Post Card

I chose three photos for my Post Card. The forest, a ballerina and floating balloons.

I started my post card by cropping just a small section of the forest. I wanted to incorporate a decent amount of trees and leaves, with some of the sky still visibly. I layered the same photo twice, the second slightly to the left creating a blurred look for the background. I did that so my main focus point (the ballerina) stood out. Before I positioned the ballerina I inserted a third layer of floating balloons. I placed each balloon specifically giving the background depth, I also made the balloons transparent on the forest so they were slightly seen. Finally, after cropping the ballerina’s photo, I placed it on the entire background.

When it came to color, I played around, a lot. My first draft with colors was the forest being a strong green and brown, and the same with the balloons. But the background took away from the distinguish beauty of the ballerina. Finally after playing with duo-tone colors I finally chose the pink/purple color you see. The bright white ballerina on top of the faded woods and balloons draws your attention to her, just like I wanted.

I liked this project the most I think. It was fun being allowed to play around with the photos I chose and the colors I want. I was very indecisive at the beginning. Starting with what section of the forest photo I wanted to use for my background. The entire photo looked like this... It certainly was challenging. The best way for me to decide how to crop it was to do it several different ways and then select. I arranged them all on the screen and decided by process of elimination.

I was hoping to achieve a post card that with two dimensions and the focus point of the stunning white ballerina. What I enjoyed most of the project was playing with coloring. I had two major color decisions to make, how many and what colors. Ultimately I am happy with the choices I made, and I am very proud of that.

Considering the time restriction there was one thing I didn’t do. I initially began with the image of the ballerina fading away. I tried to accomplish it by layering the ballerina slightly to the left, and slightly dimmer over, and over and over again. I just could not accomplish the look I wanted. Frustrated I gave up. In the end though, I am extremely happy with how my final Post Card ended up.

Font Poem

The second sight project consisted of creating a font poem. The poem I chose to use was an excerpt from 'An American Prayer' by Jim Morrison. (With his poetry he went by James)
Included at the bottom is the entire poem. I suggest reading it :)

















This project was a lot of fun, it gave me a chance to learn how many different fonts, or typefaces, Photoshop offers. I had a few difficulties when designing the layout of the words. There are so many approaches to a project such as this, so many possibilities and so many ideas.

The first draft of my font poem looked absolutely nothing like the final. I am much much happier with the finished product. I must have tried almost every single font choice for each word. The fonts I ended up using are:

• Orator Std
• Kabel LT Std
• Myraid Pro
• Shelley Script LT Std
• Bermuda LP Std
• Flood Std
• Zapfino

I tried to keep a sense of formality with the less significant words and used Kabel LT Std for those. My favorite font was the one I used to recognize Jim Morrison with, Zapfino. Favorite font for favorite poet. The font had a very clear and beautiful script, just as Morrison.

I ran into a few difficulties when doing my font poem, but of course there was a simple fix. At first I was only working with two layers. Once I began to create a layer for more and more words it began to be more fun. A sense of perfection came upon me to have each and every word placed exactly where I saw fit. By the end, I ended up with a layer for almost each word of the poem. I really, really enjoyed this project. It was not much of a struggle, but it gave me the chance to deliver the words of someone else, in MY way. One thing I wish was more involved was color!

An American Prayer
By: James Morrison

Do you know the warm progress under the stars?
Do you know we exist?
Have you forgotten the keys to the Kingdom?
Have you been borne yet & are you alive?
Let's reinvent the gods, all the myths of the ages
Celebrate symbols from deep elder forests
[Have you forgotten the lessons of the ancient war]
We need great golden copulations
The fathers are cackling in trees of the forest
Our mother is dead in the sea
Do you know we are being led to slaughters by placid admirals
& that fat slow generals are getting obscene on young blood
Do you know we are ruled by T.V.
The moon is a dry blood beast
Guerilla bands are rolling numbers in the next block of green vine
amassing for warfare on innocent herdsmen who are just dying
O great creator of being grant us one more hour to perform our art & perfect our lives
The moths & atheists are doubly divine & dying
We live, we die & death not ends it
Journey we more into the Nightmare

Contact Sheet

By creating this contact sheet I wanted to achieve the ability to display basic skills for photoshop. I gained the knowledge of different resolutions and where they are needed. For example, a newspaper or magazine requires 300 dpi (dots per inch) when a picture photo displays a higher resolution; 1200 dpi. When dealing with pixels, they can only be taken away, not added.

I also learned all different ways to edit and play with the visual effects of a photo. Photoshop offers a number of ways to edit a photo and I am excited to continue to learn and play with them all.

One problem I ran into was with resolution. I rushed into the project and even though I knew pixels cannot be added, I did it anyway. I quickly learned my mistake and fixed it the only way possible, going back and doing it over again. Practice makes perfect.

Another problem I ran into was with my contact photo. Although no mistake was really made, I learned what photos work well with what effects. The photo I originally chose was a white snowman with a primarily white background. I fixed the problem by once again, starting over with a new photo of a background playground.

Here is a close-up of my favorite image.


This image is the CMYK color version of pink flowers and a green leafy background. This version of color is normally used when printing, versus on the web.