Political Issue

For this assignement, we were required to take photograph that "advertises a message" of a social or political issue that speaks to us. I chose endangered species. To create this image, I went through my closet of old stuffed animals because I obviously can't actually take photos of endangered specied unless I was at a zoo, and grabbed some of my animals that could represent endangered animals. I took a giraffe, zebra, elephant, turtle, seal, and a tiger and took them outside and set them up in my moms garden. After trying a couple different ideas, I realized that my image didn't make sense because all the animals I was using are from completely different environments. I walked around my yard for a little while and saw thr huge American flag hanging on my shed and it sparked an idea. I had my mom lift up my stuffed seal to the American flag. I used formal balance and selective focus to draw attention to the seal but you can still tell there's a flag in the back. In the darkroom, I took exposed the paper for about 3 seconds and it came out too light, and very very grey. To fix this, I exposed it for 5 seconds and put a 3 filter on it. This solved all of my issues however I felt like you couldn't tell what my message was. So my next step was to take some cut- out letters and spell out help hovering the seals head. I placed the letters over the transperancy and the paper and exposed it for 5 seconds and it came out great. If I could do anything to improve on this image, it'd be to make sure my moms hand isn't in the photo because it's a little distracting.