Assignment 1: My Shot at Photo Manipulation

For this courses first assignment,  I found two photographs, both taken by Michael Anthony, and manipulated them to look different from the original.  Both photographs were edited in Adobe Photoshop CS6.  I titled the first one Standing Alone, and the second one Bambi Alive.  Below are the original photographs and the edited versions to compare.

"Standing Alone"

Original Photograph (by Michael Anthony)

Edited Version

This was the first photograph that I came across and I really like it.  It was very simple, but a lot could be done with it for that very reason.  The way that the girl was positioned and her staring upwards at the sky gave me the idea to make her look at something.  For this photo, I first thought about adding fireworks coming out from her chest, because her pose reminded me so much of  Katy Perry's song firework.  However, I decided to go with a darker theme, since it seemed to suit the deserted parking lot a lot better.  So I added a spider looking creature.  The spider was cut out from a different picture found online and added to the picture of the girl.  I modified the size of the spider to make it fit in with the scene and also gave it a shadow to ground it.  I also edited the colour balance, contrast, and vibrance of the whole photograph to change the mood of the scene. I then finished it off by adding a vignette around the outside of the photograph.  I wanted it to look a bit more dark and sad, almost as if to imply that what is coming next might not be so great.  This was really fun to play around with, and I really like how it turned out.

"Bambi Alive"

Original Photograph (by Michael Anthony)

Edited Version

For this second picture, I really like the picture of the deer. It is beautiful.  I had thought of many interesting ways to edit this photo, like adding weird and interesting things to the deer such as wings or antlers and even a unicorn horn (which all turned out looking ridiculous)!  What I eventually ended up doing was modifying the photo to look like a scene that could maybe remind some people of their childhood.  The deer was fortunately in the perfect pose to pull it off. I used Bambi (The adorable Disney character) as the inspiration for this photo.  I added spots to the side of the deer by playing with the blending options and also found a photo of a yellow butterfly to add on the tail of the deer (similar to one of the scenes in Bambi where a yellow butterfly lands on his tail).  I then adjusted the brightness, saturation, exposure, and colour balance to brighten the photograph and make it look more light felt and "magical" (perhaps) to match the mood from my inspiration.  I also adjusted the same things for the added butterfly and then finished it off with a vignette around the edges of the picture.  This second one was a bit harder to do than the first one, but I still think it turned out pretty interesting.  It was very fun to attempt it and seeing the final result.

Resources:

http://djktala.wordpress.com/2010/05/07/ktala-yellow-butterfly-kristal-mixes-33/

http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/gallery/2007/oct/03/spider