This week’s challenge was to take an artefact and modify it by applying the techniques covered during the week in order to remediate it into another form of the artefact. My initial thoughts were that this would definitely mean stepping outside my comfort zone. The biggest challenge being where on earth to start!
As my peers started to post the results of their work, the pressure started to mount. The bar was being set very high and quite rightly so given the quality of the work they were producing. It was also fascinating and very refreshing to see so much diversity in their work and gave an interesting glimpse of each individual’s primary communication mode.
But I was stuck!
I found myself once more staring at a scary blank page not knowing where to begin. I was clearly overthinking the problem rather than just getting on with it and finding all manner of excuses and other things to do to avoid starting. In short, I wasn’t stuck, I was procrastinating.
Procrastination is the most common manifestation of Resistance** because it is the easiest to rationalise. We don’t tell ourselves “I’m never going to write my symphony.” Instead we say “I am going to write my symphony; I’m just going to start tomorrow.”
Aside… Pressfield personifies the inability to start (and complete) creative work as Resistance in order to present strategies to overcome it.
Once I’d recognised and admitted it, starting was easy.
For this challenge I chose an image of a lone surfer I’d made in 2009. It was a serendipitious image — I hadn’t set out to make it; the elements just came together at the time and I was lucky enough to capture this single frame.
I decided to try the SCAMPER technique simply because I’d never come across it before. The remainder of this post will be a walk-through of the technique and my thought process. I will be writing this post as I work through the process and as right now I have no idea what the output will be.
The base image has had very little work done to it and is pretty much as captured apart from crunching the shadows and a slight contrast tweak. In that respect it is a very clean image so offers a good starting point.
The SCAMPER Technique…
Substitute
My immediate thoughts here were to switch out the sun for the moon and change the colour palette from orange to blue to represent a twilight moonrise rather than an evening sunset.
Combine
I liked where the new image was going but it needed weight on the left of the frame for balance. In my fashion portfolio I had a beauty portrait of a model I worked with several years ago, Kamila. The image has very Romanesque styling and I felt could add it as a semitransparent overlay to represent a sea deity.
Adapt
The moon and the portrait needed work. As you can see from the previous mage, they don’t (yet) belong in the frame. Adapting each of these new components to embed them in the image gave the following result.
Modify
The aspect ratio wasn’t working for me now. The surfer was being overpowered by the girl’s eyes. To modify the image I played around with different crops and settled on a panoramic format, placing the surfer on the bottom-right power point. I also removed the specular highlight on the water and replaced it with something more representative of diffused moonlight.
Put to another use
For this stage I tried experimenting with different texture and object overlays but nothing looked right or worked within the context of the image frame. After about 30 minutes of playing around with different ideas I felt I was forcing this stage — making changes for the sake of making changes.
Eliminate
If I’m honest, the texture overlay didn’t really work and was the obvious candidate to be removed in the elimination round.
Rearrange
Looking at the image above, the deity still wasn’t working for me. I cheated here and rather than rearrange I chose to replace as the final ‘R’ and use another image of Kamila from the same set.
Conclusion
Despite all my initial procrastination and fear of attempting this challenge I have to say I really enjoyed it. The final image isn’t perfect — compositing isn’t one of my strengths and the moonlight needs some work. I usually try to pre-visualise my images but on this occasion felt that wasn’t really in the spirit of the challenge and quite possibly introduce unnecessary constraints. It felt uncomfortable in the beginning but not knowing the result in advance was both refreshing and enlightening.
List of Images
Figure 1. THORN, 2009 Starting image: Whitsand Bay, Cornwall
Figure 2. THORN, 2020 Substitute Moon for Sun
Figure 3. THORN, 2020 Substitute Colour Palette
Figure 4. THORN, 2020 Combine image of Kamila to represent deity of the sea
Figure 5. THORN, 2020 Adapting the components to fit in the overall image
Figure 6. THORN, 2020 Modified crop and removed specular highlight
Figure 7. THORN, 2020 Texture overlay
Figure 8. THORN, 2020 Elimination of the texture
Figure 9. THORN, 2020 Challenge Final
References
Full-moon image by Mike Petrucci on Unsplash
Wave image by Jeremy Bishop on Unsplash
