A More Simple Life: A Senior Surreal Photo by Gabrielle Makower (2014)

In my piece I decided to have the solid shell morph into a living creature, the lizard. This symbolizes that there can be life in objects that are not necessarily ''alive.'' The lizard is looking off into the distance. There are buildings that look like sandcastles. Although people consider sand to be a very stationery thing, I decided to add the buildings of New York into the image to give it some ''life.'' Although the buildings themselves aren't alive, New York City is thought to be ''alive at all hours,'' so I used this idea to make the sandcastles more realistic. I created the image in Photoshop and I used different filters to make the piece work.

I chose a generally neutral color scheme with a splash of green to appeal to the eye. I tried to make the background extremely colorful, whereas the foreground of the image is almost entirely black and white. I wanted there to be a smooth transition, almost a gradient, of color saturation. My story for the piece is that there is one person who is looking out at a world where everything has shrunk. There are no more humans, and he is the only one. The objects, however, are more lively without the destruction that humans cause, so it is a happier world. The inanimate objects can finally come to life without the fear of human's destroying them. The boy lives in harmony with this different world.