Exit Through The Gift Shop Project

This project was inspired by the movie Exit Through the Gift Shop and Mr. Brainwash's work. I decided to create my own version of his art that looks like a barcode. As a whole, you can see the image, but if you look closely, it just looks like a bunch of lines. I choses to use the painting Mountains at Collioure to create the image. I used selective color first to manipulate the colors in the image. Then, I used vectors to create the barcode effect. It took a lot of time, multiplying the vectors and changing the size and distance of each one, but I think it turned out pretty well. Though his "barcode art" was usually in black and white, I decided to keep mine in color because I think it is an important aspect of the painting.

MET Exhibit

photo from http://www.metmuseum.org/exhibitions/view?exhibitionId=%7b2E988323-B8DF-496F-B72A-E999E567FABA%7d&oid=190046296&pg=1&rpp=20&pos=7&ft=*&img=0#fullscreen 

These "photographs" were taking by Matthew Jensen in 2008/2009. Through Google Street View, he traveled through the 49 States, taking one picture in each state. Photoshop was then used to touch up the images and adjust the color and contrast. He displayed the photos alphabetically by state abbreviations.Through the images, he wanted to capture the significance of the great American road trip, while bringing light to ability to explore landscapes all over the country from your own home. 

I love how he managed to capture a similar image in every state. The sun is setting in many of the images and is a prominent part of the image as well. I think these photos create a powerful piece about our country, showing how every state is similar and different in their own ways and I think it unites our nation as a whole.

Incorporating Drawings into Photographs

For this image, I chose a landscape image that I had taken in Florida. Then, I chose a picture of my friends holding hands while ice skating. I selected them and placed them into the landscape. I simply drew a ballon and placed it into Ashley's hand to make it look like the ballon was about to pull them up into the sky.  

This image took a lot more time. I chose a picture I had taken in New York of the Empire State Building. I then selected the area I wanted to turn into a drawing since I am not a talented drawer. I set the foreground color to gray and the background to white and then went to the filter gallery and chose "photocopy." I played with the detail and darkness until I achieved a sketch-like image. Then, I applied a layer mask and used the lasso tool to roughly select the area I wanted to "tear." Using the smudge tool, I blended the image in with the drawing the make it look like a torn piece of paper. Finally, I added in my hand to make it look like I was holding the drawing in front of the scene. I really like how this turned out.

Alphabet!

For this assignment, we had to create our own alphabet. I decided to do light photography to create the letters. This is done in a pitch black room with a really slow shutter speed and some source of light. I turned the lights off in my closet and sat my camera on a chair to stabilize the camera. My shutter speed was set to stay open for 2-3 seconds allowing me to use my cellphone to write the letters. This created the letters to be a bluish/purple color which I thought was really interesting. A flashlight can also be used, created white/yellow letters, but this could always be edited in photoshop to produce a different color. Then I just placed all the images in a photoshop document and scaled them to the same size. I used the smudge tool on some letters to make parts of the letters that didn't show up more visible. The faster the light source moves, the less bright/intense the image will turn out. The areas where the letter is really intense is where my cellphone was held for an extensive time. In other areas, the light was barely visible because I moved my phone so quickly, which is why I had to use the smudge tool. Knowing this, you can create really cool images or produce something just how you want it. For example, for the letter X, I had to move my phone really quickly so that no light would show up and enclose the X. Overall, I think this turned out really cool and I'm really happy with it.

Tutorials

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For these two photos I followed a tutorial on how to achieved a "tea-stained" image and a "turquoise" image. This was done with gradient maps by adding an changing the color stops to a faded magenta or turquoise. Then by changing the opacity, you could make the effect as prominent as possible. I think this is really need and will definitely be using it to add a vintage effect to my images.

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This tutorial was using HDR's to create a really cool black and white image. This allows you to really mess with the details of the image and get sort of a personalized black and white image. I thought this was really cool and a neat way to spice up a normal black and white image.

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 This was stimulating a color grad filter. I used photo filters and the gradient tool to fade the image and give the sky a cool sunset. For this one, I used three different color filters to have a purple/pink sky. This is a great way to enhance sunsets/rises to create the perfect one!

Midterm

For this assignment, I chose to use the UVA Rotunda logo and in it, incorporate popular Charlottesville/Crozet restaurants. Overall, I like it, but the logo I used was not the best quality and there were a lot of outcast pixels that I wish I could have cleaned up and made the image look more clean. If I had more time to work on it, I would definitely fix that.

For the splash, I followed the tutorial, adding different splashes around my object to make it look as realistic as possible. At first, I followed the tutorial for the background too, but I didn't think it looked realistic enough. I played around with a bunch of different images until I found on that worked well. After changing the splash to match the ocean using a color filter and the color replacement brush, I selected the part of the pineapple that would be underwater and lowered the opacity. I also selected the ocean and lowered the opacity on that too to make the pineapple look like it was actually underwater. Overall, I liked how this turned out, although it was a struggle to get it to look right.

"To Save One Life is to Save The World" - Holocaust Project

For this project we had to capture the theme of "To Save One Life is to Save The World." I knew I wanted to incorporate newspapers from the Holocaust and pictures. I decided to use the word "Heroes" and have pictures of heroes in the word. There is a picture of American Soldiers, the Big Three, an injured soldier, a child with his parents, and FDR. I chose these because I feel that in some way all of these people had done something to save someone's life and therefore- saved the world. I then also added an American Flag to the background and blended it with the newspapers to give it a subtle background that embodied America's involvement in the Holocaust. To finish it off, I emphasized the theme by adding the quote at the bottom in a simple font. I really liked how this turned off. I think it is fairly simple, yet it highlights that tragedy and embodies the theme.