Week 6

Assignment: Mash-up photos that I shot to create a message for my viewers

Craft: I used photoshop to cut photos out of one picture and paste them into a different one. I combined 4 different photos together. To accurately cut out the photos I hide the background layer and fused the eraser along with the marquee tool. After cutting the photos I used the scale to make the photos look realistc in the new background. Next I used paint to make one of the layers appear as if it were behind the other. Finally I used the brightness/contrast along with hue/saturation to match the colors of the photos because they were taken in different light.

Compostion: If I were to change one thing about my photo I would change the composition because most of the action is taking place in the lower part of my photo and there is a lot of extra background that is wasted space. To change this I will either add more people playing games to the upper region or somehow crop that area and bring the people playing games tighter together to control my viewer's eye more. This is one of the photos I might add to my final mash-up because I think another recreational game will bring the focus off athletics more because the 3 of the 4 pictures are of athletics.

Concept: My combination of photos is a tribute to games. Games are awesome regardless of who is playing or what the game is. Everyone should play games because games are fun.

Week 5

Assignment: Go out and take 25 photos to use for a mash-up.

Craft: I will use photoshop to combine a collection of pictures. The tools that I will be using are a combination of different marquees, blur, paintbrush, along with adjusting the scale, distorting the photo, changing the hue/saturation, brightness/contrast and many other things to help blend the two photos together without being able to see two seperate photos but instead one new photo.

Compostion: Right now I am thinking of adding together many different photos. I want the photo's to show the different qualities that athletes posses. I was thinking of somehow combining pictures of people lifting, running, practicing, studying, supporting eachother, and any other things that could be said about our athletic program here.

Concept: Using a combination of many pictures I want to make a tribute to athletes and inparticular at Saint xavier university. I want to show the hardwork and dedication that so many indivuals put in to become their best.

Week 4

Assignment: This week we had to come up with the final draft of our mash-up which was a combination from a lincoln era photo and a current photo. We had to edit the image that we created last week to stronger portray the message that we wanted to get across along with cleaning up the photoshop work.

Craft: Using Photoshop I shanged the shirt that I had Lincoln wearing. To do this I used the paint brush to make the shirt represent the school colors of U of I. Then I added the logo on the shirt to cover the design that had been there previously. I also colored the towels blue and orange to add to this theme of supporting the school. after coloring the towels I added a gradient to the towels to cover up some of the differences in color. I also added a logo to the hamper. Finally I used paint and blur to fix the color of the face along with reduce the wrinkles on Lincoln's old face to match his young body.

Compostion: The first thing that the eye is drawn to now is the t-shirt because the color and logo make it stand out in the white and black photo. The next thing that my eye moves to is Lincoln's face because it looks weird next to the long hair. Third an dfourth the eyes look at the other towels and the blackhawk logo. I made the blackhawk logo smaller so that it would not draw attention away from Lincoln's face or the Illinois logo which I wanted to be a bigger focus. The outer edges of the picture is glanced at but is not as relevant as the large centered person which is clearly the focus of the image.

Concept: I put Lincoln in an Illinois t-shirt because I found it likely that he would show pride in his state school. I also colored the towels orange and blue to show off that school spirit even more. I went with the logo of the chief and the team blackhawks because I found it almost ironic because Lincoln fought against and killed many Native Americans and fought in the Black Hawk War of 1832. At the same time this irony is occuring I also put Lincoln in the place of an average college student doing laundry. Lincoln appears to be laid back with the long hair but at the same time organized by seperating his laundry. I could see Lincoln having lots of school spirit especially for an Illinois school. I like this picture because of the satirical side.

Week 3

Assignment: Mash-up: Select a photo from the Lincoln era and the contemporary pictures that I wanted to put together to create a message.

Craft: I selected a photo from the recent pictures first and then found one of lincoln where his head matched up as close as possible. Using photoshop I opened both pictures and selected the area from both that I wanted to use. Using the marquee tool I cut around the head of Lincoln and placed it over the head in my contemporary picture. Then I used tools such as transformation to adjust/fix the scale, rotation, skew/distort. I also adjusted the brightness/contrast of the image along with the hue/saturation to make the colored photo match the black and white from lincoln's photo. I had to go back and to some of the layers to make the images blend together the best I could. I also used the blur tool and eraser to fix the images.

Composition: I changed the photos form the ones I choose previously because I wanted to but lincoln's face on a person. The message I wanted to send by mixing these two photos together was that if Lincoln was in our time he would have been a normal college student. I saw him as being more of the type to stay in study and do his chores. Hence the picture of him doing laundry. I see him as being organized and seperating his clothes. The long hair makes him seem almost like a hippie once again in the wrong time period. Before Lincoln might have been seen as ahead of his time now perhaps he is slightly behind.

Concpet: I want to change the picture by adding meaning to some of the objects in the picture. For example I want to make the shirt have something to do with Illinois because I believe that is where he would have went to school. I also would want to somehow make the school colors orange and blue stand out in that photo. Another thing I need to fix is the body is too young for the face and the coloring is slightly off. I could also make his shirt representative of the hippie idea or anything to add meaning.