When I was younger, and even now sometimes, I would have people tell me from time to time that I have “broccoli hair.”I assume it is because I have a lot of hair and I just can’t seem to stay in place because my hair is really straight and hard, hence my head looks like it spurts out hair from all sides like a broccoli. For this project, I want to crop an image of an actual broccoli and fit it into a portrait of myself. I will admit that I am terrible at photo editing so the final product does not seem really fitting. I, however, had a lot of fun doing this assignment. After all, I guess my hairstyle might not be the most trendy or fashionable, but it least it is “healthy.” Right?
Combo photo of two photos: PC for snake photo is Timothy Dykes via Unsplash.com, and PC for pencil photo is Yono Bulis via his photography
This photo combines a photo of a pencil and a photo of a snake. I combined the two of these using a combination of Pixlr and Snapchat (Snapchat, weirdly enough, was very easy to use for photo editing, especially for some of the minute details Pixlr couldn’t get easily fix).
Initially, I was hoping to combine a photo of a black snake’s with a pen tip, which I thought would look cool, but when I saw the photo of the snake, I quickly visualized a pencil combining with the snake’s tail. The colors seemed to fit in my imagination, and I found this particular combophoto to be striking as the snake’s tail abruptly (perhaps a bit too much) ends and becomes a pencil. I took the photo of the pencil myself, and after deciding on these two images, I set off to use Pixlr.
Through Pixlr, I was able to combine the photos into one, but the colors did not exactly match and one could very clearly see the line separating the two photos. So, on a hunch, I took the photo I had and went to Snapchat, which I’d used for some photo editing before. Snapchat is very user-friendly for photo editing, so I was able to do some round-edge cropping to both fix the color and make it so that the line separating the two photos wasn’t so obvious. Some issues present are that the tip of the pencil is a bit blurry, and in some areas there seem to be ‘creases’ that mark crop work. Overall, this image, to me, conveys the notion that hard work hurts. After spending a long time writing for notes or other work, my pencil often feels like a small snake gnawing on my fingers and wrists.
When I looked at the quest laying on my bed, my first reaction was it would be funny if I could combine a duck feet on my feet. Then, I realized that there are some technical difficulties for the duck’s posture to be exactly the same. So I approached it differently: adhering my feet into a duck’s body. Since I am not good at photo editing at all, getting rid of the background of two pictures is difficult. I had to consult my friend who is an expert in this particular field for assistant, and he literally taught me step by step. The picture conveys a symbol for protection. When the duck lands, it would always land on its feet. Even though no one would be silly enough to land on his or her head, many individuals do such things when they encounter difficulties or obstacles. They devout so much that they test things with their lives. Although I give my who appreciation to their zealous attitudes, I would not believe that everyone should do that with every obstacle they encounter. Bold is different from bravery.
After having difficulty trying to decide what to do for the combophoto, hours before the deadline, I saw my mother’s hairbrush, and then I thought that it would be funny to incorporate that in my blog post.
The only trouble I had was to whiten the hare’s background. What this image was trying to portray is to hurry and improvise when late.
Thinking of an idea for the combophoto was pretty difficult for me. I wanted to combine two pictures that had some connection, but still were completely different from one another. So, I thought of putting together pictures of things that are opposite in terms of size and colour.
I found a picture of a building I had clicked a few months back– it was black and white. The building represented ‘bigness’. I then found some vibrant Lego blocks, made a tower using them and clicked a picture of them at a similar angle (which was very hard to achieve)– this was the ‘smallness’. The result– this image I call ‘Building Blocks’.
I think that this image, in a sense, symbolises growing up. When we’re young and building our little Lego buildings, our world is small and colourful. We’re oblivious to the hardships, stress and obstacles that life is sure to offer. As we mature, we’re exposed to the big, bad ‘real world’. We have real buildings to build, real problems to solve, and the world just doesn’t seem too colourful anymore.
I combined the pictures of a window with a sunset beach scene. The picture of the window is taken by me several days ago. I found this sunset picture from the app, PicsArt. Using the app, I cropped the picture of the sunset into six pieces, resized them, and fitted into the windows. Living by the sea is always my dream. In the original picture, there was just a tree behind the window. After the combination, the window got a charming scene behind it. At first, I have trouble deciding the pictures to combine, spending time looking for pictures on google and many other places. Then, I found this window picture in my phone, and had the idea to change the scene behind the window.
