One thing that I really like about your images is that they really do tell a story. As Nancy was saying in class, you can almost feel the struggle and desperation of these "soldiers" in the desert. The choice of colous really emphasises this as well as the two sweeping views that show them as pinpoints in a vast landscape that is unchanging. When we get to see these "soldiers" up close, however, we see that they are almost like the crucifixes one sees in old graveyards. The shadows coming towards us helps in this image tremendously. Even if the crucifixes of a graveyard are not seen in the figures themselves, the crucifixes in the shadows are quite bold. This leads one to wonder what happened to these soliers. But then you move on to the last frame. Transcendence. Rather than showing the despondence and the gravity of the previous three images, this is an image of hope. The crucifix soldiers can no longer bee seen, nor can the vast landscape. Instead, we are right there, right up close, and feel as if we have moved beyond this world and into the next. Perhaps the plight of these soldiers was not in vain after all.
I really liked the way you created a story with this first exercise: such simple means to create a strong emotional impact!
In looking back at the composition, I had a few thoughts. The largest picture with the close-up shadows might be enlarged to be a background for the whole sheet. For this to work, you would need to take a deeper perspective, with the distant area fading out through fog towards the horizon so that the three inset pictures could be legible against them.
While in your printout, the colors seemed subtly unified, on my screen, the different color of the middle top image stands out. In Photoshop, you could adjust the color to match (color variations or a simple select and fill). Or maybe instead of making them identical, you could shift the others so that there is a progression of color that accomanies the enlargement. You could also see if changing the flat desert color to a gradient would enrich the images. The starkness has some appeal, but works perhaps because of the color variation.
In future assignments, I'd love to see you play more with the layouts - trying out different margins, background colors and text as graphics.
2 comments:
One thing that I really like about your images is that they really do tell a story. As Nancy was saying in class, you can almost feel the struggle and desperation of these "soldiers" in the desert. The choice of colous really emphasises this as well as the two sweeping views that show them as pinpoints in a vast landscape that is unchanging. When we get to see these "soldiers" up close, however, we see that they are almost like the crucifixes one sees in old graveyards. The shadows coming towards us helps in this image tremendously. Even if the crucifixes of a graveyard are not seen in the figures themselves, the crucifixes in the shadows are quite bold. This leads one to wonder what happened to these soliers. But then you move on to the last frame. Transcendence. Rather than showing the despondence and the gravity of the previous three images, this is an image of hope. The crucifix soldiers can no longer bee seen, nor can the vast landscape. Instead, we are right there, right up close, and feel as if we have moved beyond this world and into the next. Perhaps the plight of these soldiers was not in vain after all.
I really liked the way you created a story with this first exercise: such simple means to create a strong emotional impact!
In looking back at the composition, I had a few thoughts. The largest picture with the close-up shadows might be enlarged to be a background for the whole sheet. For this to work, you would need to take a deeper perspective, with the distant area fading out through fog towards the horizon so that the three inset pictures could be legible against them.
While in your printout, the colors seemed subtly unified, on my screen, the different color of the middle top image stands out. In Photoshop, you could adjust the color to match (color variations or a simple select and fill). Or maybe instead of making them identical, you could shift the others so that there is a progression of color that accomanies the enlargement. You could also see if changing the flat desert color to a gradient would enrich the images. The starkness has some appeal, but works perhaps because of the color variation.
In future assignments, I'd love to see you play more with the layouts - trying out different margins, background colors and text as graphics.
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