v. fell (f l), fall·en (fô l n), fall·ing, falls

Visual Literacy; Week 2 Word

Fall was a pretty interesting word for me as I found a lot of paths to explore the word and meanings behind it.Taken in a literal sense it is a verb; to descend in free fall under the influence of gravity. However, it can also be used in non literal contexts.

To fall for Temptation;;;

One of the ideas I played with was the idea of falling for temptation. It is human nature to give in to our own will and eat that last tempting biscuit. Expanding from this, I brainstormed some of the most common things to tempt people.

 Food;;

A lot of us can hold our hands up and admit to being guilty of giving in to our sweet tooth - especially during the festive season.

(All credit for this photo goes to www.orcado.com, were I found this image.)

 Lust;;

At the very base of things, underneath our MAC make up and Superdry tshirts is our primal animal self - our natural feelings of desire and lust can be hard to overcome at times and such it was labelled one of the seven deadly sins.

(All credit to photo goes to Wisdom Quarterly Blogspot, were I found this image.)

 Materialism;;

It's common knowledge that as a general rule of thumb, females love to shop. Fashion is a massive part of our culture now with idols such as Lady Gaga and Beyonce pretty much dictating what styles are "in" for the season. With many women admitting to being shopaholics it can certainly said that innocent window-shopping can be, at times, too tempting to remain cost free.

(All credit for the photo goes to www.pinkandgrey.ca, were I found this image.)

Using the idea of the relationship between consumers and materialistic goods I decided to play around in photoshop with different atmoshpheres and effect. I photographed one of my bright pink high heels to start with, importing it in to photoshop to start the work.

The first image I came up with was a girly, stylised version. I used lighting effects on the shoe itself, as well as adjusting the levels to create a good colour range for editing. The use of the facet effect on plain polkadots resulted in a nice dual-colour effect, and accompanied with a pale central gradient made for an appealing background. The finishing effect, I found, is the sparkles I have distributed sparingly around the image of the high heel to make it seem more "glitzy" and desirable.

The second image I ended up with was a lot darker and more orientated around the idea of seven deadly sins and their taboo. The background was started off with rendering clouds as this makes a very solid base for working with. I messed around with the saturation and colour levels alot to get the dark feeling right before applying a plastic wrap effect. These combined, as well as a few miscellaneous adjustments gave a background that is very alike to blood.

To fall in love;;

All credit for this image goes to Marc Webb (Director of 500 Days of Summer)

Recently I watched '500 Days of Summer'. I love the way it portrays the process of falling in love as something more delicate than boy-meets-girl. The whole film is filmed in soft brown tones and the characters are developed to be quirky reflections of our own relationship experiences.
Everything the characters are feeling is demonstrated through their quick stealing glances, the close ups on Summer's smile, the evasive body language. It's a fantastic example of how emotions and tension can be displayed on the human body.

Falling snow;;

As the winter set in in Dundee we were subject to a lot (by my standards anyway) of snow. I remember distinctly looking up at the sky during a night out to watch the snow fall past the moonlight. This moment of inspiration was luckily capture with my camera;

How pretty!

Expanding from this, I decided to create my own image of snow falling in photoshop in order to control the atmosphere.

Click for full screen version.

The main purpose of this image is to capture the sight I saw when I looked up during the first snowstorm of Dundee. I had great fun creating this image. I started off with a base layer of rendered clouds to achieve an overcast feel, adjusting the layers to darken shadows accordingly. The edges of large clouds were created in a similar method to creating lightning on photoshop; a black to white gradient with difference clouds on top, and then colour levels and contrast put up until only a thin jagged strip of grey remains. The snow was created with scattering on the default photoshop brushes and then "pinched" to give it a swirling, spherical effect. A 1-pixel brush was used to create wisps of hair to give the impression of looking up and whipping winds.

To fall as a city;

I wasn't very happy with the way the materialism/temptation theme panned out so I decided to try to explore the word "fall from a very different view point. War and broken governments lead to the fall of cities and nations, as can be seen in any account of world history. Therefore, I decided to play around on photoshop exploring different ways to visualise falling cities.

This image was a pretty simple mock-up. It depics a skyscraper (a very typical icon of modern day cities) being shattered in to many pieces. To achieve the shards, I used the polygonal lasso tool in photoshop to seperate pieces of the skyscraper image. The original idea was to have the shards slowly transform in to fighter jets to keep with the warfare idea.

However, I then changed my idea to something else...

And so I present, my final piece!