Contact Sheet

This assignment was a lot of fun. I really liked being able to get creative with the photos that I chose and the various affects in Photoshop.

In the first row, I manipulated the resolution of an image. The butterfly was a colorful image with a lot of detail, and the change of resolution could be easily seen. To change the resolution, I clicked Image>Image Size, and selected different dpi for each cell. The image became more and more unfocused on the detail as I lessened the dpi. The end image of 72 dpi was the most unclear version of the image.

In Row 2, I worked with the color of the image. The image I chose was a pile of crayons because there are many colors in the picture that can be manipulated. The image I chose was already in RGB (web) mode so I had to change it to CMYK (print). The change from “Web mode” to “Print mode” made the colors in the image slightly darker and more concentrated. In the next square, I worked with duotone. I played around with the colors and ended up choosing PANTONE 811C solid coated as my final setting. I chose this because it was a nice shade of my favorite color orange, and it makes the picture look dark and mysterious in a way. Finally, I selected grayscale to change the photo to black and white, which I enjoyed because I like the look of a classic black and white photograph.

Row 3 had us experiment with the orientation of a landscape. I started off with a very symmetrical image, so I played around with different sections of the photo. The picture of the lake had a lot of detail in the front and foreground, and I wanted to focus on this detail with the cropping. First I cropped the image to a square by typing in 1 inch by 1 inch dimensions of the crop tool, and I chose to crop out the left half of the image. This took away from the symmetry of the image. For the portrait, I cropped part of the mountains in the background at a .75 inch width and 1 inch height.

I chose a portrait of the Eiffel Tower in my 4th row. This photo is significant because I fell in love with Paris after visiting it 3 years ago, and the Eiffel Tower is the most well known structure associated with the vibrant city. This photo is interesting because there is a lot of activity going on in the photo, but one might not realize it right away because the Eiffel Tower is so large and central in the picture. In this row, we were asked to start with an image, and gradually zoom in to a smaller detail in the photo. By the time I arrived at my final image, I chose to focus on 2 buses in the background behind the Eiffel Tower. I never would have noticed these buses unless I had cropped. To zoom in, the constraints I had to put on my image was 1 inch height by 1.332 inch width.

In Row 5, I began with a photo of a giraffe, and ended with an abstract image of the giraffe’s spots. I had to change my image size to 1 inch height by 1.5 inch width. From the original image, I cropped and zoomed further and further in until you could no longer identify the object that the image was of. I noticed when I was zooming further and further in that the image got very fuzzy at certain parts. I originally wanted to focus on the giraffe’s eyelashes in the final stages of the photo, but it was too blurry so I had to focus on something a little larger. The photo was 300 dpi, but still was not as clear as I would have liked it to be.

In the final row, I manipulated my senior portrait from high school. I put 1 inch x .721 inch constraints on the 300 rpi photo. It was really fun to play around in Photoshop with the filters and see how crazy I could make my face look. The first filter that I chose to use was the Rough Pastels under the Artistic filter. I played around with various stroke lengths and stroke detail. I found that the longer the stroke length I chose, the blurrier the image got. I also found that when I increased the stroke detail enough, it started to create white shaded spots on the image. At a stroke length of 13, a stroke detail of 2, and with a sandstone texture, this filter created a dreamlike feel. In the second manipulation of my face, I chose the “Liquify” tool. It was probably the coolest thing I did in this entire contact sheet. I chose to “liquify” everything around my face, but left my face intact so you can still tell what it is a picture of. In my final manipulation of this image, I chose to use the Photocopy effect in the “Sketch” filter. Like I mentioned earlier, I like the look of black and white photography, and this reminded me of that. I experimented with the detail and darkness levels, and finally arrived at a level 9 details, and a level 7 darkness.

Overall, this project was a lot of fun. It was very time consuming because I was unfamiliar with all the settings on Photoshop, but now I feel a little more comfortable with the program and now I possess basic skills to work with a photograph or image.

Font Poem

The quote I chose to use in my font poem is from the song “Two Step” by Dave Matthews Band. This is one of my favorite quotes because it acknowledges the brevity of life, as well as the beauty of life. We should appreciate the lives that we live, and celebrate the people and things that are important to us. I try to emulate this quote by not getting overly upset over things I can’t control, and celebrating life whenever possible.

I used fonts that I felt visually reflected the words I was using. I used Herculanum font for the word “Celebrate” because it is a festive font. I played around to color in the word and make a bright border on the lettering because I wanted this word to stand out. For “we will” I used font Minion Pro in bold italic and played with various tools to warp the text. I made the two words appear as an “Arc Lower” with a 75% bend, 15% horizontal distortion and 20% vertical distortion. To color the words in, I used the “Satin” tool and selected the “multiply” blend mode. This gave the words a shadowy filling, which I made sky blue. I did this because I see this as a very hopeful color and the words “we will” refer to future actions. "Life" was my favorite word to manipulate. I selected Zapfino font because I find it to be very fun and lively, which is how I view life. I chose a Chromed Satin style to shade the letters because the colors in it remind me of a sunrise, and with every sunrise comes a beautiful new day. I used Blackoak Std for the words “is short” to physically show the brevity of life that is being described. Since the word “but” is a transitional word, I made it all capital letters, and used bold Trajan Pro font. I also used the Transform tool to skew and rotate the word so it leads up to the next word in the poem. I gave the word “sweet” an outer glow using the fx tool and colored it pink because when I think of sweet I think of candy and bubblegum, and other sugary things.

Aesthetically, I wanted my font poem to be easy to read, but also for the fonts to coincide with the words in the quote. I chose to place the word “Life” in the middle because I think that it is the most important word in the quote. The last words “for certain” are placed at the bottom center because they are very definite in their nature and I wanted them to leave a lasting impression.
Though this project stressed me out at first because I am not very familiar with Macs, I eventually was able to achieve what I wanted. After playing around with Photoshop, I grew more comfortable with the program and the computer in general.

Font Poem Draft 1: