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Abandoned: A Senior Surreal Photo by Elizabeth Leung (2015)

I took photos of a stuffed dinosaur toy, cracks on a shovel, and a ruler. Each of these photos were taken in Camera Raw and put together with HDR. The dinosaurs has cracks, which reveal rulers inside the dinosaur. In Photoshop, I used the cracks on the shovel as a texture to create realistic cracks on the dinosaur. I used the pen tool to cut out one crack and repeated it. I used brushes to add highlights and shadows to make it more realistic. I planned out my photos so that the ruler would be coming out at a realistic angle, and I put it over the crack to make it look like it was coming out of the crack.

My piece represents the pressure society puts on us to hide our weaknesses and insecurities. The stuffed dinosaur represents our childhood. In our childhood, it was acceptable to be insecure, which is represented by the rulers. As we grow up, we are pressured to hide our weaknesses away deep inside of ourselves, which is why the rulers are inside the dinosaur. But there's still there, unresolved so when situations push us to break, cracks appear, and the insecurities come out. My color scheme was pink and gray. Pink represents the innocence of childhood and the gray represents the crushing reality of adulthood.
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