"Television broadcast signals had been slated to go digital on Feb. 17th however a bill to delay the switch until June 12 is under consideration by the legislature." Photo illustration by Justin Edmonds
This past week I was asked to create an illustration to go along with a centerpiece story on the digital broadcast conversion. The whole illustration thing is kind of new to me but I was willing to give it a shot. The story kept getting pushed back because of our silly (former) Governor here in Illinois so I had to wait to post it until it finally ran today.
The initial idea/concept came to me pretty quickly but the challenging part was getting it to look right. The only digital manipulation I did was to add the binary code. Everything else is pretty much straight out of camera. I'm very much a purist when it comes to things and I really don't enjoy placing an "illustration" tag in front of my byline. When and if I can help it I will always find a way to shoot it instead of manipulating it in Photoshop. As I'm sure there was some way to "shoot" binary code I didn't think it would have looked right so I did add that part in Photoshop.
I have to thank Valerie (one of the staffers) for finding the perfect television for me at a thrift store for $7 and the remote for a buck, so awesome. The final setup consisted of four lights. One on the black seamless with a double green gel, one with a snoot to give a little definition to the dials on the TV, and two on the remote one of which had my homemade beauty dish attached to it. After I got everything metered to where I wanted it to be I just dropped my shutter speed to match the frequency of the TV which turned out to be 1/15. With the exception of cropping maybe 1/2 of an inch off the bottom, this was shot full frame. Final settings were ISO 200, f5.6 at 1/15 at 70mm.
The processing of the binary code was by far the most difficult process. I probably used eight layers and multiple filters and layer masks to get things to look right. As I often explain to friends and family, I probably only use 10% of what Photoshop is actually capable of. Being a journalist requires maintaing a set of very strict ethics with regards to digital manipulation so I don't really need to explore the many functions that the program is capable of. Don't get me wrong, it is a great tool but it's just a tool and nothing more. Even when I shoot non-editorial assignments where it is completely acceptable to "touch up" a photo I am always going to get the best possible image to start with. I don't want to sit in front of a computer screen all day; I'm a photographer, not a graphic artist.
I'm sure some Photoshop wiz is looking at this saying that it could be done much better so please, by all means give me some input. I would love to hear what others think and how the concept could be improved.
I'm all ears.
-JCE
No comments:
Post a Comment