Twice a Day: A Junior Design Student Conceptual Project by Payton Millet (2015)

My interpretation of this concept statement, at least in conjunction with this photo, revolved around the concept of the snowballing effect of consequences. I thought a lot about how I could express impatience, and realized that most of people's impatience comes in the form of little things they neglect to do every day because they feel like they are a waste of time. What better example of this periodic, continuous neglect than choosing to skip brushing your teeth. The centerpiece of the composition is the pair of teeth, looking rather unhealthy with dead roots and surrounded by a pool of thick, dark blood, they represent a drastic and grotesque consequence of impatience. Whether the teeth fell out, or were pulled to prevent further injury, the once healthy teeth are now dead and bloodied. Then there is the toothbrush, positioned in the background and in the dark of the vignette, unopened, and accumulating dust. It represents the past, all of the opportunities you had to make a change to better yourself, but more so it represents your inability to put in just the smallest effort every day. Time marched on and presented you with the cold harsh reality of the bloody teeth, and the toothbrush judges your impatience from the dark rigid past.I learned a lot about Photoshop through the process of editing this composition, primarily in the as that I forced myself to learn the pen tool to select the trickily shaped elements such as the teeth and toothbrush. I also experimented with adding a vignette in Photoshop so I could better focus it on the primary subject matter and add a subdued and judging tone to the toothbrush in the background. For my required filter I added film grain to the two teeth, which I think adds to the metaphor of the passage of time, as it makes the teeth look a little like something out of an old movie or photograph. Because they were not payed attention to they too are stuck in the past. I think I had the most fun in this photo playing with the color. I subdued the white balance to nearly monochromatic but brought out the deep reds and some of the dull tones in the toothbrush.

In brief, the Bloody teeth in the photo represent how the quick passage of time can yield some extreme consequences, avoidable by means of patience. This patience is represented by a toothbrush, as brushing your teeth is something tedious that needs to be done. However, the unused nature of the toothbrush shows that the subject and owner of the tooth was impatient, and thus time did its damage.