Evaluation

For this assignment we were asked to create a Pop Art piece using modern day objects that were important and/or represented us as an individual. For this, I chose to use a PSVita as it represents my love for video games and as it is also easy to transport from home to college. Not only that, but it was colourful and already looked like something you'd see in a Pop art piece. 

For research, I could only do Primary. This consisted of famous Pop Artists like Roy Lichtenstein and how Pop Art came about. Which started in Britain as a movement then found its way to America where majority of the most well known Pop artists such as Andy Warhol. 

I searched up a few not so popular works of Pop Art to inspire me. Example:

   

I found that lips and food items were popular with the Pop Art culture, however I didn't want to follow the trend exactly. Which is why I decided to use a PSVita as it represented me more.

My first idea which I described in my proposal was to take a picture of glasses,  When planning my piece I looked into how other Pop art photos were placed. The images were mostly repeated, just in different colours and are either repeated three or four times. So I decided to make my image portrait and repeat the same image three times going downwards. I wanted to make the colours of the image brighter than the background as the image is the main focus point.  However, due to me losing my SD card with all my photos on, I fell behind and had to resort to whatever photos I had taken that day- good or bad. Next time I will make sure to backup my SD card onto my hard-drive in case the same situation occurs again.

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As for considerations, I had to take the lighting into account mostly as it will dramatically effect my image when edited as you can see in the picture below, the light reflecting off of the screen is very noticeable and although it could create a nice effect, I didn't think much about the placement at the time as I wanted to take the photos as quickly as possible. Another thing I had to take into consideration was the ISO and shutter speed. I found that using a slow shutter speed increased the volume of light, and because the image was still, it didn't create a blurry image and I was able to take a clear photo with good lighting.   

When it came to editing, it was fairly easy when it came to applying coloured backgrounds and changing the colour of the product itself in contrast to removing the background from the image. In order to remove the background from the image, I had to use the wand tool as well as the rubber tool as the background itself wasn't perfectly white and had some shadows that had to be removed by using the rubber. After that was sorted, I went onto repeating the image three times and applying the black boarder by using the square shape tool and manipulating the size of the lines to create a thicker boarder which, in my opinion, makes the image stand out a lot more. Changing the colour of the object was simple. I manipulated each image by using the Hue/Saturation tool as well as the levels tool. This let me control the level of brightness and colour of the image. For the background, I decided to make a gradient of colour as I felt the image itself was not eye catching enough. I did this by using the paint brush tool.

In conclusion, my final image did not meet the requirements of my brief. Despite being a different idea completely, I think the finishing result came out just as good as my brief described. If I was to do this project again, I would make sure to back up my work as I feel my original final piece looked better then my final piece now. I would also add more detail into my image, for example the signature red dots that are in most Pop-Art images.

Test Shots

Looking at the photos I've noticed that most of them are too dark. I can fix this by making the shutter speed slower as it will give more time for the light to reach the object. Though when I changed it, I found that I made the shutter speed too slow, letting in too much light. I will keep this in mind next time I take photos to find the mean shutter speed for when I'm taking these kind of photos with a powerful light. Most common f: 4 ISO: 220-400 

My final image

Editing Process

First, I edited my photo on a separate page by removing the background from it. I then copied the image and put it on a different Photoshop document which I then proceeded to copy the image and paste it three times to create the image below.

After doing that, I used a square tool to create a boarder around the three images. This will help separate them so it is easier to fill in the background. Though I may still keep them as it makes each singular image stand out among the background. I also got rid of the background again so it leaves the background transparent. 

(Image > adjustments > Hue/saturation > Levels > Brightness)

To make the image look more interesting and relate to Pop Art, I went into Image, Adjustments and used the Hue/Saturation tool as well as the levels and Brightness tool. These tools  not only changed the colour, but also controlled the lighting and reflections on the PSVita.  

Finally, I applied the background and decided to keep the black boarders which I made a little bit thicker. I started with a solid, one colour background and figured it looked to plain and simple. So, i decided to make a three colour gradient of each colour. I believe it made a nice effect and makes the images pop out more, even though it isn't a typical Pop Art technique.