Digital Surrealism-Bullying

The faces have been blocked out for privacy reasons.

Before creating my final image I had to do a lot of brainstorming and sketching.  First we were given the theme of any social issue. Although there are many social issues, I had to choose one topic. After a lot of brainstorming and ideas, I picked the transition into high school. I realized there are many fears for a student going from middle school to high school. There was one fear that stuck out the most to me though, and it was bullying. I thought this topic was a lot more specific. After gathering my ideas, I started working on sketches of the individual photographs I was planning on taking.  This way I had a clear vision of what I was going to create before it was made.

My final topic was bullying. I have shown this by using a high school hallway with two girls placed in it. There is an extremely small girl as well as a tall girl to give it a surreal affect. The larger girl symbolizes the bully and the smaller girl represents the victim. I chose to make the girl small because in the victim’s point of view, they feel smaller and helpless compared to the bully. The bully seems a lot larger and stronger in comparison.  The large girl is stomping on the small girl to show power. There is no one but the bully and victim in the scene because in this state you feel like there is no ne there to support you, therefore you are all alone. I wanted the entire picture quite dull for a gloomy feel. I also added in the black border fading in because it represents another of the victim’s feelings. The feeling of getting caved in on.

To create this image I used Photoshop CS4. First I made a new 8x10inch document. I placed the hallway photo as the background. Then I used both the other pictures on different layers. Renaming the multiple layers made the process a lot easier and kept me organized. I used the Magic Wand Tool, Quick Selection Tool, Lasso Tool, Polygonal Lasso Tool and Magnetic lasso tool to take away the background. It was not too difficult because I had shot my photos in front of the cove. After the backgrounds where gone, I placed my pictures where I thought they looked best. To make the people look more “in place” I used the soft round 26 pixel brush in black to create the outline of the bodies and changed the opacity so it was lower than 20%. I also changed the Brightness/Contrast to make it darker. I also toned down the colours but did not grayscale the entire image.

I am satisfied with my final image, because it is more than I pictured it looking like from the beginning. It is similar to my sketches. I also feel I accomplished my social issue because it came across clearly. Although the message is easy to understand and straight forward, in the future I would like to add more meaning within it. It was not my first time using Photoshop but I enjoyed this project fully.