Digital Photography & Imaging - Project 2
Week 4 - Week 9 / 21.04.2021 - 26.05.2021
Tow Wan Tian / 0342765
Week 4 - Week 6 / 21.04.2021 - 05.05.2021
Project 2A - Digital Imaging
Exercise 1 - Photo Manipulation (Part 1 - Hearst Mansion)
As soon as Mr. Martin announced the exercise, I immediately turned to Photoshop and began attempting the exercises. The video was easy to follow as the instructions were clear and straightforward, and it was a great help for completing the exercise. I didn't experience much difficulties except for creating the shadows. At first it was difficult for me to get the shadows look conceivable, but after a few adjustments I finally got the shadows to appear believable.
Below shows a step-by-step progression of the final outcome:
Exercise 1 - Photo Manipulation (Part 2 - My Reflection)
Just when I thought the Exercise 1 is complete, Mr. Martin announced that there was a second part for this exercise, titled "My Reflection", where we were tasked to take a photo of ourselves and replace "Shazam" layer with our own photo while applying the same techniques from Exercise 1 Part 1.
The most challenging part of this exercise for me was to take my own photographs. I don't own any professional equipment and the only gadget apt for the task is my smartphone. I (with the help of my brother) have gone through countless trials and errors to find the right angle and the right distance between the subject and the camera. However, I got lucky with the lighting as the light source of the room that the photo was taken was naturally from my right, which was fitting with the light source of the image of "Hearst Mansion" (the background for editing). After getting the lighting, angle and distance right, my next obstacle was posing in front of the camera. Well I have to be honest here, it's very rare of me to take a full body photograph of myself because I'm not confident with my body shape and very often I think I look odd in photos. Therefore, I'm not used to posing and most of my poses looked awkward and static. Despite looking awkward and stuff, I got lucky once again as the pose in the chosen photo lined up quite well with the perspective of the background, and that was definitely a good start for me.
Alright let's move on to the actual editing!
Below shows the step-by-step progression of the exercise:
- 1. After loading the two images into Photoshop, I began masking off the background of my photo. Then, I resized the photo and placed it at "Shazams" original place.
- 2. Next, I adjusted the photo by using "Match Colour" to match its colour with the background. However, the photo turned out to be too saturated, so I made further adjustments on its brightness, contrast and saturation using the adjustment layers.
- 3. Using the Brush tool, I drew the shadows beneath my subject, decreased its opacity, and then added a Gaussian Blur effect on the shadow.
- 4. Then, I added the reflection of my subject by duplicating the original photo layer, transforming its position and placing it below the subject. Again, I adjusted the opacity, brightness and saturation of the reflection. Afterwards, I further added a Gaussian Blur effect on the reflection as well to make it more believable.
- 5. Finally, I made a few more adjustments on the overall brightness and saturation of the image and I'm done!
Week 6 / 05.05.2021
Exercise 2 - Recolouring (Part 1)
For this exercise, we were tasked to recolour a black and white photo assigned by the lecturer. We were given a YouTube tutorial video for us to reference to complete the exercise.
Honestly speaking, the exercise was not much of a challenge, but it was definitely a good opportunity for me to practice using the Brush tool. Not to mention I learned a new masking technique which I found more convenient than the previous techniques. The
- 1. First, I inserted the given image in Photoshop, painted its skin colour using the Soft Round Brush tool and adjusted the blending mode as Overlay. The Eraser tool was used to remove some of the over painting.
- 2. I moved on to colour the hair with a dark brown and set its blending mode as Overlay as well.
- 3. The pink that was used to colour the lips was too vibrant and unnatural, as if the main subject had applied lip tint on his lips. Hence, an adjustment layer was applied to adjust the hue, saturation and lightness of the lips.
- 4. Next, a light green was applied as the colour of the eyes. At first glance the light colour seemed alright to me, but as I stared at it for a longer time, the colour began to look odd. Therefore, the hue, saturation and lightness of the colour was decreased to a level that it felt natural.
- 5. I coloured the coat dark red, changed its blending mode to Overlay, adjusted its hue and brought down its saturation.
- 6. Following the tutorial, a new layer of solid colour was added. Then the background of the image was selected and masked. The layer mask was moved to the solid colour layer to replace its original layer mask.
Week 7 / 12.02.2021
Exercise 2 - Recolouring (Part 2)
Mr. Martin briefed us on how to complete this exercise. We were given a folder of black and white images and we had to select one to recolour it. In comparison with the image from the first part of the exercise, I would say the images for this exercise were harder to recolour as many of human figures have loose hair and delicate wisp of hair. Despite the increase of the difficulty, I was up for the challenge.
We weren't completely thrown to the deep end of the pool as we were given a YouTube tutorial video and a thorough written instruction for us to complete the exercise. Therefore, ideally it shouldn't be too hard for us to finish the task if we follow the instructions as it is.
According to the instructions, we would select one black and white photo from the given folder and search online for skin and hair colour references. Using said references to recolour the selected photo and complete it for submission.
After scanning through the folder, this photo of a little girl stood out to me the most and caught my attention:
Then I turned to Pinterest and started looking for colour references. I found this photograph of a child model with a skin tone that I thought was apt for the select B&W photo. I assumed the girl in the B&W photo had brown hair because it appeared lighter as compared to the dark background. In order to achieve a realistic and believable finishing, I choose to colour the hair with a dark (almost black ) brown with the following reference image:
Now that I had gather the references I needed, I opened the select photos in the Photoshop and began recolouring.
