Outside: A Senior Black + White High Dynamic Range Diptych by Maximillian Raschke (2016)

This piece was based on my personal essay. My essay was about how I want to create video games to inspire our young people to use their imaginations. I felt a sadness that kids were not going outside to play any more. I felt like mindless content on the internet is not letting children explore their own ideas. Our assignment was to create a diptych using black and white HDR photography. HDR stands for high-dynamic-range. This is a technique used in imaging and photography to reproduce a greater dynamic range of luminosity than is possible with standard digital imaging or photographic techniques. To create an HDR photo you need to take the same photo multiple times at different exposures. In my case I took the same photo five times increasing the exposure with each shot. Then I combined the photos in Photoshop.

The first photo represents the basic idea of playing outside, with a PS4 sitting out in the grass. I played around with many different locations of the PS4. One of the more interesting compositions I took was where I had the PS4 and controllers suspended in a thorny rose bush. I liked the composition but it didn’t really represent the message I was trying to convey. So I chose this photo. The second photo was meant to represent repairing one’s imagination. With the surgical tools meant to repair the light bulb. I played around with the lighting for a long time with this one. I really wanted to get good shadows in one of my photo’s and I have to say the shadows in this photo are pretty awesome. My message is kind of corny, playing outside repairs the imagination, but I feel like my message gets conveyed pretty well.