It's All Me
Since the title of the project is “It’s All Me,” the idea behind my project is “all about me.” The characters in the piece show me doing the things that reflect my personality and all of them are posing for the cell phone camera. For example, a few characters are hiding behind rocks or textbooks or kicking things around and these activities are a reflection of my sometimes playful behaviour. Another shows my love for stories and literature by reading book and another is eating food. Who doesn’t love food? In the bottom right area of the photo is a character admiring a cell phone and another character in the back reading something on a cell phone. This represents my interest for electronics and modern technology. Another character displays how I often misplace things by digging through a backpack and a few others are sitting on the rocks contemplating showing how I enjoy spending time by myself just thinking. And lastly, a character in the foreground is taking a photo of all the activities going on showing my interest in photography. So basically the whole story here is me posing for myself in many different ways. The challenges weren’t as severe as I thought; the task was just a tedious repetition of erasing the background to reveal the subjects. However, when we were taking the photos, a huge cloud moved over the sun making half of my photos dark while the others had strong lighting. It was quite frustrating trying to fix those dark photos. I tried to spread out the subject across the area where I took the photos, but I also tried to make some small clusters or groups of the subject to create a more interesting composition. The effective use of props such as the cellphone and the backpack helped the content have narrative and personality.
The theme that I interpreted from this project is that the product is to showcase the “self.” And the different ways we interpret the assignment also reflects this “self.” The fact we use ourselves as the subject puts the message or idea on a much more personal level. Our creation reflects our life, our experiences and our characteristics. It says what we say about ourselves. What I want viewers to understand and think about from my work is how I view myself and how their impressions of me may be different that my own. Is this kid really like this or is there something more to the interactions in this piece? - June 12, 2013 Picasso's Revenge
I am always fascinated with buildings, especially when artistic skills are incorporated into the architectural design. In my opinion, an interesting building will always look different at every angle one views it at. Since the main idea of the assigned project is to capture the angles of a certain object, I thought that the perfect subject matter for this would be a building. I chose my subject matter to be the SFU building located in Surrey Central because this building has a very interesting architectural design and is one of the major landmarks in that area. I decided to focus on taking photos of one section of the building rather than the whole thing so I could get better shots of the different angles. Also because the Blenz Coffee was at the base of the tower: the most interesting part of the building in my opinion. This was difficult because the building is so huge and it’s hard to aerial shots of the subject due to the layout of the surrounding area. I have some regrets for not taking enough photos because I feel that the center of photo is a bit awkward and the certain photo seems like it does not belong there. Other than that I think the piece is quite balanced.
One thing I love about the SFU Building in Surrey is all the different elements of building: the windows, the doors, the roofs, the materials used, the tower, etc. Since there are so many elements and features it’s hard to show them all in just one photo. But when you take multiple photos at different angles and abstract them, people can get a closer look and enjoy those features. In my piece, I show only a few parts of the building. You see the doors, part of the tower, the coffee shop and multiple sides of the building. I want people to see the different parts and features of the SFU building and look at that building in a different way the next time they walk by it. My piece says more about contemporary ideas than historical, but when you think about it you notice that the technology of mankind has advanced rapidly in a small number of years. So my work makes a point about how much times have changed in the terms. The fact that I used a contemporary piece of work, the SFU building, had a major impact on creating my composition in terms of angles, subject, and putting the photos together mainly because of the modern details of the building. - May 21, 2013 Tiny Planets
These two landscape photos show the skyline of Downtown Vancouver and condominiums along False Creek. Due to the Photoshop technique used and the subject matter, straight lines radiate from the center of the photos. Both photos have organic shapes due to the building and inorganic shapes from the trees and grass hills. Grays and blues are prominent in the day photo while the night photo has more dark grays and yellows.
In both photos, the condominiums exist in the foreground and the the skyline of Downtown is more in the background. The effect of having the condos in the foreground allows them to be more prominent. Since the condos are not as busy as the city, it gives the photo a more held back and calm feel to it. The place where I took the photos affected the composition of my pieces. It made my photos have an asymmetrical look to them because of the dense city on one side and the calm and yet bold condominiums on the other. The patterns and textures that exist in the photos are the repetition of windows from the buildings, the rolling and soft clouds and the star like pattern that is exclusive to the night photo. The colour scheme for the day photo is somber and ominous as it has many shades of gray. However, there is a small bit of bright colours to offset the grays. This allows the photo to have some contrast in the colour scheme. The different colours given by the lights in the night photo gives a lively feel. This liveliness is emphasized by the contrast of the dark colours in the background. The two photos are composed of two 360° panoramic photos of the same place. In order to create these panoramic shots, I set my tripod and camera and took multiple landscape photos from a single spot, making sure that each photo overlapped the next. When taking these photos, I made sure that I had enough sky and ground in the frame. I needed to make sure that I got the tops of the buildings in the photo to ensure that the Photoshop filter I was going to use will work. After taking all my photos, I put them into Photoshop and stitched them together using Automerge. This created a long panoramic photo. I then cleaned up the photo, turned the image size to 55cm by 55cm and rotated it 180°. After that, I used the Polar Coordinates filter to turn it into a planet. These photos have a lot of personal meaning to me because they show a place that I admire. I love the city. I love feeling the rush of human life as people carry out their daily lives. But I don't only like it because of what kind of life is there, I also love the buildings and seeing how high the technology of mankind can reach. I am also amazed by how a place can carry different personalities at different times of the day and I believe that it is very reflective of human society. Some people can be very reserved and serious but then turn into party animals when the night comes. This is reflected in my photos as the day photos show a very dense and somber city and is contrasted by the night photo which shows the same city lit up with life. Both photos give me a sense of wonder as I think about the contrasting persona. My work is important because it represents some of the city’s contrasting personalities. It shows that one place can have different “faces.” I did not experiment much with my surroundings. I simply found a place and used the patterns, shapes and other art elements that existed there. These photos emphasize different moods; the day photos shows somberness and the night photo shows liveliness. There is no serious message that I wanted to address. These photos are intended for others to enjoy but yet think about the moods given by the scenes. I think the general theme of theses photos is common as I have seen many people take night photos of the city and pictures of tall buildings. Many people also have made “Tiny Planets” before so I am not labeling my work as purely original. My project fully meets the requirements. However, I believe I could improve on taking the night photos. I found it difficult to get everything in focus in very poor lighting conditions and I believe more practice and advice from professionals should help me improve. - February 27, 2013 |
Surreal.
Our main idea was to incorporate the Noah’s Ark Bible story into our photo manipulation. We put a line of eight animals in the centre (hamster, dog, horse, bear, bison, fox, giraffe and elephant), coming from the direction of the ark in the middle of the strip of ocean. Above, we placed the two of us reaching for each other which was inspired by Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel painting. The rainbow above the ark signifies promise, but in contrast, the dark, sinister sinkhole represents the hellish destination of mankind. We also added outer space into the clouds because it created a startling contrast between day and night.
We changed the colour of the hamster, the horse, the bear, the bison, the giraffe, the elephant, the hole and the ark. We blended the outer space photo with the clouds using the eraser tool and we added blur to the large rock in the foreground to add a lens blur. We also changed the levels on the hamster, dog, horse, fox and bear so the colours would match with the rest of the photo. We added shadows and lighting effects on all the animals and ourselves using the burn and dodge tools. We also changed the size of all the photos to give the picture a sense of obscurity and we separated the landscape photo into different sections so we could put objects behind certain features of the landscape in the photo. And finally we added the Paint Daubs filter to the ocean. - March 8, 2013 Photoshop Introduction
January 23, 2013
Alphabet Moods
November 18, 2013
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