Tag Archives: Contrast

Self Portrait

This is the 3 original photos that I took:

 

 

And this is the what I did to them:

What I basically did is:

 

 

The photo that I am sitting is the top layer, then the black and white one, then the pinkish one.

I first adjust the brightness/contrast and the level of the three photos due to the fact that my camera chooses different amount of exposure for each photo. I then turn the color of the photo that I am pretending to smoke to a black and white one, and change the hue and saturation of the photo that I was in my halloween costume (which I am a dinosaur) in to an extreme pinkish color. After that, I make the black and white one into an oil painting texture, and liquified the pinkish photo. By finishing all of these steps, I carefully erased the first layer; therefore, I can have the other two pictures appear in the whole frame. I also mosaic the girl that is sitting behind me.

Weekly Visual Review-Webpage

In my opinion, a good website must have a user friendly design. For example, easy layouts for user to understand the structure of the page, clean colors that are just easy enough for people to read what the text is saying.

The website I choose is a personal website for a photographer named Andi Mayr. The reason why I choose his website is because the colors that Andi choose is clean and the layout is really simple and straightforward.

On the top of the starting page, there is Andi’s name and his job title; in the middle, it has four rectangular photos that are projects of the photographer that represents categories of human, landscape, sports, and random; at the bottom, there are other categories that Andi provided to viewers (and the mountain icon is a link to the main page). I think Andi puts the four pictures in the middle because they are the four most viewed categories that people view on his webpage. I think Andi makes these categories as four huge pictures because he wants these to stand out from everything else that makes viewers easy to select since it is the four most viewed categories. In addition, when your mouse stops at one of the pictures, the picture will fade and become whitish, then underlined and capitalized words will come out. This makes viewers more easy to select things that they want to view at. In the middle of the four pictures, there is a diamond that I guess is his logo. Overall, the main page is straightforward of its ideas and it gives us a simple and clean feeling.

Then when I choose one of the category pictures, it will lead me to its gallery. When its loading, Andi’s logo will pop up and continue flashing until the page is done loading. I think this is really cool because on one hand it is indicating the age is loading, and on the other hand, by making the logo as a loading icon will make viewers remember his logo. After the page is loaded to the gallery section, the page then turns into a page that has other category links at the top, in the middle there is an individual picture, and the bottom remains the same (except they added a button to the top). In order to see other pictures, you need to scroll down, but it always lets one picture to show at the time (that it has a pull back effect). I think the point of Andi doing this, to remain the page as clean and simple as possible for the views to review his projects.

In his films section, which is usually shoots commercials, combines both of his front page and photo gallery concept. The layout is the same as the photo gallery, but when we leave our mouse on the film snapshot, the photos will fade and the background will turn into white with black words on them. The text contains the name of the film, the producer, the director, and the actors.

For color choices, Andi did a good job. The basic colors of his webpage is black and white except one place that he has a red heart to show acknowledgments of Lena & Flo for producing his webpage with him. Black and white is one of the most classic colors to show high contrast and simple. Personally, I like to use this color a lot because by using this color it gives me a feeling that the whole work is simple.

Colors and layout are two really important elements in website design. The concept of web design is to be simple and straightforward. Although you can have complicated combinations and fancy colors, it is easier for a viewer to understand the content in the webpage if you have a clean layout and contrasted simple colors (or not colors that are hard to read). So I think Andi did a good job of designing hisj personal webpage with Lena & Flo.

Andi Mayr’s Webpage

Sequence Title Review – Kiss Kiss Bang Bang

The film sequence title I choose is from a 2005 spy and dark comedy movie called Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. Although the movie is acted by real people, the sequence title is animated. This title sequence outstand itself from hundreds of others that are listed online by having a great color choice (great contrast too), cool negative spacing, themes (having guns and kisses in the whole clip), movements with the music etc.

First of all, I really like the choice of color, which the filmmaker uses mainly black, white, and orange, and only using yellow once. They use black and white because these two colors are the classic colors for negative space, and they movie uses orange (that looks kind of red too) for kisses and blood. I am not sure why they used yellow in one scene that all the people are in a room socializing. But I am guessing that they use yellow because this color can represent rich people (because yellow can represent gold and money). In addition, there is a scene which has plants growing that acts as a good color transition: it is between the scene that a hand is holding a gun with women poster in the background and a mansion that is full with people. The background color changed from orange to almost black, and the leaves changed from white to orange.

The title sequence also did a good job of representing themes in the movie. Since the movie is a spy-based movie, there are some scenes that are representing the spy theme. In the beginning of the sequence title, there is a man going over a fence that thought nobody saw him but a few seconds later an eye appears and sees him, which acts like spying him. In the middle part, where everybody is partying in a house, a hand pushes a woman down the balcony, which acts like a spy that wants to assassin the woman. Since this is also a crime movie, there are lots of parts that we can see guns and bullets. There is one scene that one of the names is hit by a bullet. Despite the guns that appear in the movie that can represent crime and violet, there are parts that have blood dripping on the scene. For example, when we see Kiss Kiss Bang Bang appear on the screen, there is a bullet shot on the last Bang and blood dripping down.

I also like the way that the clip uses negative space. The clip is filled with negative space, but there are two scenes that I really like. In the scene that the woman is falling from the balcony, and passing the moon, the film did an awesome job of having negative space transition when she is away from the moon and she is passing the moon. There other one is when there are three men holding guns on their hands, and the negative space color changed when there is music beats.

