Textual Tension

The latest assignment for my photography workshop class was to combine text with an image. I've done this many times before (duh, posters), but I it had been a while since I'd done it just because. When I was younger and everything was an experiment I would often just have random poems or quotes just so I could add text to an image. 90% of the time the text had nothing (nothing) to do with the image. I had a lot of fun during those experimental days, but for this assignment I wanted the text to relate to the image.

I also thought my professor might appreciate that too.

I had these pieces on my bureau (I think dresser is a more common name) in my bedroom. They aren't arranged like this on the bureau, but after staring at them for a while I decided this scene would be a hilarious arrangement, and not only that, but I should photograph it.
I didn't originally shoot these for this assignment, but once I was shooting, I thought several of the compositions would look great with text added, so I thought why not?


Buuuut, once I edited this version, and created a text box I suddenly sat there like, ".........................". I complained to my sister that there wasn't anything that would make this funnier. Inherently, it had to be silent. She tried to encourage me, but I was very set in my ways. Nothing would work.
I look through other photographs, because at this point there wasn't enough time to reshoot. There really wasn't anything I felt like working with, so I opened up the image again and inside the text box I made an ellipsis, "...". I thought that might count as text, so I put the image inside those three dots (actually, that's a lie, I did it this way because it looks like a lego, and I was playing off the lego characters in the scene) <- That's not true at all, just really coincidental.

But once I had the dots, I thought the images were a bit more difficult to read (no pun intended), especially the buffalo, so I wrote, "dead buffalo" underneath it, which seems to clarify and have a certain blunt humor also. Underneath Hermione (the second circle) I wrote "embarrassed driver" (Ron was supposed to have been driving, but I put him on the wrong side of car. But in the text image, the telephone booth isn't in the image, which means they could be taking a trip to the U.S., so really I could have done anything), and underneath Ron I wrote, "surprisingly innocent" because he probably would have gotten into an accident as he used a confundus charm during his driving test.

I thought the image would still be kind of odd to read, but the students in my class seems to understand what it meant, although I did explain it to them. Perhaps they were just being nice. But it was generally well received. I think the piece is still stronger without the text. A strong, silent type of photograph, if that makes any sense.

Actually, that last sentence describes the photo horribly.

Amazing Cloud Tutorial for Photoshop

I'm in love again! I'm nearly as excited about this cloud tutorial as I was about this smoke tutorial!! I love Photoshop. I love love love love love Photoshop. I think I told everybody I knew about that smoke tutorial. Even people I didn't know while working at the cafeteria.


Here's the cloud video: