For this assignment, I wanted to incorporate something new into the old. The new being the assignment, “Splash The Color”, and the old being this photograph I took back in December 2017. A little story behind this image is that I was in Washington D.C. on a high school art trip. At the time I was taking two photography classes and thus had two assignments to complete. The two classes were Photojournalism and Commercial Photography. For Photojournalism I was supposed to do street photography, taking pictures of whatever I wanted. There was no minimum or maximum, as long as I had fifteen photos to share in class from the trip. For Commercial Photography I was required to use a Holga 120N medium format film camera. A medium format camera takes 120 film, which only allows you to take between 12 and 16 shots. Afterwards we were to take more photos with 35mm film in out normal cameras. This image actually shows the intersection of those two projects: a digital picture taken of a Holga film camera. The other camera you see in the picture belongs to a friend, but I did have my own film camera stored away in my bad at this time. The picture itself wasn’t that remarkable, however the bright color of the Holga inspired me to do this assignment. I used Pixlr once again for this assignment, mainly because I’m too cheap to pay for Photoshop. It doesn’t matter, since Pixlr does almost everything Photoshop does, or you can manipulate it to make it look like it does what Photoshop does. The process of creating this effect was simple. I opened the image in Pixlr’s photo editor, created a duplicate layer which I converted into black and white, then erased the area around the the camera so only the Holga would retain any semblance of color. The rest of the image stayed black and white since it was “masked” by the duplicate layer. I actually did this a few times with a few different images back in high school (but with Photoshop) so I’m thankful Pixlr operates in a similar way that allowed me to create this effect. I know the image isn’t perfect, since the depth of field is a little wonky. I know people don’t want excuses, but I was having a bit of a problem with my eyes back then. I’m right-eye dominant, but I’ve worn glasses since I was very young. Something happened with my vision that year, causing my right eye to progressively get worse, so many of my photos from back then have some focus issues. Since then I’ve taught myself how to shoot with both eyes, so my technique has improved quite a bit! Please let me know what you think in a comment down below!

I decided to try my hand at the assignment “Populate the Landscape” since I am a huge fan of Arrowhead altered art. I’d like to start off by saying it was a complete accident that I picked the exact same Rob Ross painting as the one on this assignment’s description page. I actually found this image through a Google Search, and only realized it was the same one after I had already completed this assignment. Sorry, not sorry! After finding an image I liked through Google, I took inspiration from the Northern Lights in the sky on just who I wanted to populate this image with. Now, I’m sure many people reading this probably got the reference in the title or even recognized the muscle-bound figure raising his sword to the heavens. If you don’t, well you’ve missed out on a glorious part of popular culture. Anyways, the figure is He-Man, the alter ego of Prince Adam from He-Man and the Masters of the Universe. The entire reason I decided to include him in this image is because of the way the light seems to be shining down on that particular part of the painting. It reminded me of He-Man’s transformation, which involves him raising his sword to the heavens and shouting his battle cry, which prompts lightning to rain down on him, transforming the cowardly Prince Adam into the powerful warrior He-Man. I know it sounds a little cringey, but it was a 1980s cartoon and comic series that has been a huge part of my life, and I thought it fit this painting. How I edited this wasn’t particularly difficult. I don’t have photoshop, so I used Pixlr to drop He-Man into Bob Ross’ world. Pixlr is a great free alternative to Photoshop, and it works right in your browser. I’ve used it in the past to colorize an old photograph and really enjoyed how user friendly it was. I actually think it’s better than Photoshop in some ways, mostly because I’ve never been able to wrap my head around Photoshop. I think this particular painting compliments the figure of He-Man, since the colors give is a fantasy or magical vibe, whereas He-Man is a character from a magical background. Please tell me what you think by commenting below!