Wednesday, April 3, 2024
Transformative Portrait-Nikole McCahill
For this project I wanted to take a picture of my little sister swimming in our pool and put her somewhere remote and magical feeling where she's swimming in a clear blue water hole with a waterfall along with fish swimming and interacting with her in order to create a fun, magical experience. I chose this image of her with her thumbs acknowledging the camera so it seems like a picture taken in a real event showing her approval of the situation. Overall I wanted to create the magical experience or feeling we all experienced as a young child or growing up where everything feels larger than life.
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The overall piece contains a setting of a waterfall falling into a small lake, with the subject being Nikole’s sister, composited and taken from an original picture of her swimming in their backyard pool. Attempting to create a very fun and somewhat “magical” representation of this idea. Some fish that have been animated swimming have been added to further increase the validity of the scenario or rather, make it more believable and act as the part that is animated.
Interpret:
I personally think there isn’t much of a deeper meaning or significance to the overall piece and is simply rather a fun depiction of her own little sister composited into another scene that makes it more ethereal and connected with nature perhaps. And so therefore, I feel that it does reflect the individual in a very energetic light as if they often hike to locations like these, supported by her thumbs up pose. I don’t think it alludes to much, like I had said before, it may just have been a fun interpretation of swimming in a setting that is more uncommon and in relation to nature.
Evaluate:
I was definitely given enough visual cues to understand what is happening, although I did feel it lacking in the transformative part, especially with the composite and there being a slight lack of animated elements to give the image life. If Nikole had added some more subtleties such as animated water or buoyancy with her sister in the water, it may have been more striking. Additionally, maybe adding fireflies or something to make it more in tune with nature and more magical would have been a plus. Color grading would have been an important step to aid in the creation of that magical mood she wanted to go for.
So definitely could have tinkered around with more animated elements, fog, fireflies, birds alongside the fish darting through the landscape she has presented before us. Color grading like I had said to aid in creating a mood, possibly some audio too to help further that idea of a magical setting. Lots of things could have been explored but sadly weren’t. Still a solid piece though.
Theorize:
In our larger culture, probably not much, like I had said before, it’s definitely more of a fun piece to really show her sister swimming in a much more uncommon environment to do so. The connection to nature could have been emphasized more and if a theme to be theorized would have been presented, maybe adding trash to the clean water source to kind of make way for the theory of connecting it to the pollution we as humans have caused to beautiful environments such as these, but sadly that was not touched whatsoever.
Conclusion:
Overall, I think she has a solid grasp of an animated portrait but possibly not the transformative aspect in terms of compositing. There needs to be more umph and pizazz to really create that magical feeling she had mentioned in the description of what she aimed to do. More animated elements to give the portrait life. Overall I think technically it shows she knows what she’s doing but simply needs more elements added to truly make it a transformative experience.