Overview:Title: Changing Seasons
Size: Medium: Digital Collage Completed: November 25, 2023 Exhibition Text:My intentions for this piece were to show off my photographs that I took in different seasons and combine them into something that could create more cohesion in the photos. I took all the photos in the collage, with the exception of one that my friend took but that I set up the shot for. I wanted myself to be the focal point of the piece with the background infused with different seasons, all coming together to form me and my identity with my friends surrounding me.
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Planning:
My planning for this piece was looking for images in my camera roll that fit the criteria of being: five of people and five of landscape, I wanted to use a lot of images that I already had because I knew they would vary much more than if I took some new photos of my surroundings now, they would all look very similar. By using old photos I knew it would make things more contrasting with other images.
I ended up with the following ten images all taken this year. Most on my iPhone and two on my Sony digital camera.
These images are all of me and my friends, I wanted them to be a part of this collage because they are a central part of me, most of the photos are taken at a time that I was at my happiest around them and having fun, so I knew they had to be a part of this.
The first photo is of my garage in the summer, the second is on the rooftop of the 88.9 building, the third is of South Shore Park in the fall, the fourth is of a building at nighttime, the fifth is of a yard at a farmers market.
I plan to use these images to create a final collage that blends color and heavily uses the sky, as matches with my theme. I liked the darkness of one of the landscape images and I thought it could be a good jumping off place for me. I used a lot of pictures of my friends and I knew having them in there would brighten up the piece but I wasn't exactly sure how to use them. I wanted to express the love I feel for my friends in this piece, having a picture of me that was taken by someone I love would be a good photo for me to use to continue this theme. The people that I love are a central part of me, but there is still a whole world out there to explore that being the sky part of the collage. I will start with the night sky picture, interject pictures of trees and then my friends on top.
Process:
Stage one:
I started with this photo of my garage in the summertime and I used the 'Refine edge' tool to select the garage part of the photo and put it into my main project, it was difficult to use the tool at first but once I refined and used a smaller brush to select the garage everything went fine. I then pressed the 'OK' button and duplicated the layer of the selected area into the project. The garage got cropped weird and I did not know what to do at first but then I used the 'Free transform' tool to select the size of the garage and the background of the fall tree photo which I chose as the background for the collage. The collage changed a lot during the process, I did not have a firm idea of what I wanted the collage to look like exactly. I wanted to use the background of the garage photo at first but I did not like the telephone wires in the back so I did not end up using the background. I struggled with being able to use the tools at first but once I figured out what I had to do, it was easy for me to continue on with the project steadily.
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stage two:
The next photo I moved onto was the night time photo, and at first I wanted to include the whole building, but I could not do this for three reasons, 1: it was hard to discern where the building ended and the sky began, 2: there was a tree in the building shot that I did not want to be in the end photo, 3: the building was too big for the whole thing to be in. So I cut the building and only used a part of it, then duplicated it into the collage, and then I edited the photo into the composition. I included the two building in the collage because it rounded out the composition, the garage is a part of my house, and a part of me as a whole, and the other building is very pretty and matched the aesthetic of the collage.
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Stage three:
In this stage, I moved onto my first photo of a person, I wanted it to be a floating head in the corner of the collage, to imitate the sun. I really struggled with the refine edge tool, it started to become really repetitive and my computer began to lag so it was hard to get things how I wanted them. Once I got the imitated sun into the place I wanted it, which would change a couple times more. I also edited the vibrance and saturation to match the background more.
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Stage four:
I continued to use the refine edge tool to select people and put them into the collage. it was difficult to use the tool in some specific circumstances, because some were really dark and a little blurry, and some were in positions that were hard to select with the refine edge tool. I continued the process I had earlier with some difficulty from my computer running slowly. I did get better at using the refine edge tool, when I look back my skills definitely improved. The last photo is pretty much where the collage ended, and I feel happy with it, it looks like what I wanted it to and I feel accomplished that I was able to collage things together like this, and I feel good about continuing.
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Experimentation:
At this stage in the process I was experimenting with color and how I wanted things to look, things were very dark so I used the Hue/saturation tool to make things match each other, and to have things look lighter and better to the aesthetic, I liked using the hue/saturation tool and continued to use it to make everything cohesive in the future.
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I did not keep the tree stump in these images, I used it to experiment with the puppet warp tool to see how things worked. I tried to use the stump but it did not fit. I then used what I learned with the stump to use on the bed of grass, and edit how that looked. I wanted to make the bed more interesting, and so I changed the color and shape, and liked it better. It was not the first time I used the color changing tools, but I tested them in different context and liked it. Using the puppet warp tool was easier than I though and I used it a few other times to make things how I wanted them, it was not completely helpful to the aesthetic I was going for, but I knew it could be helpful in a future collage.
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This was the end of the process where I was finalizing how everything looked and how the colors matched each other. As seen in the photos, the background became lighter in the second photo, I did this because I decided that it matched better with everything, it was my first time using the brightness/contrast tool and it went well, I used it on other things to have them more cohesive, and it ended up well for the final collage. With some of the other color tools, they seemed hard to use, but this particular tool was easy for me to use and helped me significantly.
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Reflection:
At the beginning of the project I felt very overwhelmed by the tools and program that I had to learn, but at the end of the project I feel confident in a lot of the skills I acquired, I know how to use refine edge, with is a huge tool that I needed to use, I used the color editing tools and now feel good in those as well. Personally I think using digital mediums are very challenging as a whole, but learning some of them are reassuring that I know how to do these things. The biggest challenge for me was starting the project, I felt very overwhelmed with starting and using these tools on my own, and having to rely on myself if I encountered any problems. Procrastinating this was not a good idea, but it was just very overwhelming. I have tried digital art before, and found it very overwhelming, as it is so different from physical art making, but feeling confident in this makes me more confident in programs like illustrator, which I have used before, but found challenging. My favorite part of the project was using the color tools, they had a very tangible affect on the composition and I really liked the color changes I made. My least favorite was using the refine edge tool so many times, it made me feel very tired because it was so tedious, but I did get faster at using the tool which is a positive, but still I would not like to use the tool so much in a project in the future. I can see some imperfections in the piece and it makes me feel a little upset, but at the same time it was my first time attempting something like this using Photopea. I would like to try a project like this again in the future with some more abstract elements mixed in. The sun is sort of the only element like that, I wanted to add a little tongue in cheek element like that because it represented my personality more and sort of represented that I revolve around the friends in my life.