The two pictures depicted in my digital self portrait are of images taken on two separate occasions: one photo captures me and my friends in Evan’s Point, Newfoundland during Christmas time 2006 and the other photo shows a sketch of a crowd of people that was featured in a giant maze of animal artwork at this year’s Osheaga Festival, Montreal, September 2007.
The Evan’s Point picture was a candid photo taken during a cabin trip with my friends. What I like best about this photograph is that it isn’t contrived or orchestrated in any way. It shows a genuine moment of me, having fun with my friends.
The sketch of the crowd of people caught my eye during an artwork display at Osheaga Festival. To me, the sketch is a reminder of an individual’s place in the world: we are one of many, all trying to make a way for ourselves as we live life day-to-day.
I used Photoshop elements to combine the photos. I altered each photo individually, adjusting the colour levels and cutting and cropping where appropriate. I then completely removed the image of myself in the Evan’s Point picture by using the magnetic lasso tool and then deleting the background of the photo. I transformed the size of my image and placed it on the ‘people.jpg’ layer. I used the clone stamp tool to copy the ’stick people’ in the sketch image, so that I could fill in empty areas of the overall digital self-portrait; although this was tedious, the cohesiveness of the final product indicates that it was time well-spent! Once the image looked like one unified photograph, I flattened the image layers and then played with the many effects of Photoshop. This was my favourite part of the process, as Photoshop has many neat effects to alter pictures! I decided to make the picture appear as if it was a drawing by selecting ’smudge stick’ from the ‘artistic’ filter templates, and I then added the ‘glowing edges’ style, transforming the image into one that was black and white with coloured outlines. As a final adjustment, I added some text to the image that I felt suited the image’s meaning.
The end result was a personalized piece of artwork. I didn’t have an overall message I wanted to convey when I started out on this assignment, as my images had significance to me as individual photos only. However, once these pictures were united, the overall image took on a whole new meaning. My digital self-portrait reflects my opinion of my place in the world: I am one person in the world’s massive pool of people and like the others, I have my own story, and my own life to lead.
