diamond shape.
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At this point, I had saved out many different images from VSCO and Layout. When I saw the overview of my photos in the Photos app, all the different shapes and images coming together started to make a random and dynamic pattern. I wanted to make more using the same process, but with different buildings.
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For the next week, I don’t think I walked past a building without taking a photo on a 45º angle. Cinemas, hotels, terrace houses, new buildings, old buildings—it really didn’t matter. I couldn’t stop myself. Each time I brought the four images together to create a diamond, I was surprised and fascinated with the result. Once, I had about half-a-dozen, I created the Grid Forty Five Instagram account and started sharing these visual experiments.
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The combinations and unique compositions that can be made are endless. I’ve been playing and experimenting with patterns and inverting colours. I want the Instagram account to remain coherent, but always remain experimental and to take it in new directions. Playing with patterns has been good fun and something I’m currently exploring.
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By simply inverting the high contrast black and white images, you get a completely different look and feel. Depending on the kind of photograph, you can also get bold, clean shapes or decorative and textured surfaces. With a very similar process, changing only one component gives you a completely different result.
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Playing with colour is something I haven’t explored too much just yet. I like how diverse yet uniform the collection looks at the moment. Introducing different colour palettes will completely break that consistency—which is why it’s definitely worth playing with.
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At John&Jane, it’s in our nature to be experimental—always eager to learn and try new techniques. Grid Forty Five is a good example of doing something we enjoy with no real objective. Subjectively, I find it visually interesting and who knows what it might inspire or turn into in the future.