The Old Days: A Junior Design Student Conceptual Project by Owen Daniels (2017)

My conceptual statement was the feeling of nostalgia through writing poetry.

My object in the photograph is a pen and ink covered in dust. In the background is a hallway of an old victorian house, leading to a doorway. I have the pen and ink represent poetry, and I have nostalgia represented by the dust on the pen and ink, and the agedness of the victorian house. The long hallway is meant to symbolize the long passage of time, which I wanted to allude to, adding another layer of the nostalgic feel I was going for. In order to get the photo, I had to drive down to the shoreline victorian house. I made ‘dust’ by evenly sprinkling flour over the pen and ink. I made sure to have an ink bottle that looked old and worn.

My editing process in photoshop was pretty straightforward. I wanted to make the image look as vintage as possible, without ruining the photo’s original atmosphere. I first toned town the background, in order to pull the focus more towards the pen and ink. To create the vintage tone that I wanted, I toyed with the Brightness and Contrast on the tip of the ink pen in order to make it pop in the background. I then added in in the Sepia tone. I then toggled the sepia tone until I got what I wanted, and then I simply sharpened and polished the image until I got my final product.