Connecting Lines: A Junior Conceptual Transport Project by Hasmik Galstyan (2017)

The object that I used is my sister’s bicycle. I would have used my own, but it was being repaired at the time, so I used a different one instead. I was taking photos in my patio to make the bicycle appear like an everyday object, but with more emphasis than someone might normally expect. As I was starting to take different angles of the wheels, I decided to lay down and take a photo from the ground to make the wheel appear bigger in more important. As I took the photo, it was then that I realized how important lighting was. During the time of the photo, it was sunset, and the light that cascaded down gave off a beautiful glow behind the tire that it wouldn’t have had if it was done during the afternoon or later in the evening. The idea that I got from it is that the glowing light behind the wheel makes it look more angelic. More important rather than just a plain old bike tire. And that was the goal, to show how the invention of the wheel was important for transportation. With the way the focus was on the lines of the wheel all coming together at the center symbolized all these present-day machines and how they all come from their same ancestor, the wheel.

The most important rule when editing a photo in Adobe Photoshop is to remember to not make it extreme. In other words, you have to make the viewer believe that you took the photo straight from the camera. That is why it is very important to be careful with the settings and not make one too high or too low. Starting with the spot healing tool, I used it to clean up any bothersome marks on the white bike itself, such as small dirt spots. However, for the most part, I was editing the exposure and lighting behind the tire, wanting to make it bright enough, but not too bright that it took away the focus. After playing around with the settings, I found the right exposure effect to make the lighting perfect.