The camera moves in the clip is pretty simple: it is either panning or pedestaling. But the movements with the music are really cool. For instance, when the blood and kisses appear in the last few scenes they usually appear with a beat. In the scene that we can see highways, the names of people appear from the poles and disappear from the poles (see the photo). In addition, when there is a wind blow sound in one scene, the camera pans to the right very quickly.

Although I haven’t seen the movie yet, by watching the sequence title, it really makes me want to see it already. The cool effect that the clip did is a great way to start the movie. No wonder why this movie is on the top 5 list in one website I found.

Visual Review – Movie Poster

For my visual review of a movie poster, I choose a poster form The Dark Knight. I like this poster because the cold color that it uses, the Why So Serious sentence with a happy face drew with blood, and the blurry effect of the Joker.

When I first see this poster, the red Why So Serious sentence jumped out of the frame because the color contrast of the light blue and red is so strong. This is also a sentence that the main character, the Joker used a lot in the movie. He says this sentence when he is about to murder/ cut somebody but that person is crying or terrifying in the movie. When I am taking a closer look at the writing, it becomes really interesting. First of all it is all red, which I said in the beginning, it made a strong contrast from the background color. Second of all, we can see the blood dripping down which makes me think about this is actually blood written on the screen. Third of all, the letters are all capitalized, which makes the whole sentence important and outstanding. Fourth, the letters of serious, the question mark and the happy face is redder than other letters in the sentence, which makes the letters creepy; especially Joker’s smile, because it is the last and the reddest part of the sentence. Fifth, at the end, it has a smile, which is the classic Joker happy face that he has on his, and the happy face also matches the actual face of the Joker in the background. Since the Joker bent his body to the right, his face is actually between the question mark and the end of the curve, so it makes the happy face on the screen seems suitable on his face in the background. The poster also uses symmetric for the words at the bottom, and a sort of symmetric for the buildings in the background.

The blur of the Joker is also very interesting. The creator of the poster intentionally blurred almost every part of the Joker except of his hands. Joker’s face is blurred because the designer of the poster wants us to match the drawn happy face to Joker’s face. His hands is not blurred because we want to see that one of Joker’s hands has blood remaining, and the other is internationally pointing at us like saying “Why So Serious” to us, which seems more like advertising the movie to me because Joker is creating an interaction with the audience. The part under Joker’s hand is also blurry because we want to see the movie information clearly.

The color choice is also impressive. Besides the smile that the Joker draw and “Why So Serious” that he wrote, everything else is in blue either dark blue or light blue. The background is filled with plain light color, which is really good to outstand the dark blue jacket that Joker is wearing, and contrast the blood handwriting. The near white blue color also makes an effect that the city looks foggy and sketchy since the Joker is in the city. Because the blue color is usually used in horror movies; therefore, this color also gives a creepy and cold effect to the audience especially with the blood.

Overall. I think that the poster did a good job presenting the main character and the place that the movie is taking place. While also attracting the audience to see the movie because Joker is pointing at the audience when he is writing Why So Serious.

Visual Review – Rocky

This movie is an action movie about Rocky, a man who was really passionate about boxing, but was never trained professionally. Because he usually doesn’t get a lot of money from his fights, he was also active in a gang in order to survive and make money. During this time, which was also the 200th anniversary of America, the heavyweight champion Apollo Creed, was prepared for a fight but unfortunately his opponent was injured. So instead, he decided to pick a random person to fight with, and the person who won fifteen rounds will win one hundred and fifty thousand dollar prize. This lucky person is Rocky. When Rocky was announced to fight Apollo, Mickey, his manager, agreed to train him. With Mickey’s training, his own faith and encouragement from his girlfriend, Rocky survived the fifteenth round, and earned everyone’s applause, although he lost the match. In the movie, the filmmaker uses different shots and angles to convey his ideas to the audience. The beginning of the movie starts with a full frame of Jesus and then switch to the fighting scene with Rocky. The filmmaker chose this scene to convey sympathy for Rocky, as he isn’t making a living off of his passion. Next, the camera zooms in on Rocky’s reflection as he studies photo of his younger self. The focus then changes to Rocky’s face contrasts with how naïve he looked when he was young and how tired and frustrated he is now. When Tony Gazzo left him alone after paying him money, the frame was a zooms out from Rocky’s face to the view of the street he’s walking on. This is used to show Rocky solitude. When Rocky was using a fire hydrant to break open a locker, the filmmaker chooses to use low angle to shoot the frame to make Rocky look strong. In addition, when Rocky is in a fight, the focus is mostly on Rocky’s face to show his determination to win the fight. When Mickey is begging Rocky to let him be his manager, the camera focuses on Rocky throwing darts. The camera is shooting Rocky instead of Mickey to show that the audience as well as Rocky shouldn’t be paying attention to him. In the previous scene, when the camera is shooting Mickey begging to help Rocky, the video uses a middle close up shot of Mickey to demonstrate that they are now equals. After Mickey’s successful training, Rocky ran to the highest place in Philadelphia with his hand held up high to show his victory. This iconic shot uses a low angle to show Rocky’s strength and determination after all his hard work. The filmmakers chose multiple street scenes because it uses the street as lines that go across the whole scene, and uses unequal spacing for Rocky when he is walking on the street. Overall, I think this is a great film not only for the meaning behind it but also for the choices in camera angles and shots.

Original – Contrast


I discovered this photo after I finished taking a bunch of photos of my roommate with a mask on. In this photo, my roommate was taking off the mask that I gave him while the light was hitting on the mask and his face. I think this is a great picture about contrast because the dark background contrasts the mask and the face of him, which strongly made my roommate look serious/creepy .