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Hopefullness Through Driving: A Junior Design Student Conceptual Project by Elena Razgonov (2015)

My photograph contains halo with a suitcase in its shadow. Although I am not very religious myself, the act of moving somewhere is something sacred. To take up your entire livelihood in search of hope is not something that should be brushed aside like The fact that the halo is embracing the suitcase in such a way is supposed to symbolize that. I had them be the only real figures in the image because when one goes through the act of immigrating it becomes their only focus. Before and after the event of moving, introspection is at the forefront of everyone's minds. The placement of the objects was an afterthought as I just wanted them to be the main focus of the photo. It just happened to be that this orientation worked out best. Last but not least, the lighting is meant to support the idea of being alone in the journey as well as feeling as if all the attention is on you. Although it only came out of necessity the lighting helped out my concept a lot.

Editing was a pretty straight forward process as the image was already visually appealing. My main focus was to emphasise my meaning through editing. I choose to focus on the halo as it symbolized hope, a raw emotion, which turned out quite drab in the raw image. First what I did was adjust the lighting in order to evoke the feeling of warmth and comfort in the otherwise cold photo. Then, I selected the halo and applied a photo filter in order to make it appear more murky. My reasoning was that hope is never quite solid or secure, rather it's unstable and questionable. This is especially true when there is so much on the line. With the help of my peers and teachers, I decided to liken driving to freedom and therefore the experience of immigrating. The aspect of immigration and hope already went hand in hand.
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