Digital Potrait

DIGITAL PORTRAITS: Black and White: "Violence Hurts" Manipulated: "Frustration" and "Opened Blindness"

"VIOLENCE HURTS"

I took the photo from the cafeteria, where there was sunlight shining on one side of her face. I asked Kathy to do different poses for my ideas such as blindness, violence, and sadness. I already used one of her poses for the blindness and I thought this pose looked very interesting and had the most effective lighting.

I did minimal changes to the photo. First, I cropped it and changed the contrast. Finally, I converted it to black and white. Because, there was a distraction in the photo, I had to erase and clone stamp that part to eliminate it from the photo.

I feel that even though very little change was done to the picture, the outcome was good and effective. I do find that sometimes, less is more, and that simple changes can make the photo look interesting. Sometimes, doing too much just ruins the goal you are trying to reach.

"FRUSTRATION"

At first, I was not sure of who my subject was, and what I wanted them to do. I had a lot of trouble with this first step. Ms. Reidel helped me by thinking of some friends that would be interesting to take a picture of. I chose Catherine Subang to be my subject. I took a couple of pictures of her with different emotions. I also took a picture of Steven Nguyen, but decided to use Catherine's pictures instead.

Once I decided which picture of Catherine to use, I cropped it to make it look more interesting.

Then, I played around with the shadow and highlights.

I also changed the mid-tone contrast of the picture to add more effect.

Then, I finally converted the picture to black and white.

Lastly, I played around with the brightness and contrast of the picture to create the final product.

I was satisfied with the overall outcome of "Frustration." I liked how simple it was, and how I did minimal effects to it. By converting the picture to black and white, it created an entirely new image. It added impact to the picture.

"OPENED BLINDNESS"

I had a lot of fun manipulating this photo, but I didn't want to to overdue it. The first thing I did was crop the photo and filled the background with black paint to cover up any blank parts. Next, I converted it to black and white and played around with the brightness, contrast, shadows, and highlights. Then, I used the magnetic lasso to select her eyes. I changed the brightness and contrast. I also added a new layer over each eye and painted it a light blue. Then, I changed the opacity of the blue layer to make it fit with the eye. I also blurred it to make it blend more effectively.

I was very satisfied with the overall outcome. My goal wasn't to make it look creepy or scary, but it turned out that way. Nevertheless, I like the effect and impact the picture has. A quote that inspired me to do this photo was "God closed my eye, and now I can see." In a movie, a blind man said this quote, and I think it had a good message. Even though you may be blind, sometimes you can see more. You can see things in the world that you would not normally pay attention to if you were not blind.

Digital Landscape

DIGiTAL LANDSCAPE: "Alone" by Geline Quintano

My inspiration for this project were the black and white pictures that were shown by Ms. Reidel on the slideshow. I was also inspired by the digital landscapes created by Jim Kazanjian. At first, I decided to use a desert and some type of overlay. Then, I was going to create an interesting background and use broken buildings to fill in the bare space of the desert.

Instead of using a desert as my main photo, I used a picture of a lake at night with a foreground of a drought. I did this by deleting the water portion of the lake picture and replacing it with a new layer of the drought picture.

Next, I decided to put a hole in the ground. I did this by getting a picture of a hole from Google, and pasting it on to the drought layer. I blurred the edges and changed the colour slightly, to make it blend well with the drought layer.

By using Jim Kazanjian as an inspiration, I decided to take some pictures of some broken buildings and incorporate it into the picture. I took seperate buildings and pasted them close together to make it appear as one building. I also had to change the perspective and skew the picture so that it was on a certain angle to make it look realistic.

For the sky, I decided to lower the transparency of the actual sky of the lake picture, so that the picture of the earth I used can show through. I also added a rainbow to the sky because it seemed to add a little more detail.

The foreground of the picture seemed too bare. First, I pasted a ladder in the hole to make it seem like it was coming out of it. I had to play around with the perspective and skew tools to transform the ladder. Later on, I decided not to use the ladder because I was not satisfied with the outcome. Instead, I found a picture of a man who was ice fishing and pasted it near the hole. I changed the brightness and contrast of the man, and also blurred the picture to make it blend well with everything else.

I added a black cat just to balance the picture out. There was already something on the right side of the picture, and nothing on the other side. By adding the cat, it prevented the picture from being bare on the left side.

I converted the picture to black and white because I thought it would create a darker mood to the picture. The title of this digital landscape is Alone because the picture creates a dark and sad mood and it shows a man all alone.

Overall, I was happy with the outcome. I liked this digital landscape more than the previous ones that I have created in Grade 11. I think what I needed to work more on was the lighting and shadows of the picture.


EXTRA TIME: Other filters on the Original Photo

Accented Edges:

Mosaic Tiles:

Liquify: