Let Go - Photo Editing Project

My primary audience is a 21-25 year old New Yorker that works 80 hours a week on Wall Street. They're in the rat race of life chasing things they don't need in order to impress people they don't like. They're stressed out and destroying their health but in their mind they will be fine once they get promoted. The reality is that they stressed themselves out in high school because they thought they would be fine once they got into college and stressed themselves out in college because they thought they would be fine once they got a good paying job on Wall Street. I'm trying to communicate to my audience to let go of their worldly attachments and let life take them wherever.

New York symbolizes the rat-race lifestyle. The sky which is the cosmos symbolizes the universe and reality. The picture being upside down symbolizes her life taking a 180. Her falling and fading into the universe means that she is escaping the rat race lifestyle and going into reality.

To make this photo, I got a picture of New York, the cosmos, and a lady falling. I got the picture of New York and changed the sky to the cosmos. I did this by clicking edit, sky replacement, and then uploading the sky that I wanted. I then flipped the whole image. I did this by clicking on Image, Image Rotation, and then 180. Then I got the picture of the lady falling and took out the background using the object selection tool. I then layered the lady's picture over the New York/Cosmos photo. Making the lady fade into the cosmos was a happy accident.

Making this photo, I myself realized that I have rat race tendencies that I need to escape. Through trial and error, this project taught me the basics of Photoshop. What I learned is that I need to be still and not jump on an idea I have when I start a project. I had many ideas before I created this and I'm glad I didn't start working on those because being still allowed me to go through with the idea that I love. I plan to do the same thing with future projects.