This is the rough draft of the "letter" picture, and I do like the way it turned out. I like how the colors are bright and vibrant, bringing a sense of cheer and happiness to the photo. I also like how it has complementary colors, blue and orange, that also makes it visually appealing (I still don't understand how the blue/orange combo works, but it is!). The "vignette" effect, the darkening of the corners of the photo I like because it seems to draw your eye toward the center of the photo and the "b." I like this picture. It did take me awhile to get to this picture though.
This is the first first draft of the "b" photo. I had little experience with Photoshop and had no idea where to start (and I need to continue playing around with Photoshop) so I looked at YouTube tutorials on how to get certain effects. I believe this is called the "Lomo" effect and as you can see, I used elements of this effect on the final first draft of the "b" photo. While I like this picture, I like the first one more because the colors are more vibrant and bright, and the "b" is more clearly visible. In this picture, there is a lot going on and the eye can be drawn to all different sorts of things like the building or road. So I decided while this picture is okay, I had to make the "b" the focus of my picture.
This is the second "b" picture I cam up with. Now I like this one better than the second, because the "b" is closer and more defined. Again, I am using the "vignette" effect to get those darkened corners. I also played with the Marquee and Cut tool to get rid of the cars and the man that were in the photo so I got a nice clean photo of just the road and traffic signals. But I think I went a little too crazy with cutting things out because as you can see, the light post is striped of its bulbs and this gave it a weird look. It just seems strange to have a pole there right in the middle of the road. What is that pole for? The colors while I do like the almost vintage feel to them, they were still a bit dull and boring.
What I learned from the process of creating this "letter" photo is how to think visually and how to manipulate the picture so that what I want to be the focus IS the focus. Like the second picture, it was just too far away and too busy for anyone to focus on and see the "b" so I need to crop everything else out and come closer to the traffic signals and bring out the "b" shape. But I also had to be careful, because if I had been too focused on making the "b" the focus, I can create something like the third picture, where although the "b" is visible, the overall picture looks strange and wrong. So figuring out what works visually and what doesn't takes time and a little work. Thankfully, we also had the readings like McCloud to help us figure out how to create better visuals.
2 comments:
Hello Whitney! I really like how you included three images in your blog this week and how this provided us with a visual representation of the process you went through as an artist, writer, and consumer/producer of multimedia. I think it's important to reflect on your own process and way of doing things, but also to share that reflection with others, as we can both relate and learn from it. I really like how you stayed true to the original image you took, but also expanded your knowledge about photoshop enough to add educated and unique touches to the original. I also giggled at your title because it was so clever. :)
Hey Whitney,
I loved the specificity of your post. It made me want to change the structure of my blog post :3 But anyway, it seems like you put a lot of thought into the project. I like that after reading your entry, I feel like I really know the process you went through because it was so descriptive. Not sure if it's because of the vignette effect or the square shape of your photos, but they reminded me of Instagram. I really like the brightness of the first picture. Great work!
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