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Valuable: A Junior Self-Portrait Diptych by Andre Conceicao (2013)

In my diptych, I took photos of objects that are known to be very close and sentimental to some people. I took these photos with the objective of displaying two treasured objects that are expensive and cheap, respectively. I based these off of lines in my personal poem that I wrote for English class. I wrote about how you can be in the nosebleeds, the cheapest seats of a stadium, and still enjoy your time. On the contrary, if you are sitting in the most expensive seats, you are probably going to have a good time as well. The experiences are just different from eachother. For my first photo, I took a picture of a nice diamond necklace that my mom has. This is a jewl that should be treasured for obvious reasons. It is an expensive piece of jewelry that is seen as fancy and precious. Inspiration for this picture came from 1 line of my poem where I wrote, ''the arrogant flaunt''. I feel that if someone were to wear that jewl around their neck, they would be flaunting their wealth a little too much (my mom actually keeps it stored in her saftey deposit box because she would never wear it out).

My second photo is of a ripped and torn blanket. The blanket is obviously not something that cost a fortune, but I tried to display how it could hold as much, if not more, value to a person as the gold and diamond necklace in the previous photo. The blanket is ripped not because it is a piece of garbage but because it has been used and loved by somebody for a very long time. I drew inspiration for this photo from the lines in my poem where I said, ''Up in the nosebleeds, we still laugh and chant, we enjoy every minute''. While the blanket and cheap seats are not expensive, they have a lot of value for the owners.

The two photos both display objects that have significant value to people, but in two different ways. On top of that, they are both objects that can offer people warmth and comfort, the blanket by physically providing those feelings and the necklace by making the wearer special and unique. With the necklace, I made sure that the most important part, the diamond, stood out from the rest of the necklace. The rest of the photo is in black and white, while the diamond and its gold ''shell'' pop out due to their brightness. The blanket was harder to chose a focal point for, but I tried to capture the biggest rip as the main point. In photoshop, I gave the rip a slightly golden accent which helps it pop out a bit more than it would if it were just the beige color it was originally. This also connected the photos in another way as both of their focal points have similar color and sizes.
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