Reflection

Planning

I would like to create an image to be a ingame snapshot of a prerelease version of a fictional video game using augmented reality. Thus, I will go for a futuristic heads up display seen in sci fi genre movies (ex. Iron Man). I will be adding holographic effects and try to make all overlay objects as sci fi as possible. I then include labels similar to that of a stereotypical advertisement that's trying to not give too much away (i.e eye candy with a lot of hints to new features).

Editing

While editing, most of it was free style and just using tools that would permit the image to follow a consistent theme of high tech. I wanted to give the feeling of wearing a heads up display that showed what a drone was seeing, or maybe something similar to Iron-Man.

Results

Data Overhead

I call this a partial success because near the end, when I added the extra labels, I feel that it broke the emmersion a bit. If I was to make some changes, I would make the labels less intrusive, and also tone down on the motion blur. My original idea was to use the motion blur to remove the destractions around the subject, but this kind of backfired as it made the picture slightly more messy.

Review

Harrison’s Final Image is a photo of the Human Rights Museum. The Photo itself is a good photo, and in my opinion, the photo manages to strike a wonderful balance between a scenic shot and a shot of a model. The Human Rights Museum is quite small, however given that we receive the horizon as well as the museum, I don’t mind. The use of the rule of thirds helps validate the photo as a whole and is the real reason why I consider Harrison’s photo to be excellent.
In Photoshop, Harrison added a Heads Up Display, and a sense of motion. The HUD is futuristic with a compass, a cyber-circle a holographic object, what appears to be a terminal, and a couple more items.
The mistake that hurt the most was the brightness of the image. It is hard to read the HUD when the image is so bright. For example, at first, I had no Idea why the blur effect present on Harrison's photo gave the sensation of motion. I thought it as a mistake on Harrison’s part. However the HUD shows a speed at the bottom left. In a situation where I could properly read the HUD, I easily would have known why Harrison had included that specific type of blur, however since the strain on my eyes was a tad bit too uncomfortable for me, I didn’t know and became confused.
Luckily enough, the clarity of the HUD is the only major problem I have with Harrison's image. The File size is something to take note (68MB) however given that compressing the photo would have ruined the image I can’t say the decision was bad.
In summary, the photo is amazing, the photo shopping skills are impressive but the brightness of the background kills the image for me. It becomes impossible to truly enjoy the photo when you can’t read the “eye candy” in a sense.