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When I saw the example photographs by Stephen Mcmennamy I knew that I wanted to choose pictures that could tell a story on their own. After thinking about two things that could work together, I stared out of the window of the Student Center while looking at my friend’s face and thought about the idea of their eyes telling a story. I chose the title Windows To The Soul because a person’s face, more importantly their eyes, are able to tell you so much about the struggles and life that they had to persevere through.

Some challenges that I faced while editing my photo were that PicMonkey kept crashing and freezing. I think my final image is able to convey that a person’s physical appearance can only tell you so much about their lifestyle, while their inner thoughts and emotions can only be tapped through looking someone in the eyes and having thought-provoking conversations.

I expected this week’s Sunday Sketch to be much harder than it was. Having this photo editing assignment hanging over my head all week as I stressed about midterms was nerve-wracking. I was worried about having enough time and energy at the end of the week to put in the necessary amount of effort. However, because I spent nearly every waking minute this weekend cramming for two back to back exams, this Sunday Sketch felt like a much-needed break as it turned out to be the least intense academic work I had to do this weekend.

The idea behind ‘Mary Poppins Parachute’ came to me at the end of a 30-minute-long brainstorming session in Woody’s dining hall at 9:30pm as I consumed my first proper meal of the day – chicken strip sandwich with a side of seasoned fries. When I proposed the idea to my friend and dedicated NBB 201 and Bio study partner, she exclaimed, “Oh! You ‘bout to make a whole new Mary Poppins,” hence the title. Altogether, I’m thoroughly pleased with how my photo came out. I was not sure I would be able to blend two pictures separated with a straight edge crop as well as I did. The blue sky backgrounds work well together giving the entire photo a cohesiveness that adds to the editing’s realism. Finding images that blended well together was undoubtedly the most challenging aspect of the editing.

When deciding what to make my combophoto of, I went through my camera roll on my phone and scrolled until something caught my eye as visually interesting. The top photo of a bon fire we had on one of our last nights at the Mountain School, stood out to me for its dramatic color and shape of the flame against the dusk sky. When I saw the photo I instantly knew I wanted to have the other photo be of a match, so that I could make it look like the match was one fire. My options for creative commons images were somewhat limited, otherwise I might’ve hoped to have the background of the match be darker so that it would mesh with the grass in the top image better. Thus making the pictures blend as I had envisioned was my greatest challenge. Overall I feel the combophoto has an interesting way of capturing how one lit match gives rise to such a large fire.

By Ja’Mya Yancey

This weeks Sunday Sketch idea was very interesting. I did not find it hard coming up with an idea for this assignment but I did find it hard finding images to go together that would look acceptable. My first idea was to create a banana car since the first image I saw during my search was a yellow car. But I really did not like the finished product of the collages I would make. The next image i saw when I looked some up through Flickr was a bunch of green balloons and at the same time I was eating green grapes and that made me think of this idea. Once I created my finished product I was happy with what i saw even though its not as perfect as I would like it to be.

Not only did I like how it looked but I enjoyed interpreting it and what I found that it does interpret. My image represents the high costs that comes with eating healthy and how to prices are always on the rise. Balloons rise, money is green, so the balloons represent the cost and how it is always rising and the grapes represent the healthy living factor.

My fourth Sunday Sketch has proven to be my most difficult. Not only did I struggle to come up with a creative idea, but my computer itself decided it doesn’t like this assignment and therefore has crashed three separate times, each time making me start from scratch. If I had to choose one word to describe my experience in creating this sketch and post, it would be “frustrating”. First, finding CC-licensed images is a constricting experience that leads to pages and pages of creepy, dimly lit images. Secondly, once I had an idea of what I wanted to do, none of the available images fit my idea of noodle soup and blonde hair. In my search, I came across a random picture of a bird with a weird looking beak, and that is what inspired my creepy collage. Funny enough, I think the word to describe the image I created would also be “frustrating”. The bird is silenced without its beak, but the pen is a common indicator of speech. Looking at the image makes me feel trapped like I am the bird trying to speak in a language I don’t know.

For this assignment I wanted to create a “combophoto” that not only looked nice but had some contemporary significance. After pondering for a while I decided to combine a picture of the Capitol Dome and an insulin bottle. I chose this combination in order to visualize the relationship between insulin. Despite the power the government has over the price of insulin, the price is soaring at unprecedented levels. This is causing people to try to ration this life saving commodity. Growing up in Turkey which has nowhere near the economic prosperity of the US, yet still has free healthcare, I find it outrageous that the government is not taking action to solve a problem that has already claimed lives.

At first it seemed very daunting when thinking of ways to recreate Stephen Mcmennamy’s examples of pictures he’s taken/edited. However, the more I looked into his work, I realized that his images are more about the story they capture. That said, the hardest part about creating “Tippy Top of The World” was finding two images that would work well together. The only criteria I had for selecting images was that they be of high quality. Putting the two pictures didn’t take too much effort or editing because I used PicMonkey, and their site is pretty intuitive.

The story that this combophoto captures is the feeling of being on top of the world. It can feel like a ballerina on top of a cliff. After creating this piece, I thought of how it relates to the current book we’re reading, Spinning. The protagonist is a figure skater, and much like ballerinas, figure skating requires perfection from the performers. One false move can send you over the edge, just like being at the tippy top of the world.

Images Obtained From:

https://unsplash.com/t/arts-culture

https://unsplash.com/t/nature

I decided to combine a pen and a missile together to create a “pen-sile”. The process of selecting two images that worked together and satisfied me was quite difficult. Initially, I tried to mentally visualize two random images that came to mind and somehow place them together, but soon I realized that I was not getting anywhere without looking at actual images. I also looked at some examples in order to have a clearer view of what type of images and combinations I should be trying to create. After searching through several different images and going through multiple trials, I finally settled at an image of a pen and missile cropped together. I decided to use the top of the pen and the bottom of the missile as those are the more defining parts of each item and I wanted to make it clear what each item actually was.

Prompt

Image Sources:

Pen

Missile