This photo was a combination between the Factory from the cover of Pink Floyd’s Animals with brains overlayed atop. This aimed to stay true to the theme of the songs of my favorite Pink Floyd album, talking about the perils of a materialistic society, and the dangers of always playing a cog in the capitalist machine. I sort of moved away from that message, favoring the rather pollution of our minds from all of the excess made accessible to us. The factory’s name is “CONSUME” to hammer down my opinion that the internet and mass media is causing “pollution” in our thoughts.
My combo photo was made of an image of a dolphin jumping out from the ocean and an egret flying. I chose the photos because I have always imagined as a child that fish and dolphins that jump out of the ocean seemed like they want to fly and reach the sky.
While this photo is edited well enough for minds the register and probably sufficient for an english assignment, there are many details that are still left untouched and can be further worked on. The shadow and lighting of the subjects and the background isn’t quit matching, there is barely any blend at the point where the dolphin image touches the egret, the ocean wave pattern seems unnatural and is clearly edited…
To me this image conveys the idea of freedom. The dolphin jumping through the surface of the ocean transforms into an egret that is able to sour through the skies, just as it may have wished when making the jump.
I had recently watched Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa, a DreamWorks classic if you were born around 2000. I gained inspiration for this side quest from my favorite character in the movie, Marty the zebra. Marty gained my interest in the movie because unlike the hundreds of zebras in the movie that are white with black stripes, Marty is the only one that is black with white stripes. This distinct feature of Marty that allowed his friend, Alex the lion, to find Marty in a massive herd, which allowed them to resolve their movie-long contentious conflict regarding identity and individuality. Also, he’s voiced by Chris Rock.
I was in my studio when I read the prompt of this side quest. The first thing I saw was my keyboard piano. I thought that that the pattern of the keyboard is very much similar to the pattern of a crosswalk. I found a high-definition photo of a city crosswalk as the main background. Then I had to do some editing for the picture of a Juno Keyboard that I found online. The Keyboard had too much other buttons and features that would not fit in the overall image, which is why I cropped most of the keyboard, only leaving the black-and-white keyboard pattern. I thought the concept of music and street noises is interesting, so my main goal was to connect the two images into one to, making it seem like the pedestrians are coming out of the keys and going over the crosswalk. Therefore, I made the cropped image of the keyboard semi-transparent (around 60%) and merged it with the crosswalk and the pedestrians on the right side of the road.
The world is an ever-changing place due to the rapid lifestyle that is widely prevalent. Trends and technology are constantly shoved in the face of people every hour of every day, primarily American based. Influences worldwide persuade us to visit a website, purchase the new thing, or any other way to get their product to cross your mind. I decided to combine the Eiffel tower and McDonald’s’ golden arches because of globalization affecting cultures; this particular photo combination was quite amusing to think about because I believe the idea of putting Mcdonalds branding on grande structures, such as the Eiffel tower, have come across the minds of their advertising heads. I knew I wanted to create a combophoto on globalization, but deciding how to convey my image was rather tricky. McDonald’s was on my mind, so I knew I wanted to include it, and I decided upon the Eiffel tower because the build allowed me to fit a street sign of everyone’s “favorite” restaurant on top; thus, my photocombo created, trying to convey the influence of American globalization on individual culture was produced.
I was choosing image at very first to look for something living and vivid. The word “plant” appeared in my mind and then I searched for that and found an ideal one that I used for my final picture. Looking at the material, I found the soil part takes a big portion of the picture and consists an important amount of the supporting system of the living life. Such a wonderful section should be compared with something that are welcomed by people in their daily life. Based on the shape and the function, I immediately thought about cake, which are the daily desert that are attractive for many households. Founding a coconut cake picture online, I tried to cut out the picture and blend the cake with the soil perfectly. This step is a little challenging since my photo-editing skill is not proficient enough. Overall, I want to share that living life, especially those supporting systems that work hard always, are as sweet as those we value highly.
I was choosing image at very first to look for something living and vivid. The word “plant” appeared in my mind and then I searched for that and found an ideal one that I used for my final picture. Looking at the material, I found the soil part takes a big portion of the picture and consists an important amount of the supporting system of the living life. Such a wonderful section should be compared with something that are welcomed by people in their daily life. Based on the shape and the function, I immediately thought about cake, which are the daily desert that are attractive for many households. Founding a coconut cake picture online, I tried to cut out the picture and blend the cake with the soil perfectly. This step is a little challenging since my photo-editing skill is not proficient enough. Overall, I want to share that living life, especially those supporting systems that work hard always, are as sweet as those we value highly.
This above photomontage was my 13th idea. I scratched the rest. The other twelve made sense in my head but I was unable to translate them. This 13th idea is a ‘gamble’ in itself because there’s an uncertainty in the outcome of the event; will the readers be able to align themselves with my thought? The above photo roots from my dilemma whether life is ‘gamble’ for I strive to make a sure bet everyday. For a choice to be deemed as a gamble, there must exist a stake, a risk, a hope of gain, and a result determined by chance. On immersing myself into this thought, I grew to realise that life may be a gamble but with a biased dice since efforts determine the odds. With every stroke of blending, the odds of you following my thought went from 1:5 to 4:2 to 5:1. Finding the perfectly angled pictures, to combine, was a challenging task since the slant had to play out the concept. Eventually, I was able find them on Flickr. I used Autodesk Sketchbook for cropping and blending. It helped get down to the nitty gritty.
When I first saw this quest, I thought it would be interesting if I made a picture related to the pandemic. The thought of using a disinfectant wipe came when I was at the store the other day and saw the cleaning wipes section completely “wiped” out. I’m not sure how it is in other areas, but in NY, you would be hard pressed to buy a box of Lysol (or any off-brand) wipes. I think it is really interesting how even though we have been in this pandemic for months, it is still difficult to find such a basic cleaning item. I wanted to convey the idea that wipes are found scarcely and thought it would be funny if I put one in an avocado “pit”.
In general, I have never been good at editing pictures and have always deferred the responsibility to my friends, so this was definitely a challenge. I had trouble with the layering of the images, but I eventually realized that each one had to be cropped independently. After some time, I started playing around with the cutout brush and the retouch feature (for blending purposes) which I think, made the images look better together.
