I am taking AP Spanish Literature this year, and every single story we read involves death, existential dread, or both. Existentialism seems to be a cornerstone of the senior year experience; the College Board definitely knew what they were doing when they developed the curriculum. After Spanish class, I tend to have some difficulty switching back into English-mode. Someone will bump into me in the hallway and I will be tempted to say “¡Disculpe!” I have a similar problem after reading books, especially those in first person. For a solid 24 hours I will find myself thinking like the character, observing my life with the same tone and rhythm of their narration. This class combined the two. After spending an hour and a half every morning contemplating life and death, I came into Digital Media in a very somber, pensive state of mind. For this composition, I was specifically influenced by the poems “Borges y yo” by Jorge Luis Borges and “A Julia de Burgos” by Julia de Burgos in which the two authors examine the relationship between their private and public lives/selves. La dualidad de ser. Inside and outside and both.
Clipping masks and blend modes were my best friends for this project. I love them. Very useful and very fun. Experimenting with different blend modes was honestly just entertaining, but it also gave me a sense for which blend modes to use and which photos to look for when I wanted to combine images together cleanly (such as with the reflection of the girl in the window). Layer masks and the brush tool allowed me to achieve a level of detail which I would not have been able to otherwise and to combine many different photos to form the final product I had envisioned. I hadn’t imagined that I would be able to incorporate so many little details — like the frost on the window on the right and the pine trees reflected in the window on the left — but as I got more comfortable with the tools, I found that I could be more and more creative with the project.
I really enjoyed creating this composition. Creating a surrealistic final product gave me so many skills that can be applied to more realistic projects in the future. For example, producing a glass reflection effect is a skill that I can use in many different scenarios, both creative and realistic. Surreal art is such a unique and thought provoking form of storytelling/expression, and I had a lot of fun experimenting with it. Realistic compositions are also impressive, but there is something about surrealism which evokes so many interesting emotions. I look forward to exploring creating both in Photoshop.
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