My header image correlates to my interests and skill set. Social media is a field I want to pursue post-college. The lightbulb represents my creativity. My website has been created to show my audience my creativity and what I have made, whether it is showcasing my social media experience, content, or projects I have created in the past. By looking at my page, my audience can understand more about me on a professional and personal level. I found the images on a website called Unsplash. They are not in the public domain, but they have a similar license offering free photos for anyone. Photographers have kindly uploaded their images so other people can express themselves.
Once I found my two images, I knew I wanted to layer them. Layering allows people to “control the transparency of each layer, group them together, change their order” (Manovich, 2011). So, I added transparency behind the image that says social media. I then layered that on top of the light bulb image. This allowed me to combine the two meanings of the images. I also blurred the light bulb image around the hands because it puts more of a focus on the words and the light bulb. I think my process is different from the single-layer bitmap image that Davison discusses in his article. Once a bit is activated, it remains there (Davison, 2016). Since I used layers, I was able to alter the images without affecting the whole image.
References
Davison, P. (2014). Because of the pixels: On the history, form, and influence of MS Paint. Journal of Visual Culture, 13(3), 275–297. https://doi.org/10.1177/1470412914544539.
Manovich, L. (2011). Inside Photoshop. Computational Culture. Retrieved from http://computationalculture.net/article/inside-photoshop.
Gabby Meyer 