Photo Blog

It’s interesting how you start to look at random objects as “source material.”  I see the things behind my sink everyday without really looking at them and yesterday they caught my eye as possible parts to a composition.  I must be starting to think in Photoshop terms

blog week…what week is this?

taken from within a block of the corcoran

panda party

project 1: final blog post

so the group review/commentary was a first for me but i thought it was a great experience.  what Selila said “having other people comment first before you explain/defend is a great practice” really made sense.  i often wish when i come up with new ad ideas that i could show them to 500 people without saying anything and seeing what they think it means.  it’s hard after working on an ad for 2 weeks to remove yourself from the project and objectively consider what the image/message displays or would mean to an audience.  actually it made me want feedback throughout the entire project because some of the reactions gave me ideas that may have helped to turn my project in a different/better way.

blog 5 photos

tai shan had a birthday.  i had no idea what this meant but my friends who have lived in DC for longer than i informed me fully of why this was such an important event.  now i understand

Composition project blog post 2

So far the major things that I have realized from this project are that

1: I don’t yet know if the best way for me to work is to decide on theme and then work towards it or to start
working and see what theme my work moves towards

and even more so:

2: GRAPHIC DESIGNERS ARE INCREDIBLE PEOPLE AND ID BE LOST WITHOUT THEM!

1: I decided on a theme but then felt like it was pulling teeth to get ideas to come from my head on
how to put the compositions together.  I’d start trying to create a piece, not with a final image in mind
but with a theme in mind that led me to grab images. combine them and then I would be stuck
I would have two, mayyybe three layers that didn’t look too great and have no idea where to go next.  Should I
apply some color effects?  blur things or highlight them?

so i had started with an image of the David and was going to work on my ‘historic’ italy first but
found myself imagining a montage of what david would do if he had a day off and could be the tourist…
my mind went in the two directions it normally does: somewhat ironic/sarcastic or clashing images
and then tag lines/simple phrases that would somehow create a slightly funny advertisement for something

I pictured David having an identity crisis, trying to dance, getting tattoos, going to a wax museum,
touring America, hailing a cab.  But these all seemed pretty cheesy and didn’t have a theme…just David in
odd situations.  Then I also had a lot of fear after seeing samples of projects from this class
that i don’t have near the level of artistic ability as most of the people using photoshop to do
graphic design or to create compositions for portfolios.  Every time my mind would start to think of a new
composition I would stop because I knew I wouldn’t create anything that Selilca couldn’t easily replicate.

2: graphic designers are incredible people.  I am used to coming up with a vague idea for an ad or new
site/design where I say : these are the themes, I want our logo, these three lines of text, maybe
this image, and an attention grabbing graphic but all under the umbrella of our overall ‘look’ and clean, simple
elegant, attractive

and then the graphic designers create something and i critique every little aspect of it when in reality
maybe i dont know exactly how i want it to look.  after this project of coming up with my own theme,
not knowing what would follow that theme or where to start and then not having the ability to put in
the detailed touches to make anything of quality…i have extreme respect for graphic designers.

so all of that being said…what happened was i was planning on using the italy them, started my first one, went
instead towards a theme of davids day off, got stuck after 2 layers and decided it would be a terrible
theme and not be using photoshop in any way that would help me tangibly improve my photoshop skills in
a way that would make me better at my job, then was scared of how bad my compositions were going to look,
then wanted to just start with any image and start doing effects until i got something that looked good
but knew that if i did that there would be no uniting theme besides “i liked the way this looked” and then
took all of that and decided to try to start working with one image in a way that would be similar to how
i use photoshop for my job (as a mockup for graphic designers) and then let the theme ‘come to me’ while I was working
and then at the end try to focus on the details of making it look as close to clean and professional
as time would allow.

the theme came to me as i thought about how i’m always trying to come up with new ads for our website
to include catchy image, single phrase that when combined with the image gets a point across as well as
intrigues the viewer to find out more/visit our site and finally something that looks balanced, clean and maybe
attractive.  so i stuck with david and decided to create 5 ads for make believe online companies.

right now i have 4 of the ideas and the basic mockups for them done to be completed with final touches and i’m still tossing
the last idea around in my head

blog week 4 images

Last time that I was at my grandparents house I was considering how they had downsized many times from house to house until they ended up in their current community/small space and how they choose which pieces of art/decoration to keep.  The pieces that they kept are all of a certain color/look/feel that make me instantly think of them and their generation, even though they’re probably not representative of their entire generation.  Here are some of their chosen pieces and other shots of things in their house that make me think of them.

