ENG101.02. Spring 2018. Emory University
For this Assignment I wanted to take the least flattering photo of myself that was physically possible and put it on the internet. Because that’s always fun.
I wanted to recreate a scene from early film history, so I asked a friend to help me smash an oatmeal cream pie from the vending machines in my dorm into my right eye so that I could recreate the image of the grimacing moon from Le Voyage Dans la Lune (A Trip to the Moon).
This assignment took a LONG time to complete. And unlike the past assignments, it wasn’t just the initial brainstorming stage that made it so time-consuming, but every stage. It was extremely difficult to imagine two objects that could fit seamlessly together, especially given an unlimited number of objects to choose from. I changed ideas probably a dozen times until I finally landed on these two. The idea finally entered my mind when I stopped trying to think of images and started trying to think of a story, or in this case a joke. As a student on a college campus, the idea of drinking (and hangovers) came to mind, and I eventually made the comparison of a can of beer to a bottle of Advil. Even with the idea in mind, the combination process was extremely difficult. I mixed-and-matched a number of beer cans before coming across a can that resembled an Advil bottle in size and color-scheme: the Corona Extra can. I am really happy with how it turned out, though I do wish I could have found a higher-resolution image of the Advil bottle, and I definitely think I could have come up with a more clever name!
Scrolling through Mcmennamy’s pictures, I was drawn to the majority of the pictures that included food. I recently started a foodstagram (instagram that showcases my pictures of food) and started thinking of how I could incorporate some of these s=combo photos into my feed. I’ve been eating a lot of broccoli lately because I don’t eat bread during passover and I find that broccoli is quite filling. So I searched broccoli and started thinking of what broccoli resembles. That’s when I thought of a tree trunk. I also like how the bottom picture of the trunk takes place in the winter time while the top picture of the broccoli is bright green as if it’s spring or summertime. A challenge I had putting these two images together was the sizing and lining them up so the image appeared as more cohesive and fluid. This final image conveys the life of a tree in different seasons and a vegetable branching off and finding new roots.
I could not decide what I want to use for this sketch assignment. However, when I decided to take a break and to open Facebook to see some new posts and relax a little bit, I saw a picture with this smile at the bottom. It reminded me of tomato because of its color and shape, so I thought it might be interesting to combine them and see what happens. I used PicsArt to create this photo. In my opinion, the result looks unusual, funny, and well balanced. Overall, I like the combination of these two images.
Creating my photocombo was relatively simple. As soon as I saw the assignment I began brainstorming ideas, looking for things around me to inspire me. I saw my friends stuffed animal in his room and the rest was easy. Finding the right pictures was a bit of a challenge but after a short amount of searching I found what I needed. I tried editing the photos together in Flickr but couldn’t figure out how to do it so I decided to do on google-drawings. It was pretty easy to align the two with a little fiddling. I really enjoyed the project because of its simplicity and its creativity.
A flashlight and a glass of milk. Or is it milk? I can’t really tell.
The idea was quick to come. Within a few minutes of reading about the assignment, I actually managed to think of the idea. The trouble came in execution.
Firstly, it was difficult to find a good image of a flashlight that was purely flat. Most of the images were simply images of flashlights angled towards or away from the camera. However, most of the milk/drink pouring was angled flat/horizontal to the camera. So trying to find both flats was difficult.
Editing was quite easy. I’ve been photo editing since early middle school (but just as a hobby), and this was a very simple task, so that was no trouble.
But there were more challenges. I’m still not completely satisfied with how it turned out. The way the light shines on the flashlight itself makes the tip look like it’s gone when contrasted with the light background, causing an awkward link between the pouring and the end of the flashlight. In the same vein of awkward, the angle of the pour is also awkward when compared to the flashlight. There isn’t enough horizontal pour (in my opinion), making it look extremely unnatural. When I look at Mcmennamy’s art, it looks so natural. But mine just looks like someone who didn’t know what they wanted threw something together and settled. I hate that idea because I really didn’t know how to improve it. I felt somewhat dissatisfied with it, but it was still better than the other images found.
Overall, it’s just a simple flashlight pouring out some milk. It looks decent, but certainly not as good as Mcmennamy’s. And once you see that, can you really go back to make something like this?
The reason I chose Edvard Munch’s The Scream is because its an iconic image that I believed had interesting potential for a remix. The scared cat emoji was chosen as the second photo because I think it mirrors the emotion of the original subject fairly well. Making this was very challenging because I have limited experience with photo editing. Trying to crop the emoji was the most difficult aspect. I also scrunched around the eyes in order to go along with the paintings original look. I think my final image conveys the same existential terror felt by Munch’s subject, but with the levity of something unsuspected.
This assignment was very difficult as it took me a while to think of anything to combine. I ended up thinking about the old coke bottle cap and logo while also thinking about tomatoes for some odd reason. Also it was interesting to think about weird things like this. Its always interesting to have to think about things like this in an abstract way.
It was hard to find what I wanted to match. Took me like 1 hour to figure it out so it wasn’t an enjoyable task but I knew I really wanted to use a picture I took a while ago and that was the picture of the rainbow tucan. Initially, i wanted to put a pickle but I couldn’t find a goo pickle to put in the tucan so ended up with a banana.
