Culture Clash

Purpose:

• To create a Clash of Cultures by creating your own Photo montage, combining images from Beijing, China and Yarmouth, Maine, USA;

• To further develop your Photoshop knowledge and skills;
• To create a “surreal” landscape by montaging a variety of photographs;

To know, use, and understand the Four Collage Techniques to in your Photo Montage: Juxtaposition/fragmentation, Point of View, Scale Change, Overlapping

During the creation of my culture clash project I learned how to work efficiently in photoshop, select good photos, and some new photoshop techniques. I learned that command T is transform, and command D is deselect. I also saw the many effects which can be put on a photo, such as gradients and patterns. While I was working on this project I really had to think about what photos would work well with the background and each other. Some pictures on the ning were nice, but just didn’t have the point of view I wanted, so they could not be used in my project. This was also a major difficulty, finding photos that worked that is. Because in the Ning there are very few landscapes, and many photographs are very similar because of overlapping assignments.

Free Choice Photography

This is my favorite photo I took for this assignment. Yes, I know I split the background, and it may be a little too dark. However, What I went through to get this photo makes it special to me. It was a full moon, with only a few wispy clouds in the sky. The wind was dead calm. The only sound was the occasional gargle of water in rocks, or the gentle rustle of leaves. The time was almost 11:00. I had already spent about 45 minutes crawling around, framing shot with the moon and the water, pressing the shutter, waiting, (a long time), then finally seeing the photo, which nine times out of ten was either blurry or underexposed. This is the type of photography I love. It includes nature, water, and low light. As you may already be able to tell, I am not the best at low light photography. I have a general idea of the Iso, aperture and exposure and what they do, but I just turn the settings until the photo looks right. What drives me to keep taking pictures like this is the pure serenity of the moment which I want to capture. I love being the only moving thing on a silent, beautiful night by the ocean. In fact, the photography is just an excuse for me to get out there. Absorbing the silence of nature is a kind of meditation for me. It allows me to relax my thoughts and collect myself.

Culture Clash Planning

• Juxtaposition/fragmentation

Two things which are placed close together for the effect of contrast

• Point of View

The angle and distance at which something is looked at from

• Scale Change

A change in scale in a single piece of work.

• Overlapping

When two images overlap one another partially obscuring one.

Inspiring Digital Artists, Jason Seiler

Purpose

• To become familiar with 5 accomplished digital artists;
• To see what is possible in the world of digital art.

Ethan Merrill, Edward Weston Photo project link.

This is a link to my Famous Photographers project, Edward Weston link.

Hobbies, Merrill

I have been selling on eBay since 8th grade. Although I never use packing peanuts because they are very annoying. I mostly sell my own things, however I sometimes do consignment selling at 15%. Also it is very expensive to ship priority mail so I rarely do. The only things I really use in this photo are the laptop and the scale.  However the box and peanuts made the photo more interesting.