The document discusses an advertising photograph and the author's own photograph exploring contrasts between hot and cold. The advertising photograph depicts a model enjoying an ice cream at the beach but appears to be melting, contrasting with how the ice cream would remain solid. The author's photograph uses digital editing to make a model's hand appear melted while holding a frozen ice cube, showing contrast between hot and warm temperatures. Both photographs effectively use lighting, form, and color symbolism to emphasize the contrasting temperatures in an eye-catching way.

1. Lauren Barrett
A2 Photography
Unit 3: Contrasts
Connecting Essay 5:
Imaging directed for a new ice cream campaign.
My ‘Melting hands’ ice contrast photograph
The first image was designed and created for the purpose of an advertising
campaign for a new ice cream brand. The composition is made to resemble the
model at the beach, enjoying an ice cream, but to ensure full focus on the ice
cream, the model is given the appearance that she is melting, in contrast to what
the ice cream would ordinarily be seen to do. The clever contrast of solid and
liquid, or hot and cold, is a highly unique technique, making the imagery all the
more eye-catching and effective. The use of studio lighting is also effective in
showing the form in this photograph, as it allows the viewers to identify the
model as an actual 3D object, as opposed to a 2D drawing for example. The
colour and overall composition is essential, as the use of an attractive, female
model, wearing a red bikini, only emphasizes the idea of heat, whilst the melting
motion emphasizes the contrast of something cold.
I used the basic liquify tool on my photograph of the ice to ‘melt’ the hand. My
main idea was to show a contrast between hot and cold, by using a close-crop
composition to allow viewers to really focus on the idea behind the melting hand
and the frozen ice inside of them. If I had have cropped the image closer to focus
more on the ice, I would have lost the idea of the contrast with the liquid texture
of the hands. The colouring was also quite important to me, and I wish I had
experimented with selective colour more, as the ice-blue colour in the nail
varnish reflects the cooler themes within the ides quite well. I also relied heavily
on the studio lights, as this created in-depth shadows which showed the hand to
be a 3D object, rather than just a 2D drawing.
There is a distinct connection between the two images, so distinct that my image
could almost be a crop from the advertising image, except that mine features ice
and the advert features ice cream. I also think that we have both successfully
used form and shape in our work to emphasize on the realism and to physically
show the contrast, as without the editing of the skin in both pictures, there
would be no distinct variation in the contrast. Although different in each image,
they both use colour as an important highlighting point to show the idea of
different temperatures. In the advert, the main focal colour is red which
symbolizes heat, whilst in my image, the blue nail varnish symbolizes a much
cooler temperature.