Assignment: (Combine two pictures together)
The project for week 3 was to mash up an old photo of Lincoln which we have found on the internet with a new photo I personally taken of the current era.
Craft: (How did I do it?)
In order to start this project I needed to find or take a picture that I wanted to put Abe into. I looked at all the photos that I already have taken throughout the years and I did not find any that I liked. So I decided to take a picture for a specific reason, to convey the message I wanted within the mash up. I took a picture of my dad by the computer in order to accomplish the new picture aspect. Then I started looking through my contact sheet of the Lincoln photos. I found a few pictures where Lincoln's head was looking in the directing I wanted. Then I opened both the new and old pictures in Photoshop. I selected Lincoln's head with the magic wand tool and then copied and pasted it into a blank Photoshop document. From there I zoomed in and took my time to erase everything around Lincoln's head. Then I copied and pasted Lincoln's head into the photo of my dad. I then had to resize Lincoln's head in order to get the proper look of realism. Finally, I lowered the saturation of both pictures down to zero in order to achieve a black and white photo.
Composition: (Arrangement and order of the elements)
In my photograph I wanted two main elements to be seen, 1) Abe Lincoln in front of the computer. 2) A computer with some image of Barack Obama on it. The picture that I took of my dad had a lot of empty space around the edges. So I cropped the pictures so that the image was full of the two subjects I had in the photo. I also wanted to make Lincoln the main focus of the picture because of the assignment so that is why he is larger and his face is the first thing your eye is drawn to.
Concept: (What am I trying to say?)
My main message in this photograph is two individuals that have ratified a nation at two very different time periods. This picture is meant of signify change, pass and present. Lincoln is now sitting in my current era, looking at how change has come to America in 2009. One aspect which I really like about the picture is the direction of both Abe and Obama's face. It looks like both men are starring off toward the right hand direction. This photo signifies that both men have changed America in some way, now they are thinking - looking into the future, to see who or what will be the next big change in America.
Craft: He took a picture of his dad and found Abe's photo that would match the picture he had taken. The project was made using Photoshop. He cropped Lincoln's head, zoomed it in to clean out the edges and finally incorporated it in the other picture by copying it. He had to adjust the saturation of both pictures to make it realistic.
ReplyDeleteComposition: He wanted Abe to be the main focus of the picture that's why he made him bigger and cover the empty spaces in the picture.
Craft: This project is about the people who influence Americans in the past and the present.