Flickr Exprience

For project number 3, I decided to go back to my child hood. When reading the book "The Medium is the Massage," by Marshall McLuhan, I came across a quote on page 79 where it said "The stars are so big, The Earth is so small, Stay as you are." When reading this quote I realized that young people tend to dream of becoming something grand and big in the future, forgetting who they really are. Reflecting on myself, I began to think sometimes I take myself too seriously, so for this assignment I decided to become a child again to play with toys and create a  narrative out of it.

For my photo shoot I grabbed two toys I found lying around, a polar bear and Ultraman, and decided to go out and create a world with them. I stuck them in the snow and took pictures of them alone and together in different places on Lawrence. As I got into the flow, I crafted a simple story about two lost beings meeting up in this cold environment.

During the experience, my story telling became more artistic during the photo editing process. When playing with the color balance setting I noticed how based on what color I emphasized the mood of the picture changed drastically. I manipulated this to add more emotional meaning to the story. Ultraman is a child hood hero to many kids in Japan to I decided to color balance his pictures as more red and warm despite being in a cold environment. For the polar bear I kind of got a sad vibe looking at how it merged with the white and grey environment. So I used a cold color, blue to show his mood. This created a narrative of two contrasting individuals. By the end when they meet up, I used the lasso tool to make half the picture blue and red. The final picture is a mixture of both creating a purple color  when they become friends.

Flickr as a art venue is interesting as I have never had photography experience. The site lets you create albums to put the photo in any order and there is an option for it to be a automatic slide show. This is perfect for my photo's because the photo's are in narrative order and playing it like a video adds to the experience.

Overall this was a great experience. I never really considered myself to try photography but after trying it, I feel like I may continue taking more pictures on my free time to improve and create new works of art.

Link to my Flickr: