Digital Photography- Texture Blog Post

Digital Contact Print (Purely Chaotic) 

Here are my top 10 images for the purely chaotic category. These photographs were a little bit difficult to capture because I had a difficult time defining what was purely chaotic and what was harmoniously disorganised. In the end, my definition for purely chaotic was randomly scattered, confusing or thrown about to create a feeling of dissonance in all different and multiple directions. For my purely chaotic category, I plan to edit an image of a rubber band ball and an image of Banana Gram tiles from my house.

Digital Contact Print (Harmoniously Disorganised)

Here are my top 10 images for the harmoniously disorganised category. Similar to the purely chaotic category, these photographs were also difficult to define and sort out because I had trouble defining what was purely chaotic and what was harmoniously disorganised. In the end, my definition for harmoniously disorganised was similar to the analogy Mr. Laurence gave us in class about the "blades of grass". Each grass is similar in the sense that you know what it's going to look like, you just don't know where it's going to be and in what direction it'll face. For my harmoniously disorganised category, I plan to edit my image of a durian sculpture and my image of playing cards.

Digital Contact Print (Harmoniously Organised)

Here are my top 10 images in the harmoniously organised category. These photographs were easy to capture because harmoniously organised textures exist all around us. Our modern Singaporean society is very focused on repetition and models that are aesthetically pleasing to the eye. As a result, textures such as tiles, field fences, food, lockers, etc are all created to look pleasing to the eye. For my harmoniously organised category, I plan to edit the photograph of the wine glasses in my house and the little statue tennis court net in my house.

6 Final Images

Purely Chaotic #1

For my first purely chaotic photograph, I chose this close up shot of a rubber band ball. I loved this shot because I loved how the rubber bands overlapped with one another to look intertwined and connected. This image fits perfectly in the purely chaotic category because you cannot predict what direction and shape and form the rubber band ball is going to form. For this image, I decided to isolate the red rubber bands as my focal point. The reason for this is because next year I'm going to be a senior at SAS, and this will mark my 13th year here at this school. I wanted to create a symbol of the rubber band ball, that it may appear to look like a big gigantic mess, but if you look closer, you'll realize that all the different color rubber bands come together to create something bigger and more beautiful. It's similar to my career here at SAS over the years. It may appear to seem jumbled and messed up at times, but at the end of the day, they all come together to create one whole. To create the stand out red effect, I used the Layers menu to apply a colour range, where I selected red as the colour I wanted to isolate. Then, I inverted it, and used the adjustments feature on Adobe Photoshop to apply the black and white filter. After that, I was able to use the different tools to adjust this photograph to make the red stand out as much as possible. Overall, I'm really proud of this image, and I think it's my best one and favourite one so far.

Purely Chaotic #2

For my second purely chaotic image, I took a photograph of a bunch of Banana Gram tiles in my living room and jumbled them up in a huge pile. My family and I love playing board games because it represents time spent together in a world that continues to get busier and busier every day. This image was really hard for me to define because I wanted to call it harmoniously disorganised because they were all similar sized tiles; however, the defining factor as to why it's chaotic is because they're going in all sorts of different directions, making it difficult to predict the next sequence of events that are going to follow. For this image, I used the Filters Gallery "Film Grain" filter to apply to all the other tiles except the "I" tile. I wanted to make the "I" tile stand out because Banana grams is a game you can play by yourself, but it's more fun with other people, helping to symbolise that board games are more fun when there's more than 1 person involved. I also really liked this filter because it made all the other tiles look "dirty" while this one was really clean. Overall, I'm really proud of this image, and it's one of my favourites!

Harmoniously Disorganised #1

Singapore is famous for the notoriously tasting Durian. Every person in Singapore has tried Durian at least once, and on the spectrum of "Yum" and "Gross", you either love it or hate it. In order to remember our "Durian Country", my family and I bought a durian sculpture at home. It helps to represent the divide in my household between those that love Durian and those that hate it. My sister and I cannot stand the smell or taste of it, while my mom and dad are HUGE fans of Durian. For this image, I wanted to capture the beautiful outside of the Durian fruit because it's extremely unique and unlike any other fruit in the world. Our Durian sculpture at home is a perfect example of texture that is harmoniously disorganised. If you look really closely, each spike of the Durian fruit appears to be the same and one can predict how it'll look like; however, nobody can predict the direction the spike is going to face and the size of the spike. I was torn in this image because I wanted to categorise it as harmoniously organised, but in the end, I knew it had to be harmoniously disorganised because of the unpredictability of the direction and size of the spike. I love how this final image turned out. I used the lasso tool to select one central spike and used the adjustment tool to make it black. Overall, it's a really lovely image that captures Singapore's well known fruit.

Harmoniously Disorganised #2

For my second harmoniously disorganised image, I chose this photograph of Singapore airline cards arranged neatly in an assortment together. My family loves to fly Singapore Airlines, and on every flight we've ever been on, we always make sure to collect a deck of playing cards to bring home. As a result, our house is filled with Singapore Airline cards from every year and airline known. I chose to categorise this image as harmoniously disorganised. My reasoning for this is because all the cards are similar in the sense that they say "Singapore Airlines" and are from the same company. The only difference is the front image on each of the playing cards. Therefore, it has one aspect of predictability and one aspect of unpredictability, ultimately making it harmoniously disorganised. The predictability of the image is seen through the arrangement. It's sorted like tiles stacked horizontally and vertically in straight rule of third lines. However, the unpredictability is what design is going to pop up on the front of the playing deck card. My focal point of this image is the center of the playing cards. I used the lasso tool to select the middle card, and then I used the gaussian blur effect to blur out the surrounding cards to make the middle one stand out the most. Overall, I really love this image and I'm really proud of how it turned out.

