Magdalen Pickering – Studio in a School

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