When beginning this project, I had originally planned to make the theme, high school/ teenagers. To do this, I was going to make a pie chart representing everything a teenager is expected to do in a day. The point of this was going to be to show how little time we have for additional activities and even things like sleeping and studying. As I begin to plan this idea out, I just wasn't loving the idea. It seemed very basic, and I wasn't sure if anyone would get its message. After a few more ideas, I changed my "topic" to social media. In today's era this is a very relevant thing. In my piece, I wanted to be able to get across the message of people placing their worth in the number of "likes," "friends," or "shares" they receive. I made my concentration Instagram, because I am the most familiar with how this program works as opposed to others. Many people are obsessed with taking the perfect picture just so they can receive the most attention online. I have caught myself doing the same thing at times, and it's crazy that these "likes" can affect how we feel about ourselves. Once I was set on my idea, I took pictures of about twelve people, and then edited them. I cropped each one, adjusted the brightness and contrast, and then made a 3x3 grid to place the pictures in. I had wanted to use all twelve pictures I had originally took, however some were blurry, so I was left with nine. Once all of the pictures were in the grid, I played around with the different filters I could use. Over the course of this class, I have begun to appreciate black and white photography more and more. I believe it evens out the whole picture, allowing you to choose where the audience's attention is drawn to (for example, with a pop of color in one area). This is the reason why I went with b&w for this project. However you'll notice in the final project that some pictures (the "happy" ones are a brighter b&w, while the "sad" ones are darker) Above are my in progress pictures, after they had been edited the first time. Now that all of the pictures were in the layout I wanted and in their respective black and white values, I began creating the Instagram "like bubble." This is the notification that appears when someone has liked a picture of yours, wants to become your friend, or commented on your picture. This part of the project took longer than the picture editing, because I had to use trial and error to create the icons. After numerous instructional videos on how to make hearts and speech bubbles, I was finally very pleased with how it turned out. The final step of my project was to create a bubble for each person. For the people with "sad faces" I gave them no likes, friends, or comments. For those with a "happy face", I gave them lots of all three things. I did this to make my social commentary clear. I wanted others to see that people view themselves certain ways because of the amount of attention they receive online. They feel good about themselves if they get a lot of likes, but feel worthless when they don't. This is why I put the bubble over their eyes, because their vision is blurred based off of these likes.
Overall I believe this project was very successful. If I could change anything it would be to play around with new filters, instead of always resorting to b&w.
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AuthorI am a senior art student at Shippensburg Area Senior High School with a love for graphic design, interior design, and photography. Archives
December 2017
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