Harmoniously Organised #1

For my first harmoniously organised photograph, I chose this image of wine glasses lined up in a row in my house. I loved this image because I really liked how the light was able to reflect off of the glasses to create a rainbow like effect. I also liked how it was made of glass to create a see through effect, and each of the wine glasses in my home has a little charm at the bottom of it, making it stand out even more. This image fits in the harmoniously organised category because of its predictability. One can clearly see the repetition in this image, and predict the next similar wine glass that is going to follow suit. One unique aspect I decided to change in this image was to include a focal point on the handle of the first wine glass. I cropped the image to fit the rule of thirds compositional device (to make it more aesthetic), and then I used the lasso tool to select only the handle of the first wine glass. Then, I inverted the entire lasso to select everything except the handle, and I used a "gaussian blur" effect to make the handle the focal point and isolate it. I really liked this effect because it drew the attention of the eye to the first handle.

Harmoniously Organised #2

For my second harmoniously organized image, I chose this close up of a little tennis court net statue that my family and I have in our house. My mom, my dad, my sister and I all play tennis, and it's something that has always connected us as a family and allowed us to spend more time with one another playing something we all love and are passionate about. As a result, I knew I wanted to showcase a piece of my tennis life in my final texture photography project. I really liked this image because the tennis court net is intertwined with one another to showcase and symbolise how we as a family are connected to one another through a similar passion. For my focal point, I knew I wanted to make it subtle yet visible. Therefore, I used my lasso tool to select one square of the tennis net. Then, I used the filters gallery tool to apply the "Film Grain" filter because I thought that each hole in the tennis court net looked like a screen to view a movie from a different perspective. By doing this, I was able to not only enhance the photograph but also isolate the single hole of the tennis net to attract the viewer's eye. Overall, I really liked this image, and you can tell that it fits perfectly in the harmoniously organized category because of the repetition and predictability of the image.

Screenshots of Editing Techniques

One of the types of editing techniques I used was the isolation of a single colour within a photograph. For this particular image, I first took an image of a rubber band ball and decided on what colour of the image I wanted to isolate. Then, I made a layer of the background copy and selected the SELECT menu. After that, I clicked on the red rubber band as the colour I wanted to isolate in the image and adjusted the settings to fit the vibrance and fuzziness of the image colour. Then, I clicked invert and everything except the red rubber bands were selected. After that, I used my adjustment menu to click Black and White, and this changed the entire image black and white EXCEPT the red rubber band. Then, I thought that the image was a little too dark, so I used a curves adjustment to brighten the entire image up overall.

Another type of editing technique I used was the Gaussian Blur. In order to do this, I first took my image and made a layer of the background copy. Then, I converted this new layer of the image into a SMART FILTER, and I used the selection tool to select the center playing card deck. After that, I inverted the selection and applied the Gaussian Blur filter on top of the other cards surrounding the middle one to help the focal point be the center card deck. Once I was satisfied with the intensity of the blur, I flattened the image and saved it!

Successes & Challenges

Overall, the Texture Project was perhaps one of my favorite projects this semester. I have to admit, at first, I was a little hesitant about the project, and I didn't really enjoy it as much because I'm more of an environmental and portrait photographer. However, as I allowed myself to go more in depth with my photography and step outside of my comfort zone, I learned that texture surrounds each one of us everywhere in a unique and different way.

I think one of the biggest challenges I faced was categorising each image into the separate categories of harmoniously organized, harmoniously disorganised and purely chaotic. The reason for this was because at times I felt like each category overlapped with one another. For example, sometimes an image of paint tubes jumbled up with one another looked purely chaotic from one person's perspective, but from another person's perspective it looked more harmoniously disorganised. Furthermore, each person I asked had reasonable justifications as to why each image fits in each category. As a result, I just had to continue asking more and more people and trust my instincts as to why each image belonged in each category. For instance, I would remind myself again and again that purely chaotic was unpredictable and had no repetition while harmoniously organized were like "blades of grass", similar enough to predict what is going to be next but unique in their own individual way.

Despite my struggle to categorise the images into each distinct category, I'm happy to say that one success of the texture project was finally being comfortable with how to use Adobe Photoshop! I'm no longer a beginner! Throughout this entire semester, I've always struggled with the multiple editing techniques we learned in class; as a result, I would always need to ask Mr. Laurence and my peers for help. I would also need to search online for tutorials as to how to do and perform certain editing techniques. For once in my life, I was finally able to do each editing technique on my own with minimal help! I think this really shows and represents my growth in the class! Overall, I'm really proud of my performance in photography class this year. I had a really awesome time developing my skills as well as stepping outside of my comfort zone to do something unique and different. Thank you Mr. Laurence for a great year, and hopefully I'll be back for Advanced Photography!