Transport: A Junior Conceptual Transport Project by Loren Elise Chun (2017)

The object I chose to use was a penny board. I chose it rather than the regular skateboard because it is less common and is more colorful which adds to its uniqueness. I placed it on the ground and shot it from ground level, slightly beneath it, to focus on one wheel while trying to create a sense of depth with the leading line of the board. I also angled myself to incorporate the other wheels behind it. As for lighting, I went on the shaded side of the board rather than the lit side due to the fact that I thought the sunlight caused the colors of the penny board to be too bright and preferred a darker foreground in contrast to the lighter background. I wanted this darker mood in order to make my picture more calm and juxtapose the energy that comes from riding a penny board.

Concerning Photoshop as a whole, I now fully understand the importance of shooting in RAW since JPEG condenses my photo causing me to lose information in my pixels making it hard for me to edit. As for actual Photoshop editing, I learned that while some blur can help to create a nice effect, having too much can hinder you in Photoshop due to the fact that it makes it hard to select parts of the picture. I also learned that the background of a photo is an essential piece to pay attention to as a background can distract from the actual focus point. Therefore, I increased the contrast of the picture so that my object pops out more, which will make the background less distracting. In addition I have learned that Photoshop is beneficial in making the picture less of an eyesore, because it allows you to change the time of day in the picture with a change in lighting adding a different mood. I used this knowledge by desaturating my picture and overall lowering the lighting so that the colors were not so vibrant and change the time of day to later in the afternoon. To emphasize the calm mood which I wanted to create I used my knowledge of content aware filling in order to eliminate the blemishes on the trucks of the board in order to make it appear cleaner which is associated with harmony.