Project 1: Compositions, 1st blog: Theme considerations

Theme: Images from Italy to be used with a combination of color adjustments and filters to show different “personalities” of the country.

I have the most ‘material’ as far as photography from when I spent 4 months in Italy.  I wanted to play around with how it’s not just photos/the content of a photo that sends a message but how certain aspects of that photo such as the color, saturation, and various effects put into place with filters can combine with that photo to display a certain ‘feel’ or message.

The themes I think I will go with or try to evoke with each composition are  as follows (also common ‘tourist themes’ associated with Italy)

History/nostalgia
fashion/excitement/fun and sexy
beautiful views, serenity romance
family fun
culture: art/food/wine/architecture

First I took the image that I think I may place in these compositions: a photo of a replica of the David.  It is something that is very widely recognized and associated with Italy.

I then looked at some of the filters with just this image to see which filters seem to evoke which themes and took the following notes:

History
Filters (Artistic)Gaussian Blur of 1.0
Filters (Artistic)Film Grain
Stylize: Wind
Ink Outlines, Brush Strokes

Sexy/Fun
Filters (Artistic)Neon Glow
Stylize: Solarize

Family fun:
Filters (Artistic)Poster edges
Filters (Artistic)Plastic Wrap

Beauty and Romance:
Smudge Stick

Culture/Art:
Dry Brush
Splatter
Ink outlines
Sketch
Water Paper

I then took a precursory glance at lighting effects and think already they will be great to use somehow: you can choose where the central point of light in the image will be focused.

Colors:
Affecting just the level of the green to make it florescent could be family fun or young/hip/exciting

I do not like or plan to use any adjustments to the level of the red

Adjusting the level of the blue could lean towards history or art/culture

I played with the green, blue and yellow tones in the image’s saturation levels and the only one I really liked was to increase the saturation of the yellow.

I’m going to play with the curves on a case by case basis as I create the compositions.

Next step I took was to go through all images from Italy and pick out ones that I think had content that would get the theme or point of that composition across but also ones that would somehow work with the David.  I have a feeling that as I composit, these choices will change.

week 3 blog-colors/textures/fabrics on a Tuesday

I wanted to work with multiple layers and then layer effects as I almost always flatten my layers of images when I create something before going on to a new step.  I find it difficult to make sure that I am applying the correct effect to the correct layer or to highlight/select and move the certain layers that I want so usually I just flatten them all and then go from there.  But after playing around with a few of this weeks images, I was able to see the value in taking the time and attention to work on a layer by layer basis as it gives you more control and the option to create something unique with each layer having different relationships to those below.  I played around with the color, some masking, some transformation and then layer effects with a few of this weeks images to come up with the edited image above.

week 2 photo changed-clone to remove people

This was done almost entirely with clonging.  I did adjust the levels ever so slightly and I used Free Transform a few times when I decided to copy and paste an area but the more comfortable I got with the clone tool, the more I preferred that than covering a part of an image with a copy/pasted piece from elsewhere in the image.  For the distant areas (red building in far back) it was easy to magnify the part of the image, clone and then demagnify the view…you don’t notice the blurry areas as they’re smaller and in images less clear from a distance anyways.  THe hard parts were the straight/hard lines of doorways and creating areas that didn’t exist like the insides of doorways or areas of buildings that you weren’t sure what it looked like behind the people.  Other challenge was getting the angle/perspective correct for the buildings on the right which it seems to me I went in the opposite direction/angle of what I should have done, giving that area a somewhat warped view.

cloning and redrawing. the doorways and the angles as they get further away were the hardest parts to fill in