Photoshop Assignment

The theme for my collage is movement. I wasn’t sure what theme I wanted to go with, so I chose something that comes up everyday and that can be found in all areas of life. I didn’t want to confine my collage to one type of movement, so I included humans, animals and technology. I tried to portray my theme not only through the images themselves, but also in image placement. I wanted my collage to have a natural flow of movement from one image to the next.

When reading this image, one would start at the top left, at least in Western society. I intersected the airplane and the rocket on the horizontal third. From this intersection the eye can see the diverging vectors created by the airplane flying up and to the right and the rocket shooting straight up heading towards the outside of the frame. I added a motion blur effect to the airplane because I wanted to make sure the viewer didn’t rest on this image, but was inspired by its motion and therefore moved on to look at the rest of the collage. The airplane also is moving in a diagonal line with is more dynamic than if it was traveling on the horizontal. As the eye travels down the rocket, it creates the effect that the rocket itself is moving out of the frame, further supporting the idea of movement.

At the bottom of the rocket I added the star shaped brush strokes. I liked the way the individual stars overlapped and created a random order. I placed them at the bottom with the exhaust from the rocket to make them appear as though they also were being propelled out.

Coming out from this “fiery blast” I placed the two runners. I wanted to keep with the flow of one image to the next and made it seem as though they were running intensely away from this rocket and its remains. I created a more urgent movement from them by placing them in a position where they were facing the right. Going back to the fact that we read from left to right, by having the men run from left to right, it makes them appear like they are running faster. There is also a converging vector between the men running and the elephant walking towards them. Between these two I placed the two women jumping. I wanted to keep the converging vector visible so I placed the women up higher, to make it appear as though they are jumping out of the way. I also thought this consciousness of the diverging vector was made more prominent as one woman was looking at the elephant and the other at the runners, seeming as though they were aware they were in the way. These three images together make a triangle, which is the most dynamic shape and draws the eye in.

To pull the eye out of the previous collection of images, I placed myself on the elephant. I hoped to create depth with my image and have my foot catch the attention. My blue shirt also increases the depth by causing my body to recede back while my foot remains forward. From my head one can look at the bird above and see the converging vector between the bird and the dancer.

I find the dancer to be the most dynamic image in this collage. The dancer makes various triangles with her body, as seen in her legs, dress, and arms. She is also dressed in a pink-red color, which stands out more than any other color in this collage, especially when it is placed on the blue background. I colorized the clouds and the night sky using curves and adjusting the red, green and blue so that the background had a blue hue. The movement of clouds and apparent twinkle of stars are not extreme forms of movement, so I wanted them to be in the background and recede. While the dancer is so dynamic and may initially draw the eye, I hope that the viewer can take the journey from left to right, passing through all of the images and movement created as they interact. I want the viewer to move from the dancer, up to the plane and through the image from left to right, until they rest on the dancer again at the end.