Rap or Go to the League: A Photo Journal
Sport as a Necessity
Task
Curate a series of 3 portraits unified by purpose, composition, cropping, and special effects that display a strong driving concept.
Purpose: ad proposal for Nike, who uses sport as a vehicle to bring awareness to social injustices.
I wanted to explore sport, particularly basketball, and how it's viewed in the Black community. While opportunities can feel limited, there's a common misconception that a young man's only options to make it out of tough environments are to "rap or go to the league," symbolizing careers as a musician or an athlete. Each portrait signifies a young man with dreams of making it as a professional athlete.
I chose to have the portraits be black and white to reference how bleak a future can seem, with images of the sport in color symbolizing the means and desire for a "brighter future." I wanted all of the photos to have a gritty, vintage look to depict how hard the environment and road can be, even when success is achieved and accomplished this through the use of adjustment layers (brightness/contrast, exposure) and by adding noise via a filter (non-monochromatic and uniform).
Tools
Unsplash
Adobe Photoshop
Technique
I began by making a copy of each image before proceeding with a destructive edit like cropping. I cropped each portrait close to the subject to emphasize the subject's importance and to remove outside distractions. I opted to leave the basketball goal in for the first image because of the depth and story it provided.
To achieve a gritty, vintage look I used non-destructive adjustment layers with focus on the brightness/contrast, exposure, and levels adjustment layers. I increased brightness for each image while decreasing contrast, and proceeded to add a tad of exposure for "moodiness." I optied to apply the destructive noise filter for texture at the end. The filter was non-monochromatic and uniform to create a subtle distribution appearance unlike the Gaussian option.
"Portraits with a Purpose"
Illustrative Imaging
D. Thompson 2020