Week 5 - Week 9 / 28.04.2021 - 26.05.2021
Project 2B - Poster Design
Part 1: Topic Research - Refugees in Malaysia
Summary
Refugee, defined by the 1951 UN Convention on the Status of Refugees and the 1967 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees (UNHCR, 2010), as individuals who fled from their home country in fear of the conflict and persecution due to “reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion ”. An asylum-seeker is someone who is “forcibly displaced and has crossed international borders to seek refugee, but has not yet had his or her claim to be adjudicated” (Wake & Cheung, 2016).
In Malaysia, refugees and asylum-seekers are considered as stateless people. Most of them who are unable to obtain, or do not have passports or citizenships in their home country, should register with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Malaysia to obtain an identity document known as “UNHCR card”. In 2016, approximately 160,000 asylum-seekers were registered with UNHCR in Malaysia, but estimation showed that there were about 35,000 unregistered and undocumented. Despite being documented with a UNHCR card, the refugees and asylum-seekers still do not have a legal status in the country, and the treatment they receive was no less different than those undocumented migrants. Not to mention that the refugees have no legal rights to stay in the country, and are constantly exposed to the risk of exploitation, detention and deportation. Malaysia does not have a proper administrative framework for the refugees; and no direct protection and aids were provided to the refugees and asylum-seekers. By law, they cannot work officially. However, they still need to work in order survive, and very often they are vulnerable to abuse and discrimination, such as little to no payment for their jobs, verbal and physical abuse, sexual harassment and workplace raid.
Moreover, refugees struggle to obtain proper education. According to UNHCR, refugee children in Malaysia are prohibited to attend government school, thus they receive informal education from community learning centres supported by UNHCR, NGOs and faith-based organisations. Among the 28,238 children at their school-going ages, only 30% are enrolled in said learning centres. Revealed by the institutions that are administering the learning centre, the common challenges include teacher and staff retention and quality, parent-teacher relations, girls’ education, etc. I would like to turn the spotlight to the challenges of Rohingya girls’ education. Rohingya girls are most likely to miss the opportunity to receive education or even drop out of school due to the parents' reluctance to send them to schools. Many parents are not aware of the importance of education and think that education is not necessary for their daughters. The girls are expected to stay at home and help with the house duties. Furthermore, the girls are likely to get into early child marriage.
Keywords & Ideas
Everyone has their right to receive education and should not be denied proper education due to their status as refugees. A majority of the refugees did not receive proper education and mostly face difficulties in conversing in Malaysia. This is due to the fact that they only speak their native language and do not speak nor understand other languages such as English and Malay language. On the other hand, local Malaysians are unlikely to understand their language as well. The language barrier between the foreign refugees and locals creates much inconvenience and misunderstanding. Sometimes they might be lucky to have someone who can help them translate their message, however, in reality, many of the refugees were left with confusions and miscommunication.
To overcome this issue, I believe refugees should be provided with the educational opportunity to learn a new language, so that they are able to achieve effective communication with the locals in Malaysia.
Therefore, I wanted to create a poster that advocates formal education and English language learning opportunity for refugee children.
Visual References
Define
Title - Refugees in Malaysia
Slogan - Education for Refugee Children
Details - #ARightToUnderstand
Call For Action- Education for Refugee Children
- Help them learn a new language
Part 2: Define Concept
Sketch
I wanted to first bring out the issue of language barrier and then lead the viewers to the advocacy of education for refugee children. As I was thinking of ways to portray language barriers, the app Google Translate came to mind. Online translation tools are one of the most common ways that people use to make sense and understand a language that they do not know or are not familiar with. Google Translate is probably the most well-known, yet infamous translation tool; well-known for its accessibility and infamous for its weird, hilarious and literal translation that does not make sense. Therefore, a hand holding a smartphone and using Google Translate can be seen in the sketch. It represents a local Malaysian who encounters a refugee and does not understand his native language, then uses the translation tool to translate the foreign language. However, the language could not be detected, thus it could not be translated which results in a language barrier between the local and the refugee child.
1st Draft
After sketching out the poster design, I moved on to look up materials and photographs on Pinterest and Freepik. Below are some of the materials to be incorporated in the poster:
- First I masked out the unwanted background of both images and aligned them according to the sketch. Inserted a screenshot of the interface of Google Translate and placed it in the smartphone.
- I tried out the design with the original background and resized the image to fit the whole canvas. Then, I added in the title and slogan.
- However, the hand doesn't look right, probably due to the proportion. Despite adjusting its colour and size, something still looks off.
- Therefore, I decided to take another approach and replace the smartphone with an error message instead. I couldn't find an appropriate error message online, so I created it from scratch in Photoshop.
- Then, I experimented with the various placements of the title and slogan.
- I came up with an alternative text for the error message:
- I made three variations of the poster with the three different error messages. However, I wasn't quite sure which one I should choose to continue developing as the final designs.
I showed the three versions to my family members and asked them to choose one that they think can convey the message best. Most of them chose Version one ("Language could not be translated"), and I decided to go with their choice as well.
During the consultation session in Week 10, Mr. Martin suggested that the slogan "Education for Refugee Children" should be enlarged as it is the most important message of the poster. Next, he suggested that I should place the details in the bottom right corner of the composition. He then said the poster would be ready for submission after making said adjustments. Taking Mr. Martin's feedback into consideration, I made a few adjustments to the poster and finalised it as shown below.
Final Design Outcome
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