Ok, so I’ve been holding back on my efforts as a photo manipulator. The last few edits I wrote about needed little effort from me, since I didn’t need to add much in the first place. But THIS (Not the first image, the second and third) THIS is the result of me putting my soul and effort. It took me over 3 hours to make, and it was mostly due to me playing around with the lighting of the harp and the twins (me and me, lol) to try and match it as close to the original image of snowy mountains during a sunset as possible. For this post I thought it would be great to remake an old edit I made around 2 years ago, considering my fro grew since then, my style has slightly evolved, and I learned more about manipulating photos using my phone. As I mentioned before, fire in my ideology can represent one’s confidence. Water in my eyes represents beauty and transparency, also known as truth. I went with transparency because it’s more literal to the element itself, and because water can be a beautiful sight when the circumstances are right. But anyway, the inspiration behind the Harp Twins, aside from my interpretation of fire and water, comes from my fascination with twins. I’ve always wanted to be a twin, or have twin daughters or sons. And knowing that I can’t be a twin (for obvious reasons), I decided to get creative, strike two poses, and use both photos in one art piece. The reason I use a harp in this edit is because I played this game called Brave Frontier. And there was this character called Archangel Aurelia. Her divine appearance drew me to use her in battle almost every time. And her harp drew me to her even more. She starts off as just Aurelia, evolving into Elegant Aurelia (her harp is exactly what’s in the photos in Elegant form, except it’s gold), then Statuesque Aurelia, and finally Archangel Aurelia. I was so inspired by her design and the fact that she really floats with that giant harp in her hands that I had to portray myself doing the same. I also love futuristic looking weapons, instruments and almost anything, so the harp’s design gave me so much life. Because I wanted to add my own style to the harp, I changed it’s hue using picsart after erasing Aurelia off the harp. I recently learned that when using picsart on a transparent image, it’ll stay transparent, no matter what edits you make to it. This had me excited because I didn’t have to erase the black background that appears when using pixlr. The difference can be seen in the harp in the first image, as it has a few dark dots where it’s strings are, and the harp in the second and third image, where the strings have no dark spots and the sparkles that it originally had can be seen clearer. Aside from Aurelia, I’ve always liked the sound of harps and plan to learn how to play it in the future for fun, and for photos (of course!). Nothing’s better than having an actual harp with your touch of elements or hue changes to it! The elements in all three photos were also inspired by the idea of having a harp or a musical instrument as a weapon. When the twins play their harp (which I hued blue and orange to match their elements), water and fire energy forms and can be launched like an arrow that’s launched from a bow. Basically, strumming the harp would launch flames and torrents of water. I didn’t add the launched effects to the photo because there’s already a lot going on in the background, so I also learned that sometimes, less is more. The reason these edits took so long to make is because I was spending time re-positioning both transparent photos of me to be closer or farther, as well as tilted a certain way so that when I add the harp it’ll be positioned the right way to make it look like both of me are playing the harp. Then I figured out that the best way to make the photos of me look closest to the lighting of the image I put myself in was to upload the same background again and positioning it to almost match the background, and then erasing everything off except the harp area and the photos of me. Fading the second image by choosing a blending filter (as well ass lowering it’s opacity) makes it much closer to the right lighting. The concept behind the image as a whole stems from the ideology that being confident brings out the beauty in someone, and vice-versa. I thought “what better way to represent that ideology by making two of myself and show us working together as a team?”.
Credit to: http://www.alynspiller.com For the second photo’s background image.
Also to Neil Omacharan, who took my photos.
All other backgrounds were found via google search.
Obscura 