Honestly, I like my midterm more than my final. I think I was really happy with the way the two panels worked together as a diptych. It was a challenge to make the piece work as a whole and flow nicely into one another using Photoshop tools. I tried to accomplish that with a similar washed out background and similar lighting in both pieces. I also tried to make the artistic style similar in both panels. I think I was more successful in portraying my big idea of uncertainty in an artistically creative and thought provoking manner with my midterm as well. It was definitely a great challenge for me to take something I felt connected to personally, turn it into a established "big idea," and then find a way to present that big idea through Photoshop. So, my midterm in general was probably my most significant accomplishment.
2. Choose a project in the class and discuss your most challenging learning experience in Photoshop. Focus on a technique or concept from Photoshop that was difficult at first, but that you mastered by the end of the quarter.
I think I would have to choose Quiz 3 and the final as projects I struggled with and was challenged by. Just applying physical transformations in a convincing and flawless way was hard for me to do successfully. When it was time to do quiz 3 I had a difficult time even coming up with a creative idea for retouching an image. Looking back on what I turned in for quiz 3 I see a lot of room for improvement. But, I think I did improve pretty significantly between that quiz and what I turned in for my final. I used a tutorial from worth1000 to help me convincingly retouch an image of my 19 year old friend Julie, making her look well into 70s or 80s. My use of the clone stamp tool and liquify tool improved through practice. I also learned how to effectively use masks, adjustment layers, filters, and layer styles in a way that made a piece of work look more reaistic and complete. These are all tools that baffled me at the beginning of the quarter. An aspect of quiz 3 that doesn't look so good would be the rough selection egdes of the hair, I think you can see where I was able to create a smoother transition on the final. I also think that my use of the liquify tool to make the lips bigger in quiz 3 could have been done better with a clone stamp tool, which is what I used to thin the lips in my final.
3. Compare two projects from the quarter to compare and contrast how you achieved making meaning in the work. Try to showcase in your examples an improved capacity to making visual images that mean something as opposed to being a showcase of technique.
I chose to compare my Quiz 2, the selection quiz, to my midterm. Obviously, my main goal for quiz two was to just meet certain requirements within the class period. For quiz two I simply played around with the brightness and contrasts of images. I took an image of a flower, selected it out and placed it in a different picture. I also selected a butterfly from one picture into another. To make the changes more realistic I changed colors, added drop shadows, changed perspective and sizes and so on. I also made random use of the liquify tool. However, there is clearly no deep meaning or "big idea" begind this final image of a butterfly sitting on a flower. I was just showing that I could use certain techniques in photoshop. However, in my midterm, I had to continue putting these techniques to use, while keeping my big idea in mind the whole time. To do that, I first determined what my big idea was, in this case, uncertainty, and then zeroed in on some themes I could portray in my project, being lost and fearful. I then took the topic and subtopics and applied them artistically. I had to take the images I was using into much more careful consideration than before to make sure my project made sense.To reinforce my big idea I created a bright and eerie lighting to my work. I also used blurred images with sickening colors. The repeated imagery of long endless passages or paths and staircases was meant to represent being lost and not knowing if an end is near, thus creating fear. There are distant and dark figures wandering in most of the passages adding to this effect as well. I also merged an image of a young boy and a grown woman to create an unsettling and strange image with eyes wide in fear. The whole time I was creating this image, I had to make sure I was effectively getting my meaning across. And to do so I had to use all those techniques I used in quiz 2, but this time is all came down to a significant point I wanted viewers to understand.
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