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This was a fun exercise and gave me some insights into what is possible with photoshop. I used a variety of tools, Dry Brush, Stylized then embossed, glowing edges, clouds etc. All of this was interesting but I still have not found a feature or technique which I think has enhanced my collage with some added artistic merit, either through just form or conceptually but will continue to work on it. Photoshop has allowed me to experiment but it would probably be of more benefit had I some clear idea of where I want to take this collage and already understand what is possible with the medium. Long way to go...............
I have retyped the words in the middle /top of the collage.The red across the naval zodiac has been enhanced to emphasise the fact that they too, although at Howards insistence rather than the clear observation of maritime conventions, may have blood on their hands. In the centre of the collage are 2 people in uniform carrying young children to safety having been unloaded from a refugee boat. I thought it important to show the compassion of the people involved in the sea rescue. Their compassion was evident, unfortunately the compassion of the Australian Government was not.
I wanted to blur edges a little so cloned the sea around the shipping containers in the middle of the image, increase the size of tha Tampa and deleted the words around the woman as they were incomplete and had been finished by hand.
Having increased the size of the navy zodiac I cleaned up around it with a cloning tool so as to provide an edge to the water
The role of the navy previously unheard of, became important under the direct instruction from Howard. The boat, also in black and white was increased in size and I decided that it was unnecessary to have another image of refugees in the front right hand corner so I allowed the boat to take over that image.
Having increased the size of the headstone I decided the size of the husband of Fatima needed to increase, to emphasise his grief and to humanise the refugee, something that Howard clearly tried to avoid.
I decided to increase the size of the headstone of the refugee because the issue is about Australia's compassion (or lack of) and whether or not John Howard has blood on his hands because of his stance with refugees. I started to enhance the colour red falling from his hands.
I decided there was too much information in my collage and that some things needed more emphasis so decided to eliminate the crabs in the bottom left hand corner and increase the prominence of John Howard's presence by cloning his suit over the top of the crabs. The red crabs make Christmas Island recognisable but the main feature of the collage is the Tampa issue which happened at Christmas Island also. The crabs become irrelevant.
These are some of the photos I considered for my collage. Most are from my private collection although I did not take them all, some images are from a movie (forgotten the name) some from paintings I completed while at Christmas Island and others from the internet.
