Magdalen Pickering – Studio in a School

Magdalen Pickering
The Suspense of the Sunset
Digital Photo Collage

What inspired me to create these images was the dancer’s motions and how it seemed as though they would suspend themselves in movement. In these pieces, I wanted to help the viewer see a still photo but also feel the suspense of motion as well. I made the setting the moment of a sunset as I feel that the sunset is a perfect example of suspense, belonging in a small fraction of time between night and day. To achieve this, I combined found images with my own to create the final images.

To create these images, I took the main colors of individual parts of the image and put them on the layer covering it, creating what looked like a silhouette. I then outlined a silhouette on a different layer of the dancer. I wanted to recreate the magical mood of a sunset by creating “light bubbles”. I added the bubbles to both the foreground and background, behind and in front of the dancers. I also mapped out the movements of the dancers by creating smaller bubbles where they might have moved before the still image. I wanted to present them as a rising motion, helping the viewer foresee an inevitable falling motion.

While creating these pieces, I had trouble visualizing an idea and deciding what I wanted to do. This was probably due to my inexperience with Photoshop. I knew the basics by the time but I didn’t know what to do with all of the information I was given, or if I even should use every bit of it. In the end I was more comfortable with Photoshop, mixing my own experience with it and was able to have more fun with it than I was before.
-Magdalen Pickering