Self Destructive


Today’s society is unarguably tainted by pollution and greed. Pollution is constantly poisoning the air and destroying not only our habitats but also every living thing that lives on earth. The main basis of my picture is: Who is to blame? The exact answer; we are.
Humans are responsible for the slow but constant destrucion of our earth and since we live on Earth we are harming ourselves. That is the exact point of my picture.
This picture has many different procedures and steps to make it give a “dream” the surreal look I was aiming for. First I had to take many pictures of myself in various actions. Only a few of these were selected for use. I guess humour was achieved in this picture but along with that my message I believe is still clear. After I gathered all the pictures and put them on my computer I began to take the selected images, cut and shrink them.
I had to choose a main picture for the larger version of me getting attacked. After I cut the background out of that “main” picture I began to paste the previously shrunk ones into it. These added pictures looked a little out of place so I blurred them in to make them more in the picture.
The little men were placed around my body and layered properly so it looked like they were hitting me. I had the main picture done which was me getting attacked by, me. This scene did not look surreal or like a dream, which was off my mark so I had to change something. First I began individually change the colour balance on each little me. I made them a variety of vibrant colours. Reds, oranges, greens and many other colours were used to make the men more imaginary. After I was finished editing the little men I jumped up to the larger version of me. For this I wanted to cut out separate body parts and individually change the contrast of them. I cut out the legs, torso and head all into separate sections. I made the contrast on the head the highest and thus went a little lower with it as it progressed down my body. Finally, my body and all the men around me looked very odd and irregular; perfect. The picture is not quite ready yet. The background was what I started to edit now. I first made it a gradient from black to white matching the intensity of my body’s contrast; black on the top and white on the bottom. After this I decided to almost blend my body into the background. I swirled my body at different points twisting it into the background. After that I decided on the name Self Destructive. The matched my point and meaning of the picture.
Looking at it now it really has a gloomy feeling and I believe it has a lot of personality. Looking at all the faces in the picture this all gives you very mixed emotions. The little men resemble, earthquakes, hurricanes and all other natural disasters. I chose this because earth is angry at the human race for harming it so much. This gives earth emotion as well. If you look at the main part; my face, the agonizing emotion mixed with the extreme contrast really gives it an intense look.
I learnt a lot about the Photoshop program through this assignment. Since it really had no limits I feel that was a very expandable assignment. It really taught me to picture what my final piece will look like as I do it.