Week 7 Blog Entry: w/c 2nd November 2020 - Creative Enterprise

This week, I created some edits for the photographs that I took on the 6th week. When I had printed my contact sheets off, I noticed that a lot of them had printed quite dark, and you could barely see the effect that I was trying to get across. I decided that I was going to pick some of my best photos (3 of each effect that I tried) and edit them as I would if I was actually going to send them off for print.

The first edit I did was for my favourite image that I had taken with the camera shake technique and tinsel. I did some fairly simple edits, including straightening the image out using the crop tool. The one thing that I did do was significantly brighten up the image. When I printed the image out to include as part of my research file, I noticed how dark the subject was. If I was going to send these off to print, I would need to make sure that the subject was bright enough, not only to be seen but also to get the full effect of the abstract. I turned down the contrast very slightly, because if I turned the brightness up too much, you would be able to see the black cloth I used as a background. The last thing I did with this image was because I wanted to add a little bit more to the image, just to finish it off. Christmas tree usually have a star or angel at the top and I thought my image looked a bit bland. I used Brusheezy to download a brush that resembled a star. The one I downloaded was classed as a lens flare, so some of the brushes were a bit too complex for my image, but I managed to find a brush within the file that suited the abstract of the Christmas tree. I only had to click once and the 'star' appeared. I might try some other edits next week where I tone down the harshness of the brush I used, just so it doesn't detract from the abstract too much.

For my other edits, I only adjusted the brightness and contrast. I didn't want to do too much in the way of editing with my abstract pieces, as I feel that editing too much would ruin the effect. I adjusted the brightness so that the subjects can been seen against the dark background and I adjusted the contrast to allow the colours to stand out a bit more, without showing the black cloth in the background. Another very simple edit I did was using an image on my light trails. I changed the hue of the image to create some more neon colours to match the Pop-Art trend. I really like this particular outcome and the bright colours will hopefully attract customer's attention.

Alongside sewing text onto card, I also tried some other methods of creating type that I could use on my cards. I had tried a number of different techniques with sewing, including only sewing a line once and then sewing a line more than once to see what amount of thread would be best for my own cards. Ultimately, I decided that sewing text onto the card would be a better technique to use with imagery that was a bit simpler and more minimalistic. I also tried using some adhesive gems on some of the fonts. I quite like the look of little gems on cards and I think they would add something a little bit different to my cards. The only issue I have with this is that the gems won't be allowed in the recycling, which doesn't make them eco-friendly.

Next week, I'll be starting to create the final imagery for my cards. I now know exactly what props I need and the techniques I'll be using to create my final outcomes. I'll definitely be experimenting with different colour schemes and camera shake techniques in order to create outcomes that don't look rushed or messy. I think I will try experimenting more with changing the hue of some of my images, as I could then fit them into some of the themes I've researched into, like Bloomsburg and Pop-Art.