Students take on pop art assignment
Meagen Tajalle, Staff Reporter
Originally published March 29, 2015
Senior Madison Asher photographed by senior Rachel Cole. Asher is pictured with her make-up well done, and Cole edited the photo to manipulate the color of her eyeshadow and lipstick, making them brighter, as well as the yellow background to contrast with her dark hair and clothing.
Students in the Advanced Placement Photography class recently completed a pop art assignment — something most had never done before. The photographers first completed a Photoshop tutorial on the process, then edited their own photos for the assignment.
“We had to have five pictures, one had to be a friend, one had to be you, one had to be an animal, and two had to be objects,” senior Rachel Cole said.
For the editing process, photographers changed the background of the photo and certain features of their subject to be more vibrant, eye catching colors. These techniques come from the pop art movement, which began in the 1950s. At a time when comic books were extremely popular and advertising had become ubiquitous, it made sense for photographers to draw on popular culture for inspiration.
The student photographers were assigned to edit five photos and could choose between shooting new pictures or using ones from previous assignments. Cole shot pictures of senior Madison Asher, and had a clear vision from the beginning. “Before I photoshopped anything I had a picture of her with bright, kind of retro colored make up, like pop art is, and throughout the photo-shoot the make up got gradually worse,” Cole said.
All of Cole’s photos for the assignment were of Asher; some simple, some more complex. “For one of them I did the simple pop art where I made the background red and ‘comic booky.’ For another one it was only a quarter of her face after the make-up was messed up. In another one I broke her face up into four different photos and edited them differently and put them together in a collage so her face didn’t match up,” Cole said.
Senior Ella Tanaka opted to use photos she’d already taken and then designed in Photoshop. “I just wanted to give a retro feel to the picture. I took it of my friend, and I edited it so she had blue make-up on her eyes and red lips and then I just gave a whole bunch of colors to the background and kept her face the same,” she said.
Junior Isabelle Keller’s collage for the assignment. She photographed her sister.
Senior Madison Asher photographed by senior Rachel Cole. Cole photographed Asher specifically for the pop art assignment, and had her start the photo shoot with her make-up well done and gradually had her smear it more and more.
Senior Ella Tanaka photographed her friend Bella Immel for a previous assignment and then chose to edit the photo differently for the pop art assignment. She chose it because the look already seemed retro.
Senior Madison Asher photographed by senior Rachel Cole. This photo was for the poster portion of the assignment and juxtaposes Asher’s face at the beginning of the shoot with her make-up well done, and her face at the end of the shoot with her eye make-up and lipstick smeared across her face.
Senior Madison Asher photographed by senior Rachel Cole. Asher smeared her make-up as the photoshoot progressed, and Cole edited the photo to manipulate the color of her lips and the background and cropped it to only feature a quarter of the original image.
Senior Madison Asher photographed by senior Rachel Cole before Asher’s make-up was smeared. Cole edited the same photo sixteen times so that Asher’s face looks the same in each and the color of the background differs.
