The Montgomery Interpretive Center
I have chosen to do my project at the Montgomery Interpretive Center. The Montgomery Interpretive Center is one of three memorials for the Selma to Montgomery March and is located just off the Alabama State University campus.
I chose to do my project on the Montgomery Interpretive Center because as a native of Montgomery, the history of civil rights has been a huge part of my upbringing. This center is a reminder of the past disenfranchisement that minorities have faced at the ballot and the fight that continues against voter suppression. I have been offered an internship at the center for the summer, and I am very excited to have been able to do my project on it.
For my creative photo, I wanted to create something very different and artistic. I explored the use of both PicsArt and VSCO. I liked the PicArts app because it had a lot of crazy and fun filters that featured a lot of colors and designs. Some of them could completely change the image while others did try to retain its integrity. I did think that the app could have been a bit more customizable; some of the filters only worked under certain conditions and it didn’t give much opportunity to fit them to other images. VSCO was much more subtle. I didn’t think many of the filters were able to deliver what I was looking for in designing this image, but I did like the layout much more. I think that for more natural photos, it is the ideal app. The iPhone editing tools that come complimentary with the phone are nice as well, but they need a lot of adjustments and tweaks. The preset filters are good in a pinch but aren’t the best if you're looking for an extremely different look. I do think that some of the tools are really useful in adding finishing touches to your photos
The first step to creating this photo was applying the pop art effect, DTN5 in PicArts. After applying the filter I erased the effect from the emblem, revealing the bright orange color. I saved the image and moved it to the VSCO app where I changed the exposure to -2.0. I moved the contrast up to +2.9 and made the tone shadows +6.9. The tone highlight I moved +8.7. I played around with the skin tone setting and brought it to +4.1 to make the photo a little more orange. I sharpened the image a lot, moving the slider to +9.7, and set the fader at +5.4. I set the grain to +6.5, and the vignette to +4.5. I then moved the photo back to the regular iPhone editor and adjusted the black point to define the building’s details a bit more.
