Meet the Artist

Photo by Jessica Taylor

My name is Daisy Barrette. Currently, I'm a student at Holy Cross Catholic Secondary School in Kingston, ON. I'm part of the Specialist High Skills Major (SHSM) program, and I plan to go to university in a com tech related program after my returning year in high school. My favourite parts of com tech are photography and photomanipulation/ composite images. I love how I can take a 'slice of life' in a photo that reflects my personal version of reality, and, if I want, manipulate it further to create images that can't exist in this universe. Lately I've also become interested in flash animation (within the school curriculum) graphic design (in and out of school) and conceptual photography (outside of school). I take courses in com tech, tech design, yearbook, and next semester I will be doing a com tech related co-op. The different elements of com tech form my favourite parts of what I do at school and after school.

Animation, Photomanipulation, and Typography

Animation

The Night

Drawn and Animated by Daisy Barrette

This is an animation I made for my Tech Design course in Flash CS3. I wanted to take a different approach to the project (which required that the final animation feature at least two characters, besides various other technical elements) by making all of my characters celestial bodies. I used the 'tween' function often, both to make objects travel across the screen and change colour, sometimes at the same time. I designed this animation to include a time change, a rotation, a 'zoom in', and verbal action. Overall, I'm pleased with the way it came out, very simple but in the cartooned style I was looking for.

Photomanipulation

 Up in Smoke

Photos and editing by Daisy Barrette

Recently I have become interested in levitation photography and photomanipulation. I find floating photos magical, both 'jump shots' (where the model has simply jumped and only appears to float) and manipulations. To take this shot I took separate pictures of both of my legs, and combined them with the background (including shoes) in Photoshop. I close cropped my feet and legs and positioned them so that they appeared to be floating over the shoes. I also adjusted the lighting and added a 'film grain' filter which I think adds to the surreal effect.

 Silence in the Library

 Photo and editing by Daisy Barrette

This is a manipulation made using re-sized versions of the same picture. Because of this, it was relatively easy to do. I wanted to create an endless hallway of books, so I used an almost-endless one in a library at Queen's University. I combined copies of the image together in Photoshop to create a distant vanishing point... the lines of the shelves, and on the ceiling and floor drag the viewer's eye into the shot.

 Cascade

Photo and editing by Daisy Barrette

This is another manipulation that plays with infinity. I again used copies of the same photo to extend the perspective by combining them in Photoshop. I saw this staircase in a library and I was fascinated by the spiral. I wanted to manipulate the stairs so that it seemed them went on longer than they did. I wanted to exaggerate the spiral and make the stairs seem surreal and interesting.

Cubed

Photos and editing by Daisy Barrette

I have not yet solved my Rubick's cube. I was feeling frustrated and I wanted to create an unrealistic, surreal scene, involving levitation if possible. I close cropped the photos of the hand and cube in Photoshop, and put them over my favourite cloudy sky. I boosted the saturation and contrast, as well as adding a grain filter to give the piece a more aged look.

 

Typography:

 The TARDIS

Typography by Daisy Barrette

Doctor Who and the TARDIS are copyright of the BBC

This typographic piece is based on the TARDIS from the British TV series Doctor Who. The TARDIS is a spaceship/ time machine that is constant throughout the long-running program. Though (usually) inanimate, the TARDIS is a central character. This fascinates me, and prompted me to make a 'typographic portrait' of the TARDIS. I used Photoshop to create layers with different sizes and styles of text, though I used the same font for everything (Calibri). I worked from several pictures of the TARDIS, copying the colours and shapes, but using text to do so. I chose meaningful quotes from Doctor Who to add another dimension of meaning to the piece. I'm happy that it turned out so easily recognizable (for a fan) while still keeping a lot of the text readable.

 Self Portrait

Typography by Daisy Barrette

This is a typographic self portrait I made for practice. I took a photo of myself and opened it in photoshop. After converting it to grayscale, I added a new adjustment layer, 'posterize' (the levels were set at 5). This enabled me to see my face a five layers of colour. I then proceeded to copy the colours into text, using both text brush presets, vertical and horizontal text. I covered each colour level with words like 'skin', 'face', and 'hair', leaving my eyes and eyebrows black. I wanted to keep the feeling of anonimity that the text gave me intact. I think this turned out well for a first attempt, and I know I'll be doing similar things in future.

GRAPHIC DESIGN

Composite Poster: Muse

Heavy Handed

This composite image is a self portrait intended to show my 'muses' and general influences. The background is a manipulated photo I took of a broken window with the words of T. S. Eliot's The Hollow Men superimposed overtop. Both the photo and the poem are favourites of mine, and works that I try to emulate. I wore my top hat and black clothing to give an air of mystery to the piece. I replaced my irises with camera lenses to represent my love of photography, and how I sometimes see the world through a camera. My canine teeth are the nibs of calligraphy pens to symbolize calligraphy, writing, and general typography. I am a guitar player, and connect to many things through music, so I decided to connect my head to my body using the neck of my guitar. I have a fascination with six-fingered hands. For me, the sixth finger represents extra ability, somewhat similar to a sixth sense. I've often thought it would be useful to have extra fingers while I'm playing guitar. I wanted to make myself stand out in this portrait, but in a subtle way, with as much realistic editind as possible. All of the surreal elements have gone unnoticed by one person or another at first glance, but everyone in unnerved from the start.


