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ParaStalk: A Junior Design Student Conceptual Project by Rebecca Pristavok (2017)

I am exploring the feeling of paranoia when learning how to love.

For this project, I photographed disheveled papers, three camera lenses, a glass mug, whipped cream, and corn syrup which was dyed as the three primary colors: red, yellow, and blue. The papers consist of a few French words that resemble love. Three of the words visible in the photograph are amour which means love, compter meaning rely, and commettre meaning commit. I placed the colors on the edge of the mug full of whipped cream to seem as if the mug was knocked over and spilled the colored corn syrup onto the papers. I then chose to place the cameras in the shadows in the background as if they were spying on the papers and mug. I used natural lighting from the surrounding windows to avoid harsh shadows, and I chose to angle my camera downward on the objects at a slant to show the writing on the papers and the cameras behind them. The placement of my items and the angles at which they are perceived add to the feeling of paranoia, while showing the brightness from learning how to love.

Being the language of love, I decided to not use a French dictionary in my photo, but rather use what looks like someone’s vocabulary notes from learning the language. I chose to have the three words Amour, Compter, and Commettre visible due to their relation to love. People have a hard time with truly loving due to their fears of relying on someone and being involved in a commitment. These words best fit the emotions that one feels when learning how to love. Then, the three cameras represent paranoia. People tend to feel most paranoid when they feel they are being watched, so I chose to surround my objects with cameras as if they were being recorded and watched. The glass mug is used along with the whipped cream to portray another form of love. While the French language resembles romance, a mug with whipped cream represents a family love along with the feeling of warmth. Lastly, I poured colored corn syrup onto the papers appearing to spill out of the mug to show the learning process. When children are first learning colors, they learn the primary colors: red, yellow, and blue. So I chose to dye the corn syrup those three colors to bring out the essence of learning.

I’ve recently learned how to edit the exposure and concentration within photos as well as the hues and saturation, which is what I used to enhance my image. My first step from opening up Photoshop was to edit my photo in Raw. I chose to crop my image immediately to remove all of the unwanted and negative space of the original photo before fine tuning the coloring. I then raised the image temperature to remove a cold look that was originally in my dark and blue raw image. After that, I bumped up my exposure by+0.4 to lighten all parts of my photo very slightly. Then, I enhanced my whites by +25 to make the paper and whipped cream pop. Also, I lowered my blacks by -10 to make a more shadowed appearance with my cameras in the background. I then increased my saturation by +8 and my vibrance by +10 to make the colored corn syrup much brighter and colorful than it originally turned out, to portray the brightness of what a child learns to be the primary colors. Lastly, I added a black vignette to my photo by -30 to darken my border and make the center of my photo stand out and have a blended border surrounding it.
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