Past Instruments: A Junior Conceptual Transport Project by Max Baler (2017)

My photo was a wheel of a cart used to transport instruments for band. I took at the angle because I really liked the wood floor that it was on and I thought it would be a good contrast against the dark tire. I also really liked the lighting because while it was partly inside, the door let the stream of light in that made the colors pop. The wheel caught my attention when leaving school one day and I went to go look closer at them. I felt a connection with it more than any other wheels I had found before. I’m not a big biker and I don’t use a wheelchair. It reminded me of being in middle school when I was in band. I had quit band when I went to highschool and taking a picture of it for a class that had replaced it felt pretty cool. Like it had come full circle.

Wow. Photoshop is amazing. I never knew how much you could do with it. All i thought you could do was do basic cuts and color changes. Plus it’s pretty simple once you can memorize keyboard shortcuts. Learning how to edit in camera raw was a big help as I did a lot of editing in it. For this photo, I tried messing around with color a lot. It was a dull grey when I started and pretty boring. I toned down the highlights and white so you could see the red and other colors of the wood floor while lightening the shadows to show the colors in the wheel. I did my best to sharpen the image to show most of the detail on the wheel because I thought that that was an important part of the project. The bumps, scratches and paint splotches give the wheel life and a story. It's what made me feel more connected to the wheel.