Roots of Success: A Senior Black + White High Dynamic Range Diptych by Colin Dickerson (2016)

My personal essay was about my trip to Northern Tier, the training I had going into and how that led to leading a successful rescue mission. For my first subject I choose to photograph roots of a tree because the main portion of my essay was about the trainings and how they were what made me capable of accomplishing my rescue. That is why I choose roots because they are the bases of the tree and what keeps the tree going, which is what my trainings have done to me. For my second photo I took a picture of my old Cub Scout uniform and my current Boy Scout uniform to show the person I have become today. It also shows where I got these trainings and the growth I have made from these trainings which is the basis of my essay. The two sides speak to each other because the roots were how I was able to make this transformation.

To create my compositions I started by taking HDR photos of my objects, meaning I took 5 pictures of the object at different exposures and then combined them into one. I struggled a bit with this because my first time shooting my tripod moved a bit while taking those pictures so I had to retake the photos. After taking the photos I went into Photoshop and made the photos black and white and used an adjustment layer to changed the balance of the image. It was tough to make it so the images weren’t too black and weren’t too over exposed. It took a while but I feel like I struck a good balance at the end. I would maybe try and find a way to show more of my former uniforms which is what I originally wanted but overall I was happy.