The objective of this project was to come up with creative concept driven ideas and then use Photoshop to turn those ideas into a “reality”. Through using everyday objects in unconventional ways, I learned how to maintain meaning while creating a way for my viewer to see the object in a new way. I created 7 different images using different creative strategies for each. These strategies are isolation, juxtaposition, combination, metaphor, change of environment, shape similarity, and material change.

My object was a candlestick. When beginning this project, I thought first of the many different objects that are similar in shape to a candlestick and tried to draw connections between them. I started sketching all the ideas that I could think of. I wrote a word list that I thought was representative of a candle and what a candle is typically used for. Next I googled what a candle represented and got a huge list of words. I added some of them to the list I had already created, and I then sketched some more ideas.

After sketching, I looked again at the 7 strategies that I needed to use and I chose my favorites for each category. The next step was taking pictures of my candle. I wanted to have pictures of the candle as it was, as well as on fire and mostly melted so I bought a few more candlesticks and came home and took a lot of pictures. I got pictures of the plain candlestick first and then I lit one of the candlesticks on fire and took pictures of it burning. I blew it out a few times and took pictures of the candlestick with just the smoke above it. It was taking a while for the candlestick to melt significantly so I lit another candlestick on fire and held the flame up to the first candlestick as well so that both flames were melting it instead of just one. Once I got all the pictures that I needed, I started looking online for images that I could use to create my ideas.

I used the Pixabay website to find all of the images I needed and then I jumped into Photoshop and got to work. I continued to refine each of the images until I was happy with the results. In the end, I created 10 images and then narrowed it down to my top 7 favorites. Finally I printed and cut them down to size for my presentation.