I believe space has a personality. The aesthetics of a particular space heavily affect my immediate impression of the space. Spaces that I have particular emotional connections to have the ability to evoke a variety of feelings. For my “tiny world” image project, the space I chose to photograph was the Oval area of Ohio State’s campus on a snowy morning. I have a strong emotional connection to Ohio State because of the growth and memories I have experienced here and this space is representative of that to me. I work part-time as a tour guide while in school and I walk across this space through all types of weather talking about how much I love it, so it has a special meaning to me. I believe this is an example of how space can reflect something larger about ourselves. As a college student and proud Buckeye, it is easy to relate to this space because it feels like home to me. I feel very personally connected to this space because it is a symbol for so much more that has happened in my life and a constant throughout my time in college.
I knew immediately that I wanted to photograph the Oval for this project because I love the area and how it looks during this time of year. I followed the instructions from Spoon Graphics’s YouTube tutorial closely because I am still working on becoming more familiar with Photoshop. I found that using my own photos was much more difficult than the “tiny worlds” that I created in class. It was difficult to edit a photo with lots of people walking to class in it, and I had trouble adjusting the sky around the trees. I ended up using the clone stamp tool for the majority of this. Other tools I used frequently in this process include the eraser, opacity adjustments, free transform, and spot healing tools. Using my own photos was a new challenge for me but ultimately allowed me to use new techniques to achieve my desired results.