Originally created on January 18, 2004, click for larger version
Retouch: April 19, 2009, click for larger versionSo I'm here looking over ALL my photos organized in folders on my external hard drive and came across this project I did for my high school history class. The assignment was to make an illustration/drawing of some sort of your parents' immigration story and naturally, I did mine on my mom.
I remember using my Nikon 2100 [yes, that's 2.1 MP] and photographed my mom at the park going up the stairs with my concept in mind. She was in a sense leaving her homeland represented by the Philippine flag, her basis of who she is, to go to America in which for sure it was going to be an uphill battle to try and work hard for me in order to get a better life.
With the help of Photoshop, I remember outlining my mom out of the original picture and using a photo of the beach I took previously as the new sky. The stairs I pretty much cut and pasted several times along with the railings [and mirrored it] to make a long cliff-like stairway to the America.
For kicks, I decided to redo the image with the knowledge I have of today. First off, I removed the text layover since it took away from the image [although it was required I believe to put that information]. I removed my mom's "ghosted" image since it reminded me too much of another thing if you know what I mean.. and instead focused on what the image is portraying. To make it more dramatic [and more realistic], I dodged the areas to shape the image as if the sun was really shining behind the American flag and casted a heavy shadow below.
Maybe I'll continue with these "redos" since I do have several projects utilizing Photoshop.
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