Behind the Madness: A Senior Surreal Photo by Aava Salehi (2016)

My surrealist piece tells the story behind the beauty of failure. The tongue represents the risk as it is crawling out of the necklace. The tongue fails as it is being burned in the flames. But, behind the consequence of taking the risk is the beauty which is represented by the the necklace and the delicately designed tablecloth in the background. The contrast of the bright colors and the black and white communicates how we tend to focus so much on what is right in front of us, causing us to overlook the beauty behind it all.

This piece consists of three separate images: a necklace, a tongue, and a designed tablecloth. In Photoshop, I began with the quick selection tool to trace around the exterior of the HDR photo of the necklace. Then, using the same tool, I traced around the exterior of the tongue. I used the color correction tool to make the tongue a brighter pink than it was in the raw photo. With a black and white filter and a stencil filter on the designed tablecloth, I was able to make the bright pink of the tongue to stand out. Finally, I used the pen tool to render flames to mimic the tongue being on fire.