Weekly Blog - 6-30-21: Portal to Another Universe

When thinking about how to approach this assignment, I wanted to show two very different environments between the main setting and the world on the other side of the portal. So I decided to go with a desert landscape with a portal leading into a beautiful, green landscape full of waterfalls and mountains. One challenge I had when looking for photos online to use was finding variety and appropriate image sizes under the fair use section on google image search. Overall, I really enjoyed this assignment and had fun adding multiple images to the scene and using curves, layer adjustments, and filters to make them blend together as much as I could.

This was my original image of the desert landscape that I chose for its stark, and seemingly desolate, dry atmosphere.

My next step was to find an image for my portal, so I tried to find an ornate, beautiful golden frame to be the border between both worlds.

One thing I found difficult during the entire process was to take images with different lighting and try to create shadows and highlights in areas that made them all seem to be coming from the same place. Otherwise, it would look very unnatural and stand out too much.

Then I added my waterfall landscape into the portal frame and created a lighting effect between the two to make it look like it was causing a glow around the frame as if the light was popping out of that world onto the desert one.

After this, I played around with different images that added more interest and context to the photos. I used a photo of two parrots flying out of the frame to connect the two worlds more, as well as adding clouds to the sky for more of a dramatic look and a cow skull on the ground to add more to the dry, wasteland feel of the desert.

I did find the cow skull image under fair use from google images but had to use my brush in photoshop to remove the "Stock" text covering it. I also added footprints into the sand, leading into the portal. This was one of the more difficult aspects, having to blend the shadows of the footsteps as well as the sand itself from the original photo to that of the beach that the footprints were one.

Final image -