A Fork In The Rose: A Senior Black + White High Dynamic Range Diptych by Rachel Sims (2016)

For my diptych I decided to use two forks and a rose. The reason I decided to use a fork was because I wanted to express the challenges of making a decision. A popular metaphor for confronting a hard decision in life is “a fork in the road.” So, after a long thoughtful process of trying to figure out how to show that I decided why not use an actual fork in the road. However I did not want to be so literal so I decided to put a twist on it. Instead of one fork on the ground I put two. I put the two forks over each other creating an “x” formation. I did this because I wanted to create a sense of confusion. My other image is a rose, I used this to portray the idea that when you make a decision it may look good at first but there are always issues. I used the rose because of the saying “every rose has it's thorns”. I wanted it to go with the fork by expressing the idea that every decision comes with beauty and also pain. For the rose I especially wanted to have a long shadows that really reflected the rose. This is because I wanted to be able to see the thorns on the rose on the actual rose as well as the shadow. I think that this creates a sense of depth. Together the two images create a juxtaposition of two different parts of decision making.

For this piece I learned about HDR photography. I had most sucess using the camera raw filter to edit the photos. The HDR allows you to show more detail in the piece and also creates a more intriguing photo. By putting the photo in black and white it also allowed for more drama and intrigue. I encountered some issues on this project such as contrast. I was having a hard time because in my original photos the shadows were too dark and it covered the actual image. So I had to create a sense of depth and contrast to make the shadows present while making sure they did not overshadow the actual object in the photo. Overall, I think that I learned a lot about HDR photography and editing HDR photos and I am very proud of my work.