Assignment 5: Still Life

Maren Botz-Zapp: Cup of tea

This is the final product of my previous set up. I essentially had to create a layer mask for each photo with an ingredient and then smooth it all out until the background was unanimous. Unfortunately, I did not think about the shadows that my boyfriend's hands cast, as well as the shadows that the cup and ingredients cast. So the only shadow in this photo is that of the cup, although it doesn't look as bizarre without three other shadows as I anticipated. My biggest regret about this photograph is that the sugar packet on top looks a little strange at that angle (and was very difficult to edit around). Next time I probably would've used skewers to tape to the sugar packet and small scoop - easier to edit out in Photoshop. It is also quite difficult to see the sugar falling out of the packet, although if you look carefully enough it is there and completes the look. I needed to crop the photo down to get rid of the white walls behind my black poster board, which left the photo a bit off-balance.