Ellen Wang

Reminiscing Youth

For my concept, I  wanted to show the yearn for youth as one grows older. I took a picture of a installation by Yayoi Kusama ‘LOVE IS CALLING’ which composed of a “mirrored room illuminated by inflatable tenticle-like forms”.  For the picture on the right, I took a picture on a Harborwalk which represents the dullness and unfiltered adult life. I wanted these two pictures to contrast eachother since I wanted to illustrate the difference between youth and adulthood. 

At first I was going to edit the first image to make it more colorful and bright and leave the second picture unfiltered but I realized that there would be too much contrast between the two pictures. Therefore, I decided to edit the second picture and include some elements of the first picture so the second picture somewhat resembles and connects to the first picture. As for photoshopping, I used the lasso tool a lot to select areas of an image that I wanted to paste and include in my second image. I also aded two cropped pictures of my feet from different persecptives which represents loneliness and solo adventures. On the water, I added elements of the first image to make it look like reflections and I also added wave to make it more water and ripple like. I also individually pasted the colorful tentacles and then used the paint brush to outline the edges. I inverted the colors of the tentacles to create a contrast between the brighter ones. Additionally, I included a subway map to represent the “adventures”. Problems I encountered was not being able to make the edges smooth after using the lasso tool but I figured out that I could change the hardness and use the eraser tool smoothen out the edges. 

If I had more time, I would most likely retake my pictures because of the time crunch, I wasn’t able to take pictures I wanted for my concept which is why I had to alter my concept to make it fit the pictures. I would also want to play around with making collages because it seems like an interesting technique to try.