My other main idea for the Constructed Images was to photograph a cup and saucer, and photoshop different elements inside the cup to create a collage/photomontage. My first idea was to photoshop one of my images of the stars and the night sky into the cup, so that it looked like the stars were filling it up. I had seen similar ideas on Pinterest that inspired this idea, but I wanted to personalise the items that I imposed into the cup. Another possible idea was to photoshop some of the landmarks and skyscrapers from my trip to New York into the cup, to appear like there was a city within the cup. Therefore I began photographing in my home studio again, with two different coloured sets of cup and saucers to see which was most effective. I shot them from various angles so that I had a wide choice of which images to impose into which cup; I also varied the lighting to find an effective lighting setup and found an appropriate exposure, which needed to change to the complete opposite once I swapped from the bright, white cup and background to the darker, silver cup with black background. Here are the images from the shoot:

 

The Editing Process

Next, I was tasked with editing the images on Photoshop to add in the elements that would produce the collage and turn the images into a Constructed Image. I imposed the stars into the cup by first drawing out an ellipse shape the fill the top of the cup, then placing another layer with the photo of the stars and creating a clipping mask to clip the photo into the correct circle shape. I then added another layer where I used “select and mask” to add a picture I had taken of the moon into the image, to add to the night sky element and add more layers to the collage. I chose the silver cup and black background because I felt this colour scheme was fitting with the dark night sky and bright stars.

I was so happy with this first image that I wanted to see what the New York teacup would look like, too. I used the “select and mask” method again to individually cut out the Statue of Liberty, Flatiron building and World Trade Centre and some surrounding buildings, smoothed the outline so that it looked more natural, and used the ruler guides to help me place them level with the top of the cup. The image has an almost surreal and pop art kind of vibe to it, which I think is really interesting and appropriate for a collage. Here are the final edited images: