#i could start heartstopper season 2 or i could make progress on the book i started today or i could watch a mission impossible movie

[thebeautifulfantastic]

how unfortunate that i have two hyperfixations, several side interests, and a load of homework all clamoring at the same time for priority in my brain

[ardn632sem2ashleighdanby]

Work in Progress

I decided that I wanted to edit my base images in Lightroom to best reflect the tone I want them to have before adapting them into composite images since the photos will have a 'storybook' scene, I think having alternating colour pallets between the 2 scenes in the image will work well.

After a long day's work, I finally finished going through all of my pictures and editing the strong contenders, I finally had a batch of photographs I could start working with.

At this stage I have all 3 of my people scenes, but I'm not sure I can create 3 different storybook scenes from what I already have, but I will give it a go before planning another photoshoot.

Also, Heartstopper Season 3 just came out and I was incredibly inspired by some of the visuals they have:

I've been thinking of adding an element like this to my composite image as well to tie the 2 scenes together and become my 'third' element potentially. I think I may need to reread the assignment brief to double-check as this is more Photoshop painting than photo manipulation - so I will get back to you on that one.

Edit: I read over the assignment brief and I think I was getting confused with Assignment 1 where it was required to use 3 different photographs to create a final composition image. In light of this, I will continue with my original plan and add extra elements if necessary :)

So I put my first lot of images into Photoshop and clearly, you can tell I'm unsure where to go from here. I've placed some text as maybe I might incorporate this in the final image but I can't decide whether to keep Loren Ipsum or actually put a real poem or quote in there if I were to keep the text.

I think my next steps may be to get images of a burnt/ripped page or something like that to split the 2 images and see where we go from there, so now I need to take more photos!

I used one of these to create this and I think I do want to add text to the paper - and once this is done get all the lighting and colours looking good and I think I can continue with this idea throughout the rest of my series - but clearly I still need to take MORE pictures so I'm not using the same one for each composite image, and maybe even theme the paper to match the vibes of the 'storybook scene' - I am confident in how this going to turn out now :)

I found some coloured themed card in my crafts draw and picked 3 that I thought would be appropriate for my 3 themes - one of them even inspired my last 'storybook' scene that I was struggling with: war book/romance book/travel book. I also decided I wanted a silhouetted couple in my romance storybook scene so enlisted my brother and his girlfriend. I hope my photographing is finally over! BUT I am not sure where my travel storybook scene will lead me so will have to update you on that.

I continued with my first composite image by changing out the cutout and I thought that the storybook scene would look much better in black and white and yes it does. I think having the darker paper also looks a lot nicer. I added a drop shadow to the paper and I think most of the hard labour is done for this image - I just want to do some finishing touches to make the image feel more complete, but the layout is looking strong.

I moved on to my next image before I did this because I figured getting the layout sorted for all 3 composite images first would keep the steps fresh as the layouts will all have a similar process and then I can finalise edits to all of them at once.

This image was coming along quite nicely but I can't decide whether to have the couple be in black and white or in colour. I think getting the colouring right will be a little tricky because obviously, I didn't take their photo at the beach with the back scene, so all of the lighting and colour grading is all off - so having the couple as a silhouette would eliminate a bit of work for me. I do think the silhouette looks more 'storybook' but then it would make more sense for the beach scene behind them to be more of a sunset so the silhouette would make more sense. Either way, I still have a bit of work to do on this image.

Grrr and then I was playing around with the blending options once I recoloured the couple's image and I think this adds a different kind of storybook energy that matches the vibes of the beach scene behind them, buttttt I will need to cut out the couple a lot better because it looks quite messy as it is right now, but otherwise this image is on the home stretch to having it's layout finalised!

But omg - the storytelling of only dissolving one of them!!! Plus this way, the background scene is made more obvious that it's a beach since the cutouts are covering a lof of the background scene.

Okie dokie, and now to start with my final composite image, the laundromat scene. Now, with this one, you can see I've done it a bit differently. In my previous 2, the reader was inside the paper cutout, but this time the storybook scene is in the cutout.I've done this mainly because my storybook scene is definitely lacking an element BUT I don't think I need to think like that because my actual reader's scene is meant to tell a story within itself, so I think I can get away with providing the context of the map and the water without having to find an actual boat to photograph because in reality I just don't have the time or resources to be able to do so at this point.

The more I stared at it, the more I really thought it needs a boat. I was suggested to go through my Monopoly board game and see if one of the pieces was a boat, but there was only a plane. I thought about using the plane but I just feel the boat on the water would have better storytelling, so I thought about drawing the boat instead.

But this just looks terrible so no. I decided to play around with the gradients and settled on this:

I then also added a gradient to my second composite image while I was at it:

And with that, I think all of my editing is finally done. Now I just need to write my statement and submit!