Assimilation: A Senior Surreal Photo by Chiara Neyman (2014)

The visual metamorphosis of my piece is a lot more subtle than the symbolic metamorphosis the image carries. Your vision beholds a monotone girl with eyes filled with a spectrum of color, a colored background, and a halo of color saturating her outermost edges. The girl is holding onto a bear and her innocence for now, but as the color spreads from her eyes and edges to her center, she begins to conform with her surrounding world, metamorphosing visually into the same colors and emotionally succumbing to influences which surround her in her formative years. I created this image using photoshop. All of the images used are shot in HDR, meaning I took three different shots of the same composition using different shutter speeds, and merged them together in photoshop. The HDR effect in my piece is very subtle because my location had very little light, forcing me to shoot at a higher than desirable ISO. In photoshop, I edited different photographs of my friend and lovely model, Sheila Ahi into one grand image, layering them with different effects and photo filters.

The color scheme I have selected is a subtle blend of warm colors combined with some bold black and white photography. While each viewer of the piece probably has their own idea of what is going on, I like to think that the girl in the photograph (mighty thanks to the beautiful Sheila Ahi) is in a world of overwhelming and saturated color. Colorful characters, colorful language, colorful confrontation. The girl in the photograph is holding onto her old life, but is slowly succumbing to the real world. It starts as she sees the world through different lenses and slowly the color starts creeping under her skin.