This piece was a lot of fun to photoshop. Believe it or not, I did not actually take this photo. Wild, I know. I scoured the interweb to first find a really interesting background. I stumbled upon this really cool picture somebody actually took of some sort of old castle structure. I then found a picture of a sitting dragon and a UFO to add some flare. Photoshopping the dragon took a really long time to delete the background of but I think he and the UFO came out pretty cool.
@ds106 #washingtonspacevikings pic.twitter.com/c5pYZOe7eW
— Daniel Hawkins (@Hawkins10000) February 11, 2017
I wasn’t able to directly upload the picture I made for this assignment (which was to combine three images into one “impossible” image), so I tweeted it and embedded it here. I’ve combined Washington Crossing the Delaware with a space/sci-fi wallpaper and a photograph of a reconstructed viking ship. This was one of my favorite assignments so far, because it felt more like a daily create, but with more work involved. It challenged me a little because the topic was so broad and the Photoshop work was a little time-consuming, but I’m happy with it. I mean, what’s cooler than George Washington on a viking ship flying through space?
I decided to get started early on the visual assignments for week 3 of noir106. I took some time this evening to work on the Chimeratic Composition assignment submitted by the great Tom Woodward. The instructions are as follows:
Take at least three pictures (your own or someone else’s) mash them together into something that makes them more than the sum of their parts, something that would have been impossible in real life. Include the original images so we can see how they build on one another to make your final composition.
I love the example Tom provides:
Chimeratic Composition by Tom Woodward
He used four of his own images to create this supernatural, gothic moment. So I got inspired to try my hand at this assignment. First up was finding some of the images I had taken recently to mash together. I came across the following images I took while on a trip to NYC with my family. After browsing I got the idea of doing something with the life-size lego Batman and the shot of downtown Manhattan from the top of the Empire State Building.
Life-size Lego Batman at FAO Schwartz
View of downtown from Empire State Building
I also found this shot I took while on the Staten Island Ferry of what looked like a helicopter size drone. Flickr user Bill VanderMolen commented on the shot to say it’s actually a “V22 Osprey. Tilt-rotor aircraft that the military plans to use to replace troop transport helicopters.”
V22 Osprey. Tilt-rotor aircraft that the military plans to use to replace troop transport helicopters.
This got me thinking, wow, that’s very Batman. State of the art, military-level artillery. I now had my third image. I opened each image as a layer in GIMP and started playing around. I cut out the parts I wanted use with the magic wand and lasso tools. I then scaled each layer to the proper size, and changed the colors. I made the city black and white, kept a bit of color on Batman. The Osprey was already black, so that was easy. I probably spent more time futzing than I need to, but I kinda like how it came out.
Batman atop the Empire State Building
After realizing that Batman’s positioning made it look like he was posing for a selfie, I decided to double up on this one. I returned to yet another Tom Woodward visual assignment: “Historical Selfies.” Gyeore Lee had done this assignment earlier in the day-–reminding me how  much I love it—so I decided to actually illustrate Batman’s selfie on a smart phone thanks to this template made available. It has all the layers, I just pulled my Batman selfie image in as a layer and cropped it for the phone screen. After that I added likes and tags.
And with that I have my first visual assignment of the week. I am only giving myself 3 stars for this one because I am committed to only doing assignments I haven’t tried before. I took a stab at the Historical Selfie last semester, which was fun. But I have to admit I think this one is much better, although not very historical at all.
This is the second of the visual assignments I’ve completed for week three. I was looking at red images for my last assignment including roses, barns, and apples because I think red is a powerful color. That made me think about apples and agriculture, specifically bushes. Then I thought, would it be funny if something else were to grow with apples. First I thought about oranges and then I decided to go with lemons because they just looked funny together. I think the images is fresh and a little whimsical and may make âcity folkâ think twice about where apples come from.
I used Photoshop to create the assignment. I opened the bush image up and made it the background image.
Then I opened of the apple image. It was too large so I resized it to fit the scale of the bush image. Then I used the quick selection tool to select the apple only, leaving the white background behind, and pasted it into the bush background.
I pasted the apple three times so each apple was a separate layer and left the layers in the default position at the center of the screen. I followed the same process for the lemon image but copied five lemons layers onto the bush.
Then I selected each layer one by one and moved the lemons and apples around so they were spread out across the bush. Last, I saved the image at a PNG so the file is compressed into one layer.
I completed the Chimeratic Composition assignment as one of my visual assignments for the week. I’ve titled the above image “Balloon in the Mirror.” It was inspired by the thought that sometimes when we’re headed for rough times, we can sometimes take a moment to think back to simpler times.
I used the Pixlr online editor to create the image from the three images below. I used the cropping tool and eraser tool and layered my images one by one. The three base images I used are below. The image of the mirror and the girls with balloons were taken by me on my iPhone. The last one of the dark and apocalyptic sky was taken by my father from his balcony in Wichita, Kansas. I attempted using Photoshop but found the online editor much more user friendly. There were some difficulties in that tool as well as I could not figure out how to re-size the images once they were uploaded to the tool. I would have liked to have all three balloons in the mirror reflection, but could not re-size the image and had to make due with the one balloon.
  
 
One of the assignments I chose to complete was the one called “Chimeratic Composition.” I chose this because I thought it would be fun to see what I can come up with, but also because I wanted to try a new photo editing software. The assignment itself is so open-ended that it really allows you to be creative and create a story from scratch. I particularly like how the assignment asks for the end result to be something that wouldn’t be possible in real life. This fiction aspect truly allows for the story behind the pictures to take on a variety of shapes and spines, completely dependent on the person viewing the picture. The assignment asks to take three images and combine them into one, here is my result titled, “Santa Saves Car Meet.”
In order to create this, I used the online free photo editing software, Pixlr. I also went online to get some help with Pixlr, so I browsed youtube and found this video which got me started.
The picture above is composed of the following three images..
Take at least three pictures (your own or someone else’s) mash them together into something that makes them more than the sum of their parts, something that would have been impossible in real life. Include the original images so we can see how they build on one another to make your final composition.
Another quick #ds106 assignment (tags – VisualAssignments, VisualAssignments1257)
Take at least three pictures (your own or someone else’s) mash them together into something that makes them more than the sum of their parts, something that would have been impossible in real life. Include the original images so we can see how they build on one another to make your final composition.
This was somewhat inspired by the Russian photographer1 images that were floating about (may or may not be amalgams) and a bit like this Modern Met post.2
Here’s my attempt.
cc licensed ( BY SA ) flickr photo shared by Tom Woodward
Sources below- all shots I took at random times without any real purpose.
cc licensed ( BY NC ) flickr photo shared by Tom Woodward
cc licensed ( BY SA ) flickr photo shared by Tom Woodward
cc licensed ( BY SA ) flickr photo shared by Tom Woodward
cc licensed ( BY SA ) flickr photo shared by Tom Woodward
