A Fishy Night: A Junior Experimental Project by Gabrielle Makower (2013)

For this piece, I was exploring the feeling of bewilderment one gets when considering the depths of the ocean and the limitlessness of outer space. I tried to achieve this by placing colorful, bright sea creatures in the smooth and speckled sky. The contrast of color further emphasizes difference between the two places, yet they both contain that same element of mystery. I aimed to make the picture slightly disorienting, and puzzling. Fish and turtles don’t naturally reside in outer space, yet the contrast explains the feeling of confusion one may experience when considering the two locations.

I took the photos of the turtle and fish on a GoPro camera while I was staying in Hawaii on vacation. The creation as a whole was created on illustrator. I brought the fish through photoshop to create an invisible background, then placed them on top of my illustrator image. To create the outer space effect I used multiple layers of low opacity brushes. (Unfortunately, the brushes had too low of an opacity value, it’s slightly difficult to see the depth of the image via the print.) I then zoomed in and placed hundreds of small ''flares'' via the flare tool. I also put a larger flare in the center to create a whale’s eye.