Both of my midterm Photoshop images were inspired by a music video for the song “Gone with the Sin”, written and performed by my favorite band H.I.M. The video features the band’s lead singer, Ville Valo, walking through a cemetery that has been edited with neon colors. I was also inspired by a beautiful old cemetery I sometimes visit when I go home. Over spring break, I took photographs in this cemetery while thinking of the “Gone with the Sin” video. If you go on Youtube and search this video, you can clearly see its correlation to my midterm images.
My first image, a mausoleum with a rainbow, was partially a tribute to St. Patrick’s Day as well as the music video. I brainstormed images that typically put me in the Irish spirit: rainbows, pot of gold, leprechaun, four leaf clovers, and lots of greenery. As I looked through my photographs from the cemetery, this shot of the mausoleum caught my attention. I started changing the color effects in Photoshop, turning dull colors into vibrant, neon greens, blues, and purples. I probably spent a total of 2 hours doing this until I was satisfied with the total picture. Then, I searched an image of a rainbow on Google and used the lasso tool to select it and paste it in front of the mausoleum. I had to use the eraser tool on low opacity to make the rainbow seem see-through.
My second image, a close-up of a headstone with a ghostly figure in the background, is a clear reference to the H.I.M. video. In fact, that ghostly figure is Ville Valo, the band’s lead singer. This image took me a long time to complete because I could not find an image of Valo that showed his whole body standing. I actually had to edit two photos together, an upper body and a lower body shot, to get the look I wanted. Then I inserted the image of the flowers into his hands to tie in Valo with the image of the headstone and the roses in front of it. Again with this photo, I spent a lot of time adjusting the colors to get the neon look I wanted.