Midterm homework

The midterm assignment was a tough one for me, since I really didn't know what to create for a historical collage. I thought about using Halloween as a theme for the collage, but couldn't figure out how to compose such a theme--even as I'm looking for images to use. I was also thinking about the Cuban Missile Crisis as a theme, but also wondering how to compose such a theme. When I saw the background map, showing the red circles on how far the Cuban missiles would strike into the U.S., the theme came together. The map was the inspiration for the entire collage. I worked like mad trying to get this assignment done in the last couple of days before the due date. If I had more time, I would have loved to extend the map circles over the border photos, showing how far they extended around the map of the U.S. I tried to draw circles using Photoshop, with as close of a color to the map circles, but such circles came out way too thick, and I was doing this at around 11pm at night that the midterm project was due. At that point, it was the best I could do for such a short time.

Homework 6 typography

Homework week 6 was to take a background image and add some text to set the tone and theme of the graphic. It was a lesson in typography. For this homework, I had some beautiful flower and rose photos that I wanted to include some poetry for. I chose this gorgeous red-and-yellow rose photo from my backyard, and attempted to hunt for an interesting rose-themed poem to accentuate the rose. There are plenty of rose-themed poems, but a lot of them are fairly long, and I needed a short, quick poem to fit into the graphic. Calling Emily Dickinson!

A big problem I had with this photo is how close-up, and centered, this photo is. There is really not much room on the left, or the right, to include the text on that green, background leaves. If the rose was off-centered, I could have placed the text on the side, and changed the color of the text so it would contrast on the green, and bring out the lettering. Unfortunately, I had to find a coloring that would contrast the green leaves in the background, and the red and yellow in the rose. Best I could find was this light blue. And yes, I moved the text to all four corners of the graphic, and tried to adjust the size of the text. I wanted the text big enough so that you could read the poem, and see the beauty of the rose.

Homework 3 duotone

This was a fun little image I created for the West Valley College online Photoshop class. The happy little lady you see in the center of the photo is my niece Delaney, and she's just having the time of her life playing with the hose, while her pet dog Annie is trying to jump and bite the water. This was a color photo I took of their summertime play, and I cut and pasted another photo of Annie jumping on the left of the duotone image. It is a quick composition of Delaney being surrounded by jumping, happy, Annie-dogs. The real question I had for this assignment was what color do I want to make for the duotone image--having all sorts of colors and tones to choose from.

First test setup of Photoshop blog

This is a first test setup posting for a blog to post my West Valley College Photoshop class homework.