The first thing that came to my mind when I read about this mini-quest was to find an animal that had an object as a part of its name. Like a swordfish, or an angelfish. I decided to choose a hammerhead shark because I thought that it would be the easiest to crop, and I would have the most room for creativity. Now I could obviously just crop a hammer to the shark’s body and call it a day, but I wanted to be a little bit more creative. I wanted to stay in the theme of tools, as a hammer is a tool, so I decided to crop a wrench on the head of the shark. There are a few reasons for my decision. First of all, the head of the wrench looks like a mouth, so my final product could still somewhat look like an animal. Another reason I chose it is because of its symbolism. Wrenches are used to take things apart, but with the ultimate goal of fixing, while a shark’s ultimate goal is to destroy. I thought it would be the perfect tool to put on the head of the shark. In terms of editing, the main problem I had was that in order to fit the wrench head onto the neck of the shark, I needed to significantly enlarge the image, needing to move the picture up multiple times to enlarge the ends. Not only that, but the head ended up being too big. Despite these things, I think my combophoto turned out decently.
This photo is a combination of Eiffel tower and an Egyptian pyramid. I googled the image of the pyramid and the Eiffel tower.
The moment I started this quest, I thought about putting together something that had the similar shape, or they just simply won’t fit together! Then I thought about the Eiffel tower, the icon and famous tourist attraction in Paris. And I combined it with the pyramid, which could serve as a base to the Eiffel tower. I feel like the Eiffel tower has such a sharp top that made it really hard for me to work from the top. So I chose the bottom. Some of the challenges that I faced was brainstorming and lacking photoshopping skills.
I named my final work The Lost Eiffel because “the lost” symbols everything about the ancient Egyptian culture. It seems mysterious, aged, and in our modern world still no one is able to accurately tell the myths of Egyptian pyramids. The title also captures the contrast of modern and ancient constructions. The Eiffel Tower is a relatively new building compared to the pyramid, as the Eiffel is lost in the grand basis of a pyramid.
I was looking around my room for inspiration when I noticed my water bottle sitting on my desk. Then I started to think what fun things I could do with a water bottle. Eventually I came up with a play on words of Bottle rocket. As a kid I would make these cute little rocket with an Alka-seltzer tablet and some water. When we got into high school my my friends and I used dried ice and they flew way higher. I wanted to express my love for this weekend activity and fill viewers with that nostalgia from childhood.
The hardest part of making this photo was the formatting the layers. It was my first time using some form of Photoshop that was more than just Snapchat. All my previous experience of photo editing was writing the letter “S” for my streaks. It is quite exciting to learn something new in life on my own. I feel as though the past 18 years have been so guided, so this approach to something new has relaxed me.
Let's play a game with photo editing this week! For this week, you'll make a combophoto, which combines two different photos to create a new image.
Stephen Mcmennamy is an Atlanta artist and Creative Director at the advertising firm BBDO. He first came to my attention when I saw his series of “combophotos” that splice together two different images to form a surreal new creation.
Here are a few examples from him:
Cauliflower + Poodle
Spaghetti + Paintbrush
Guitar + Bridge
Take a few moments to look through the images he’s posted on his site linked above or on his Tumblr or his Instagram. Then create your own square combophoto and publish it to your site. You can take your own photos, but probably you’ll want to use CC_licensed images you find on Flickr — make sure you give credit to the originals that you modify to create your combophoto.
The level of technical aptitude for this assignment is actually relatively small, just simple cropping and resizing. The greater part of the challenge is thinking creatively and finding images that you can work with. That said, note that Mcmennamy comes up with ideas and then specifically stages photos to combine, and he seems to often spend significant amounts of time shooting and selecting his images. You won’t have lots of time, models you can hire, or expensive photo equipment to work with, so I don’t necessarily expect your final images to be as polished and perfectly aligned as his are. More important is for you to be playful and come up with images that combine to create something funny or witty or striking.
To edit the two photos together, you can use whatever photo editing software you’d like. Pixlr is a good free web app. (Pixlr X is a freemium service so it's free to use but they might make it look like you need to pay for something -- you only need to pay for more "advanced" options, which you won't need for this assignment.) Adobe Photoshop is also available for you to use on the computers in the Media Library on the 4th floor of the Woodruff Library, if you're on campus.
Once you have your image, publish it in a post on your class site. Don't forget to give it a funny or witty title! Tag your post "sq4"
Write a paragraph about how you went about choosing the two images you combined and why. What challenges did you face as you created your combophoto? What do you think your final image conveys?
