Organic Forms/Textures

Artist Statement

For this image, I noticed my cat sitting in front of a wall with a mostly solid background and placed the camera at eye level. However, there is another photo included where I photographed the rock wall in my yard that has been edited in a layer over my cat. I attempted to keep the balance of the image fairly even—there was not enough space on the sides for me to attempt informal balance, as I had originally considered, so I cropped the image with fairly even space around the subject. I had to wait until the cat's face was visible in the image to take photos, but I settled on this picture because how she is looking the opposite way than the direction the rest of her body is facing contributes to a more formal balance. (If I could go back and edit more, I would even out the horizon in the background, though.)

Over the course of the project, editing was a bit of a struggle. I stuck with my original concept pretty closely, but photo editing proved to be a challenge. The texture of the stone matched my cat's fur enough to look quite good. However, around the edges where I had to erase the photo of the rocks over the image of my cat looks quite choppy. I tried using the blur tool quite a bit to ease the transition into the background without noticeably causing the fur to look blurry, but it didn't quite work out the way I wanted it to. Other photo edits were a little less planned. I put lots of the image in black and white because the colors of the background didn't match well with the photo editing I did on the cat (it still looks a little strange, but better than it did before). I also put a bright blue over my cat's usual green eyes because my original intention was to further edit in a photo over the eyes—one that would make it look like her eyes were filled with pools of water (the photo selected had rippling water from a puddle, and I planned for it to match the color of the stone). Instead, due to issues such as time and photo editing struggles, I settled on blue eyes.

This project was mostly made to relate to my inquiry question for my personal concentration, relating to portraying literary devices through photographs. While the photo editing could have improved, the most important factor I wanted is there (the matching of the picture of the rocks to my cat's fur). It is meant to represent a simile, comparing the texture and color of the rocks to the cat's fur. I'd like to revisit this image to make further photo edits and extend the meaning, making more comparisons in order to further convey my inquiry question.