My Lyrical Essay focuses on the social exchanges and shifts in perspective that one has during the grief process after a great loss. I focused mainly on how my interview subject noticed the lack of empathy and recognition in her peers, and how she decided to deal with that.
I decided to photograph youth for this project because the most innocent and empathetic stage of who we are is usually when we are young. In order to achieve this, I took a trip to my local park. After taking over 200 photos, I narrowed them down by choosing ones that included more than one person in the photo. I wanted the child to be interacting with someone else to further highlight the idea of empathy in youth. I landed on this photo because I liked that the child was interacting with an adult because I thought it showed the idea of empathy fading over time as we age.
To create my diptych I used Adobe Photoshop. First I had to double my image side by side, and then work on the left side. I started by making my image black and white, and then later using the paintbrush tool to add color back into only the child. After this, I then made a selection using the lasso tool and pasted it on the right side over a plain black layer. FInishing the left side of the diptych, I went in and added a dramatic vignette in order to and emphasis toward the child and away from her surroundings. Lastly, I added in my text. To do this I used my text tool and typed out one word at a time. I then rasterized the text and used the warp tool to drag and pull the letters in whatever direction I wanted. I also chose this font because I wanted something more simple because I had a lot of words and I didn’t want the font to distract from that.
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