Willa Magland
Bringing It All Back Home: Photography Project
Posted Jun 10, 2025
Bob Dylan has some fantastic album covers, but one of my favorites is Bringing It All Back Home. In it, he is surrounded by all his favorite things. Magazines, vinyl records, his cat, a woman in a red dress. And to top it off, he's doing his meanie-stare right into the camera, as if he's saying, "look at my stuff, look at my fine taste!"
A few months ago I got the idea to recreate that cover, so I messaged my friend Emily to do it with me. Emily has more of a background in photography, and I don't quite have Dylan's hair like she does.
I angled a couch in front of the fireplace to roughly match the angle in the photo. Looking back, I wish I had gathered more things to scatter around. I think I was too worried about getting the angles correct.
We shot it in two photos, which I stitched together afterward. First, Emily holding Sydney (my cat) and getting that meanie-stare. Second, me lying in the red dress (the best I had was orange) pretending to hold a cigarette.
I did all the editing in GIMP, which I am most comfortable with. After color adjustments I had to try and recreate the fisheye camera lens effect. To do this I first applied a circular focus blur. Then, I went back to the original photo and used the "select by color" to grab the yellowish rays from the lens. I copied this over to our photo and did a circular motion blur on it. This resulted in something I was happy with.
Ultimately, I think it came out great!
Current Status ☕
