Postcard

For this assignment, I was trying to make my postcard based on my word poem. Because I was able to visual the word poem, I had some ideas for an actual image. This is nothing like I expected but it's probably better. The major challenge I had was how dark the bottom half of the photo is and the more I played with the contrast and lightness, the more distorted the image and colors got. So I settled in the middle of a really vivid blue and a semi-dark background. Playing around with the arrangement of the photos was really new for me. I had to keep referring to my notes but as with every project, I eventually got the hang of it and actually made it pretty quickly. I enjoyed the fact that this image was basically an accident. I was trying to put the heart where the eye was and that looked pretty cool but when I copy and pasted, it just sort of happened and I loved it. I am most proud of the image as a whole because it really came together and I feel like it illustrates my word poem well. I feel like I was able to achieve what I was trying to accomplish. But if I had more time, I would have tried to make the images fade into one another better. I really don't like that the heart looks chopped off but I guess for some it would be an artistic choice, so it could be worse. Overall I think the image is really cool!

Word Poem

This project was a lot of fun for me once I got the hang of it. I just wanted to accomplish something that was fun to look at and something that was easy to understand. I want anyone to be able to look at it and understand why I did what I did to each word. One of the major challenges that I encountered was piecing the words together. When I began this, I did the whole phrase in one text box. Once I got really frustrated by the fact that everything would move together, I realized I needed to put it together like a ransom note and made each word in it's own text box. Once I did that, the rest was fun and fairly easy. Again, this whole thing was new for me. Every time I sit down to use photoshop I learn something new but figuring out how to change the background color, though it may sound easy was definitely new. I had played around with it a lot and just couldn't figure it out. I enjoyed that I go to choose the phrase. Because it was something that I really liked, it made it easier for me to visualize it and I couldn't wait for the end product. I am most proud of the fact that I was able to figure out most of this stuff on my own. I spent some time in the mac lab by myself and was able to get a lot done and play with a bunch of different ideas, and this one was my favorite. However if I had had more time, I probably would have played around with the words "that" and "keeps". I spent the least amount of time on those two and just kind of had them left over and put them in as they were. The only thing is I'm not sure what I would have done to the two words differently except that I would have just thought about it more.

Contact Sheet

Because this was the first assignment and I have never used Photoshop before, I was very skeptical and cautious with every move I made. After first, I was very frustrated and thought I would never be able to remember everything or understand some of the concepts. I quickly learned—on my own, outside of the classroom—that I was able to have fun with it and it was no longer stressful. I was just trying to complete the assignment at first and then I became more meticulous about the images I chose so that it was aesthetically pleasing. My biggest challenge, however, was probably the first and fifth rows. The first one was difficult because I could not find a clear enough image in the first place to differentiate between 72 dpi and 1200 dpi, but I eventually settled on this image. For the fifth row, I had to play around with different images for a while because it was hard to find an image to zoom in on enough to abstract it. Because this entire program and its functions were new to me, I enjoyed the entire final project. I felt good when I was able to figure things out on my own and go at my own speed. I was able to do it all in just about and hour where as the one that was done with the class took two periods, therefore, I'd have to say that I am proud of the whole assignment. When all was said and done, I was excited to move on to the next project and learn more. However, if I had had more time, I would have tried to find a more clear image to use in the first row to demostrate a more drastic difference between 72 dpi and 1200 dpi and I probably would have been more careful in my fourth row so that the upclose goes more gradual to wide angle.

Here is a close up of my favorite image from the contact sheet.