Photoshop Project

In Digital Media Class, we are working on a photoshop project. I have never used photoshop before so I am just trying my best in hopes that it looks decent. It has to be about an idea or event in your life and responding to it. Mine is the realization that time goes by fast and nothing lasts forever. It was inspired by a song called "Who am I" by Casting Crowns.

It was an image of a pocket watch with flowers as the hands, fading as time goes by but I had to redo it to create movement. So, The hands are fading as it reaches the clock instead.

I suggest listening to the song while looking at it. It has 2 scans, 1 picture, and 2 images pulled from the internet. The background is a picture I took on a hike that I put through a bunch of filters. The 4 flowers are scans of a flower. I picked a flower and I scanned it right after I got it (which is the first image in the upper right hand corner) and then I scanned it a second time a week later when it was dehydrated. I then used the first image and played with it in photo shop until it looked older to get the second of the four flowers. Then I switched to the second scan of the dehydrated flower and played with it to make it look similar to the last flower. The last flower is also the second scan but I turned the opacity down so much that you can only see it's shadow. You know it's there, but it's a ghost of the image so you can't see it. The clock I found on the internet but it didn't look much like that when I found it. I changed the color and I covered up some of the details on the clock with a stamp tool. I also changed the perspective so it was no longer so straight foreword. I also found the chain which I had to play a lot with in order for it to look as though it was attached to the clock. I then changed the coloring and used my new favorite tool, liquify, to make it look as if it was being distorted and fading a way as it went further up the page. I also played with the eraser tool which is taken for granted in most software. Photo shop allows you to change the opacity of the eraser so it is more of a blending tool. I used it a lot in my project.

Ultimately, I put a lot of work into this project, even if it seems like it didn't. I even look at it sometimes and think, "did that REALLY take that long?" but it ended up being something that I'm proud of and it also really helped me learn photo shop (which, I think, was the main point of this assignment).

I Heart Photography!!

So, since I do not have any real classes tomorrow, I thought I'd use this post to proclaim my undying and unyielding love for photography!!(Hooray!) I like having proof things happen. Just in case people decide not to believe me... Not really. I love photography because I can really get through to people how exactly I see things. It also shares my experiences with people and conveys messages I wish for others to learn.

A "friend" of mine asked why exactly photography was art if it was just copying something that happened and was not something the person created on their own. Photography, however, is art and is difficult just because it forces people to think outside of the box to become original. It is also not just a copy of something. Every moment is precious and original and is impossible to be recreated exactly. Therefore, if art is something completely original from everything else, each photograph is a unique masterpiece. Also, photographs are not just manufactured things that everyone can do just by clicking a button. As I have learned, there is a lot of skill that needs to be learned when trying to take a good picture. Although, not everyone is great at learning said skills (aka me). The F stop (aperture), shutter speed, and time of day drastically influence the quality of picture. Once you learn how to manipulate the picture correctly, you can manipulate it incorrectly in order to portray your idea. Confusing. My teacher always says that you learn the rules in order to break them.

Not only does taking a picture with the right settings make your photo a piece of art, but so does they way the photographer chooses to develop the picture and the way it is edited or cropped after it being taken. Whether you use a digital camera or not, there are always a cornucopia of ways to alter your picture after it is taken.

Therefore, taking a picture is indeed a difficult piece of artwork that you can master in order to convey a message to the viewer just like any other kind of art form.

In closing, I'll show a picture from my new Design project that requires use of a camera and photoshop to portray the alphabet seen in nature. This project is proving to be a challenge for me because I can not manipulate any piece of nature to make it look more like a letter. I'm finding out that there are a lot of L's in nature but not a lot of R's. People also look at me like I'm crazy when I'm taking pictures of the ground that, in my opinion, look like A's. MLIA

Woman with Dinosaur

In Digital Media we are working on scanning images into the computer to load them onto photo shop and, from there, create an image that conveys an event or message or dream that we possibly have. I'm thinking that mine is going to be about how all good things always come to an end. So far, though, I have only played with scanning and fooled around a little with photoshop. Honestly, I have no clue what I am doing on photo shop. I just keep pressing buttons until something weird happens and sometimes it works out. Most of the time, though, I end up having to start over because it completely sucks.

Here's an image I skewed by moving it when it scans, which, by the way, is a lot funner than it sounds.

This is something I did in class today when I was experimenting with photoshop and I thought it looked nifty.