Junior Conceptual: A Junior Design Student Conceptual Project by Mason Kennerly (2016)

We are the warriors
Who drip. Drip. Drip.
splash!
An apple with no core
A grape with no seeds,
A peach without its pit,
An orange without pulp,
A banana without its peel.
All explode at once!
And golden fruits are born
From their s c a t t e r e d remains
Ones that can only reveal themselves
Under the rays of the golden sun.

This poem is representing the idea that nobody should ever feel ashamed of lacking a desired ability. The idea that I had was to show all of a person's qualities coming together, good or bad, within that person to make them truly unique. I could display idea this through my photograph with a very strange looking plant that I found. With the purple tips of this plant looking like they are set ablaze under the light of the sun truly depicted the concept behind this project. This concept that all people have something that makes them special and unique that can be unleashed under the right light.

Once I found a very peculiar plant hanging from a tree, I thought it to be the perfect focus for my photo. I placed this plant that would most certainly stand out among other plants in a bushel of small vines so that it could look incredibly unique in comparison. The sunlight in the afternoon was perfect for setting the scene of my concept through the image. Because the sun was picking and choosing where it would shine, it made the spots that were lit up more special. Being fairly inexperienced with a camera, I had trouble getting the perfect shot that I had envisioned in my head. I had to try shot after shot with a plethora of different settings in order to find a frame that matched an illustration of my passion. I took so many photos, that when I came back to class to find that perfect shot, I had to sift through many overexposed, underexposed, blurry, grainy shots that were rather ugly. Among these failures of photos, I found the one that accurately represented my passion for my concept. Once I found the chosen one, I knew that with the help of Photoshop, I could turn the picture into something that I could mold into a masterpiece. By enhancing the saturation and vibrance of the brighter colors on the plant, I created a photo with a very interesting contrast of color. The smooth, relaxing green of the base meets the loud, bursting warmer colors of the tips.