Wagner-+Texture

Claire Wagner Texture Assignment

To start off this project I needed to find a base, something I could use to build off of. Luckily I found the perfect image, the following picture of the prairie. (1) In the prairie you will notice that plant in the right bottom corner of the layer was out of focus. Personally I found it distracting so I used the clone stamp to cover it up so it looked as if it was just prairie there.

After getting the starting picture I had a picture of a cross I decided to use.

(2)In order to incorporate this cross into the picture of the prairie, I used the quick selection tool to select the cross, and copy and paste it into the prairie picture. (3)Unfortunately much of the background was copied with the cross so I had to select it and delete it until I got just the cross (4)After that I decided it would look good at the bottom left corner of the page, moved it there as well as shrunk it down.

Finally it was time to move on to the next image, one of a statue of woman, possibly the Virgin Mary



(5)Again I had to select the woman and copy and paste her into the prairie although this time none of the background came with. (6)In order to create a sort of ghostly feel, I reduced her opacity so she was sort of translucent. (7)To make it look as if perhaps that cross is her grave, I then moved her to the bottom left corner. (8)Unfortunately she was overlapping some of the pretty flowers on the cross so I erased whatever part of her was on top of the cross so she would look like she was behind it.

(9)After this there wasn't too much to do, I played around a bit with color effects and ended up deciding to heighten the saturation of the entire image (10)Finally while I was playing with saturation I decided to lower the brightness and increasing contrast

All these steps created a final image that looked like this: The whole point of this project was to take pictures of interesting texture. The first texture I thought was interesting was all the plants of the prairie creates a unique flowing texture that is worth noticing however does not take away from the focal point of the piece. The next texture I found interesting was that of the statue, even though it is hard to see due to the lowered opacity, the weather worn texture still shows through especially on the head. In my opinion this gives the statue an old world worn look, as if pain and sorrow have chipped away at her once flawless finish. The final texture I wanted to emphasize was that of the flowers, especially the purple one in the center. The contrast of dark to light purples, and texture the many petals creates gives it a kind of edgy feel to it.

The other part of this project was practicing our compositional technique. One that I definitely used was a level horizon. I wanted the background to be level so that it would not look either just plain bad or just plain freaky. Something else I was consciously aware of when assembling this picture was the rule of thirds. Putting both things in the middle was too focal and very interesting as was putting the cross and statue on either side, it was too balanced and not interesting to look at. So instead I put both off to the side with a clear view of the background of the other side, which made it a lot better. The next one I used was filling the frame, as I wanted both the subjects off the side I didn't want to make them too big, because they would take up too much space, however I did fill the frame on the side that they are on.

In completing this assignment I felt I was pretty successful. The cross and the statue are probably the favorite ones I have taken so I was very excited to be able to use them both. I also was pleased with how the colors turned out. I liked the contrast of the purple and yellow. I do believe I met the criteria of texture and I can safely say I know a significant amount more about photoshop than I did two weeks ago. The one thing I wish could have been different was the sky color, I wish it was bluer but that had more to do with me taking the photograph than anything else.