The brief this week as all about image manipulation and to use four photographs we took and turn it into a composite image. I honestly struggled with choosing a concept and a direction for this brief because everything I thought about didn't inspire me. Eventually I had to look up some inspiration photos on Pinterest and Google Images to start thinking of a concept. 

I saw some cool coffee cup composite images on Pinterest and decided to go down a similar path, playing with the concept inspired by Avatar the Last Airbender and 'blood moons'. Mostly the concept was spurred on by the dragon themed tea cup I'm holding in the first photo. 

Technique: Photography, image warping, blending, gradient mapping, Photoshop

Process: First I had to take photos of all the four items I was going to use in my composite image. I did a self timer photo of myself holding the tea cup, a front-on photo of some flowers on a plain background, a side-on photo of a tiny boat on a plain background, and a bird's eye photo of some water with food colouring in a cup. 

Second, I placed all the images in Photoshop and used the teacup photo as the base image in the composite. I placed the flower photo on top of the teacup and made it a little smaller and also added a layer mask to erase the harsh edges of the flower photo. I used the Colour Range tool in Photoshop to easily remove the background and separate the flowers and leaves from the pot. I warped the leaves and added drop shadows to make them sit where I wanted them to give the illusion of a mini world inside the teacup. I then placed the food colouring water on top of the image and used the Warp option to warp it to the teacup. I placed this under the layer of flowers to create the illusion of water. After that, I added the boat and resized it so it wasn't too big for the teacup. I placed it behind the flowers and blended it a bit to make it look like the bottom of the boat was in the water. 

At the end, I used a gradient map to create more of a darker storyline to the photo, and added some Noise to smooth out the textures and make it look more seamless. 

Reflection: Overall I think I did okay at this, however because I was so uninspired I don't think I put enough effort into this brief. I definitely could have taken better photos and chosen a better concept but honestly I just wanted to finish this brief. Out of all the briefs for this assignment, I did not like this one at all and I definitely think my effort in this brief reflected that. It was nice to come back and play around in Photoshop but I just don't like image compositing in general so it was difficult for me to be motivated to work on it.