Media Arts Reflection

Media Arts Reflection                                                                                               February 19, 2015

The assignment was called, "Memories in My Skin". The focus of the assignment was to create a collage of photo's that related to a significant event that happened in our life. The significant event I chose was when my grandpa had a heart attack because, I will never forget that event where I could have lost someone I really care about. The medium I used was my grandpa's Facebook photo, various brushes I created using photo's and various photo's from Google images.

Technical
Some of the tools I used in the photo were, dodge/burn tool, layer blends, and colour balancing. Also I used a variety of opacity's to emphasize certain parts of the photo.  Furthermore I repeated some brushes so it was easier for the eye to move around the photo.

Idea/Concept
My idea for the photo was to show how his heart attack had affected me. When I first found out about it I was extremely upset and, later once other people started to find out about it, they began to try and help everyone else out who was taking the news hard. It allowed my family to become closer together and they prayed that he would recover from the heart attack. So, in the photo I tried to show that by, having faces crying, a father comforting his children and hands praying. I also included a picture of a doctor because of all the work he did to help my grandpa so he could live to see another day.

Influences
There was no particular artist that influenced me on how I designed this assignment.

Composition
I balanced the composition symmetrically by having around the same amount of dark and light pictures on each side. I emphasized the movement of the photo by having solid images "boarder" the photo. The movement that was intended was you start at his face in the bottom left, then move across the horizon line to the right, next you would go up the heart rate lines, continuing across the butterflies at the top and flow down the tears from the faces in the top left. made the movement path clear by making all of the objects darker than the rest of the photo so they would capture the eyes attention better.

Motivation
My personal motivation to complete this assignment was that my grandpa means a lot to me and since it was about him I wanted to make sure it was finished to the best of my ability. Also I planned on showing him the photo so he would know what I did with it. He knew I was doing it about him but he hasn't seen what it looks like.

Critical Assessment
The most elements that I think are the most successful are the layering, repetitive images/shapes and the eye movement. Some parts of the process that surprised me was how hard it was to find the right pictures that showed what I was trying to convey through the picture.