Intro to Digital Media Portfolio

Introduction to Digital Media

Portfolio: Al Gaillard

This portfolio deals mostly with photo manipulation or color manipulation in photographs. With my recent development of color manipulation techniques I began to expand my base of knowledge by experience.

 The first portfolio piece began as a picture taken by myself.  The current image was developed by raising the contrast of the building, and overlaying the clouds over a dark background. Something interesting that kept me busy for a while was the building. Every time I raised the contrast, I kept getting a black comic-book-style border around the building’s steeple. I ended up selectively desaturating the edge of the selection and blurring it.  The second portfolio image was inspired by some simple geometric drawings, with variations of two colors.

The third image is a simple color correction of Cromwell Hall. It was created to welcome in the fall season as the leaves begin to change on campus. The hue and saturation were the main tools to change the trees colors. The building had to be manually removed from the hue, as it became a light green color. The fourth image was inspired by Obama’s “Change” campaign and a desire for a parody. The subject is a charismatic leader of a organization bent on world domination. The four-color scheme was challenging but satisfying once finished.

The fifth and sixth designs were pictures from my Seattle trip. Piece five is an experiment in color saturation and how it effects the perception of the picture. I found that the increased color of the brick buildings led the eye to the focal point, rather than relying on the bird to do such. Piece six began as a color correction piece and became almost an expression of alien design. It was very hard to successfully blend the foreground to the background, so I took it to the other extreme. The Seattle Space Needle became a pulsating space ship abducting the subject (myself) under a dappled sky.

I quite enjoyed this segment of the class. I enjoyed working with the pictures I took and manipulating their colors. It was quite interesting how changing a picture’s color scheme changed how the eye traveled to the focal point. Something I feel that I could do better work in is merging elements from one image into another, and especially, taking better photographs to begin with. I plan on taking a photography course next semester, and practicing photography to help remedy this.

Portfolio 1

Portfolio 2

Portfolio 3

Portfolio 4

Portfolio 5

Portfolio 6

Another photograph from paintball. The same player, but from two different photographs, merged into one.

Layer masks proved their use in this project and it was a constant effort to mesh both figures into one useable pose.

Over the past week the weather has been, less than cooperative. The observed building is the spiritual center on campus with color alteration on the clouds.

On a side note, this photo was quite troublesome. Whenever the contrast changed, a solid black border appeared around most of the tower. Many hours were spent desaturating, burning, and dodging the architecture. And don't even get me started on the trees....

The first shot in many of the paintball portraits. 

Subject is myself with color editing and a visual effect on the lens of the mask

Kane Propaganda Poster

Inspired by 0bama's campaign poster and Kane, from the Command & Conquer series.

The original portrait was removed and was then replaced by pure color planes and a separate background.

An Early Fall

A small color correction piece I made of Cromwell Hall. I changed the tree's colors and made the sky a more vibrant blue.