Philippines Trip

On November 28,2012, I embarked on a Boeing 747 owned by the Philippine airlines to get to my home country, the Philippines. When I got down in the airport, I can feel the weight of my textbooks in my backpack just weigh down my back. I needed to bring the textbooks to keep up with my studies. Right when we got down, I immediately turned my Go Pro on to document my trip, I planned to document my whole trip so I can look back at it.

After a few days of rest and family reunions, we decided to go zip lining. At the mountain, we took a silver old jeep to the peak and strapped in and enjoyed the ride. When we went to church in the Philippines, we attended mass at the oldest church in Asia, it was very catholic and had a very rusty, old look to it. One day, we went on an outdoor excursion, on that excursion we saw the rarest mammal in the world, the Tarsier, we saw many accustomed Filipino birds and we saw a waterfall where Holy Mary appeared among the people.

During the excursion, we got the opportunity to scuba dive and see many different types of fish. During the night time, we enjoyed the night-life and the comedy bars in Manila, the nation’s capital.Many bars were also explored and we listened some of the best music I have ever heard and the best visuals for music ever! On one traditional excursion, I got the “joy” of eating live worms, surprisingly good and the chance to climb a peak, a religious peak where prayers were said at the top. During the celebrations, we lied down and sat on a “Banig”, which is a multicoloured sheet that is used as a cover for hard ground and such. We also acquired a “barrel statue” where it shows private parts of a man covered by a barrel, we did not get a full explanation, I didn't even ask, aha. All of these memories, engraved into my brain, skin and my Go Pro. It was a crazy trip with many surprises!

Memories in My Skin Assignment Reflection

Sean Castillo

1.    Technical aspects I used:

●     Layering photos and changing opacities to create depth and mixtures.

●     Changed color curves to create similar or differentiated colors.

●     I used layer blends to make a more unified look between layers.

 2. Ideas or Concepts

 My idea for this project was to create a crazy, non-peaceful piece of work. I wanted to                          reflect my trip and how it was crazy and full of excitement. During the production                                process, I started my composition completely because of lack to rotation in the image 

 and I created an attempt at making the pictures blend together.

 3. Influences

 No artists inspired me to create this image. I just let myself loose and did magic with                           Photoshop. I then just became critical with myself and readjusted images.

 4. Composition

 I tried to create a mix of images with different sizes and opacities. I tried to have more                          solid opacities on the corners to create a box feel to the picture. I tried to create emphasis 

 on the more connective images such as the church and scuba divers while adding birds to                    draw the eye back to the place or flow of emphasis. As a whole, I feel that the pictures 

 blend together in a natural way, I tried to create a yellow kind of tone with red and blue,                      representing the colours of the Philippines.

 5. Motivation

 Besides fulfilling the assignment, I really wanted to share my experiences in the                                    Philippines using pictures and reflect on the BIG things I wanted to really emphasize. 

 I wanted to explore a more “traditional” tone of colours such as yellows, blues and reds that                represent older  cultures.

  6. Critical Assessment

  I feel that my most interesting elements are the mixtures of nature and man made things,

  such as the Plane and the Church blending with the different textures of the face, waterfall.

  No, I do not feel that I could have improved my assignment anymore because it was so                         hard to know what to put and not to put.