Conceptual: A Junior Design Student Conceptual Project by Nicole Nguyen (2017)

I am exploring the feeling of relief through contemplating the unknown.

I placed a sketchbook on a table that had a reflective glass during school hours for natural light. To shoot this photo, I flipped the sketchbook to a blank page and placed the flowers, making sure the one that stood out the most was placed in the center, onto the sketchbook. I rested the camera on the table so the reflection of the objects could also be seen. I went through many phases, only to realize that I had been focusing too much on one part of the concept statement that I had forgotten about the emotion I was supposed to portray. Instead of trying to find an image that could represent concept itself, I tried to find an object that would represent the emotion and tweak it to show the experience. The first that came to mind for showing relief was my sketchbook. Since the pages in a sketchbook are white, I thought a blue background would pair best, and I believed that could be captured at school. I found some flowers lying around and thought they also represented relief, especially when paired the sketchbook. I angled the sketchbook so that I could have a door in the background, which I wanted to represent relief in a more eerie way, also portraying the unknown.

I opened this (after having to choose from several other images) in Adobe Photoshop and began to edit. I intensified the saturation, making the flowers stand out more. I also toned down the vibrancy of the background, giving the door in the background the eerie feel that I wanted, despite the calming appearance of the flowers. I added a slightly lighter vignette to ease the tension of the colors. There wasn’t much that I wanted to edit, so I used Photoshop’s Spot Healing Brush Tool to conceal any unwanted distractions in the photo, such as the fly that happened to land on the sketchbook. These edits had been taught in Design class, so I was more prepared to enhance my image using the skills I have learned.