Black Swan Movie Poster

Portraiture Reflective Essay

I believe that participating in a global project is exciting. Knowing that something small as one contribution to a huge collection can make a difference in the world. Knowing the background of the project by watching the video about how it started is also very exciting because you know it worked if it’s still going on. 

The people I used in this project were myself, and my two friends Shannon and Taylor. When I asked them if I could take a picture of their face the first reaction was “Can you take away my acne?” and I was like “Of course so is it a deal?” And they accepted. First they didn’t now how close I was going to get to their faces and if they were suppose to smile or not. I told them to make a strong face of something they believed in and at first they didn’t know what I was talking about so I told them to just smile. The pictures still turned out great. I used photoshop to take away their acne like I promised and the lines under their eyes so they look young and awake. Other than using black and white afterwards there wasn’t any major changes. It took me awhile to get a picture of myself since I was alone but after about 20 pictures I got a good one. 

I believe very strongly that art can change the world. Art is what everyone sees on a daily basis. Art isn’t just painting and drawing. Posters and advertisements are art as well and people are swayed by what they see in the media. So yes art can change the world if you get enough people to look at it. 

Shannon Inside Out

Taylor Inside Out

Me Inside Out

Photomontage Reflective Essay

I acutally used six images instead of just four because I was originally only going to use four until I started adding a couple and a whole new world started creating itself in my head so I added two more pictures to round it off. All my images are snagged from the internet. At first I really had no idea what I was going to do or what pictures I was planning to use but I knew I wanted some sort of scenary in it so I started with the mountain reflection picture which I took from http://desktopwallpaper-s.com/42/-/Norway_Mountains/ . Then I decided to have a whole different background but in space since it seemed like a cool concept so I looked up pictures of space and pulled the sweet background you see on almost every new mac model from this site http://www.coolwallpaperslk.com/2011/03/space-hd-wallpapers.html . Then I didn't know what to put in it but the mountain was floating so I decided to put some sort of flying thing in there so that's where the airplane came in which I snagged from http://www.loc.gov/pictures/ . Then I decided to through an animal in there and thus the eagle takes form and came from http://www.squidoo.com/bald-eagles-?utm_source=google&utm_medium=imgres&utm_campaign=framebuster . Then when I saw that these two melded together I decided to put something on the other side but with ground transportation so I got the horse from http://www.whitegadget.com/pc-wallpapers/141792-horse.html and the car from http://www.carinsurancecomparison.com/minimum-car-insurance/

The most challenging thing for me when putting the images together was finding a way to blend them so they all kind of looked as if they sort of belonged in the picture. I played around with different lighting and textures and finally came to consenses of putting all the small pictures in luminasity and the background in pin light. The mountains remained the same. It was tedious when I was masking the the smaller pictures and the mountain so that their backgrounds didn't show but I got it done and it wasn't terribly difficult.

The story I guess I'm trying to convey here in this photomontage is that there use to just be nature in the world before humans and electronics and those kinds of modes of transportaion but now they're just a refection to today's society. I thought the mountains and space could tie it all together and make it look like a different world.

Two Different Worlds