NA: A Junior Conceptual Transport Project by Mateo Kaiser (2017)

For my object, I chose a scooter because I liked the idea of trying to photograph something so simple in an interesting way. I placed the scooter onto a rail used for doing tricks. I balanced the scooter on the rail in the hopes of making it look like the scooter had been frozen in motion. There were a lot of gray colors were I was shooting, something that I tried to keep in the photo. The only prominent sources of color come from the rail and the center of the wheel. I tried to bring out this effect as much as possible by making sure that the frame had mostly gray objects in it, and no bright distracting objects. I did this because the scooter had a cold, almost industrial feel that I wanted to bring out.

While photoshopping this image I considered making everything but the center of the wheel black and white. After creating a mask around the center of the wheel and inverting it I applied a black and white layer, but I wasn't satisfied with how it looked. There were enough grays and blacks in the image already to make me think that the photo didn't need to be in black and white. Instead, I created a mask around the center of the wheel and then applied a saturation layer to the selection. I made small changes to the saturation of the center bolt to bring out its color a bit more. I had initially somewhat struggled with masking, saving layers, and inverting masks but while editing this photo I practiced this important basic tool.