SCALE & CONTEXT

Rashika Lungani

Mar 22, 20213 min read

Updated: Mar 25, 2021

STEP 1 - PRE WORK

I first worked out around 10 ideas, involving items like razor, sugar cubes, jewellery boxes and so on.

Upon submission, the idea that was selected, was of a razor as a street light.

STEP 2 - PREPARING PHOTOGRAPH

I clicked pictures of my razor using a thread and double sided tape.

Initially I had planned to use the razor sideways. I wanted to create a straight road with lamps on both sides.

However this idea of using a regular urban road with cars and lamps didn’t appeal to me as much as it did when I first through of it. This encouraged me to look at my idea from a different perspective and figure out some new possibilities.

While analysing my razor I noticed how the front of a razor resembles a vintage street lamp. This sounded much more appealing to me and I decided to carry it forwards.

REVISED IDEA

STEP 3- SELECTING A MOOD/LOOK

While watching “the haunting of the hill house” during the weekend, I came across a street lamp quite similar to the one I was trying to create. This inspired me to create a vintage town with some mystery. I decided to follow the same blue colour scheme that was used in the show.

COLOUR SCHEME

based on this I developed a distinct colour scheme.

STEP 4- MANIPULATING FORM & SURFACE

I wanted to give my lamps the look of metal painted with black oil paint, quite similar to a vintage lamp.Unfortunately I wasn’t able to find any stock free images of this texture.

However my balcony railing made of iron came to my rescue. Though this was not exactly what I wanted, I was able to create a satisfactory end result using this.

I used the warp and mask tool to transform the surface finish of my razor. I worked on my razor and light in a separate file as I needed to add multiple versions of them in my final outcome.

Subsequently I used images of vintage lamps and added them to my razor poles. I used the ellipse tools and the Gaussian blur to add the glow. This was similar to what I did during the transition of time assignment.

Final Outcome

STEP 5 - CREATING A BACKGROUND

ATTEMPT 1 (REJECTED)

The first image that I wanted to use was that of a road passing through a bridge/tunnel. I had planned to add a railway track along the road and create a rail track scene. However after working on this for 2-3 days I was not able to achieve what I wanted.

The curve of the image provided a challenge as I was unable to edit the lamps located at the very back. The entire scene looked messy and unfinished. I was also not happy with the way the yellow light clashed with the background.

ATTEMPT 2 (FINAL APPROACH)

I used the image of a bustling town. This slightly resembled the vintage town vibes that I was going for. I decided to change my game plan a bit by going for a greyish landscape instead of blue and add white lights instead of yellow. I used the clone stamp tool to erase the pre-existing lamps and people out of the scene. This was followed by the addition of curves to reduce the expose, colour balance to add a hint of blue and finally black and white filter.

COLOUR SCHEME

though not very different from the initial colour scheme this time I tried to incorporate darker colours.

STEP 6 - COMPOSING

I added lamps to the background. I decided to use white lights instead of yellow to match my grey landscape more. I also added a human figure walking with a cane and other elements like a vintage railway clock. With the help of a few YouTube tutorials I was able to learn some new tricks- such as adding fog using the render tool. This helped me bring my image to life and add a sense of mystery to it. All this was completed with the addition of a bright moon, which was a foam ball that I had ripped apart. The addition of text using the path tool - saying shhhhh and don’t be silent along with the inverted clock emphasised on the mysterious aspect of the composition.