Stephanie Yip, The Harshness of Reality
The concept I was going for with this piece is the feeling behind the thought of slowly losing your childhood memories and dreams to the harsh reality that time is always moving. The thoughts you have as a child are temporary as reality always kicks in and is inescapable. That is why I chose the objects: duck, origami stars, ribbon and dead roses to symbolize a sad, almost playful concept.
The process I had for this piece was at first just playing around with the composition and seeing how the objects work best with each other and what connection the objects have with each other can convey. I mainly liked the photos I took with a darker use of the white light and a higher ISO and aperture because it had better focus on the duck and less on the background as well as showed a sadder mood for the concept I was going for. When it came to the photoshop aspect of the project, I had difficulty using the techniques but after some time playing around with what I can do, I decided to use the lasso tool to add other elements to the photo. I added a bunch of arms/hands to represent that reality is inescapable and inevitable. I also added a blue/purple swirl in the background to symbolize the subject coming out of a dreamlike state and into reality. I would say that to me, the photoshopped image produced was able to convey the meaning I wanted it to convey.
I think what I could do to improve my piece would be to firstly, figure out when adding my pictures onto photoshop, how to make it so that it has as clear a resolution as it was originally photographed. Another thing I could do is add more color to the photoshopped version to convey more of a dreamlike state and make it more clear what my concept was to the audience.