Basketball Posters

These are two promotional posters for Girl's Basketball at Holy Cross. They were a collaboration created for the PH Classic, a basketball tournment held at Holy Cross that fundraises for cancer research. Each student in my grade 12 com tech class photographed a player using studio lighting and manual focus on a Nikon D5000. I used F5.6, 1/125 second shutter speed and ISO200. After taking the photograph, I imported it into Photoshop CS3, keyed out most of the blue screen and close cropped and blurred the rest. I then arranged the template around my player.

Certificate: Design Exchange

I designed this certificate for the Sears Canadain High School Design Competition 2012 as part of the curriculum in my Tech Design course. With the exception of the logos and the graph paper in the background, I made everything in Photoshop CS3. I wanted to make something a little different from the standard certificate. The needle and typographic artwork symbolize the different aspects of the Design Exchange contest (industrial design, fashion design, graphic design, and architectural/ interior design) intergrated within the certificate itself. I made the colour scheme simples, mostly gray and white.

VIDEO

Memorial Video:
Holy Cross Junior Boys Basketball Team

Voice over and editing by Daisy Barrette
Practice footage shot by Daisy Barrette
Game footage from HCTV archives

This video was a project for the Specialist High Skills Major (SHSM) program. The Memorial basketball games are a fundraiser for cancer research at Holy Cross and Regiopolis Notre-Dame, and SHSM students filmed them and put together a halftime show which included this video, broadcast on local TV. I shot footage of a practice and used archival footage of the Holy Cross Junoir Boys basketball team as visuals for the voice over parts of the video (I wrote and spoke the voice over myself). I also interviewed two players and the coach of the team to complete the news story.

Highlights Video:
Holy Cross Junior Boys Volleyball Team

Shot and edited by Daisy Barrette

For an individual assignment in my com tech class, I filmed a Junoir Boys volleyball game from the balcony above the school gym. I imported my best shots into Final Cut Pro, and put arranged and edited them into a short 'highlights' video. I chose music and sound effects from Soundtrack Pro, and exported them into my final video in FCP.

Highlights Video:
Holy Cross Christmas Concert 2011

Shot and edited by Daisy Barrette

I filmed this year's Christmas concert in the school gym, in clips of about ten seconds each. I also filmed several of the songs in full, and used one of them as the audio for this highlights video. Once I had my chosen clips imported into Final Cut Pro, I put markers on the audio where I thought it would be good to have a transition, and edited the video accordingly.

Grade Nine Video:
The Scariest Thing About Secondary School

Video by Jessica Taylor, Daisy Barrette, and Samantha Morin

This video on the scariest aspects of secondary school is part of larger collaborative effort of the Grade 12 Communications Technology class. We split up into teams of three (camera, audio, and producer being the general roles) and each team interviewed several grade nine students about their experiences in high school. After the initial interview process, each team chose a question to specialize in, ours being 'The Scariest Thing'. We selected the best clips, and arranged them in a logical order in Final Cut Pro. As the camera person, I used the keying video filters in FCP to take out the bluescreen. My group's producer Jessica Taylor and I planned out background shots to add interest to the 'talking heads'. I filmed these and also put in the text. Overall, it was a good learning experience; all the work that can go into just over a minute of video.

Video Intro:
"HCTV Student Production" Bumper

Video by Daisy Barrette
Effects arranged in Motion, video assembled in Final Cut Pro

This is a "bumper" or intro to be played at the start of a typical HCTV student video. I arranged the effects in Motion, the music in Soundtrack Pro, and brought everything together into Final Cut Pro to edit and export as a quicktime file.

PHOTOGRAPHY

Architectural Photography

Isabel Turner Library "Mirrored"

Photo by Daisy Barrette

           When taking this photograph, I intended to showcase the unique reflections in the windows of the building. The composition of the photo is meant to exaggerate the lines of the building, and give one impression of it rather than a direct representation of reality. I edited the image in photoshop to maximize its visual impact. The lines of each of the windows continue in the reflection opposite in an interesting geometric pattern. It is impossible to see inside of the building, only the altered reflections of the outside. The lines between the windows draw one's eyes to the centre of the image, and continue outside of the frame, giving the image a more dynamic feel. The angle this photo was taken from gives an interesting perspective on the building. It causes the lines of the building to begin to converge. The reflections of the windows are accentuated by the angle, as is the impression of the building itself. To optimize this image, I cropped it and used minimal editing in photoshop to heighten the contrast, and made several different versions using filters in photoshop. However, I liked the look of the original photo best, so I increased the saturation while keeping the image essentially the same. This picture is meant to show my perception of the building's architecture; straight lines and reflections in contrast to the plain blue sky around it.

Publicity Photography

Jessica

Photo by Daisy Barrette

This is a headshot of Jessica Taylor that I took as an assignment for my Grade 12 Com Tech class. We formed teams of two, and took promotional headshots of each other utilizing Rembrandt style studio lighting in front of a black background. The Nikon D5000 was set to a shutter speed of 1/125 of a second, F5.6, and ISO200. After I was satisfied with the focus and lighting, I imported the pictures into the computer and edited them in Photoshop CS3. I made the image black and white and heightened the contrast after cropping and re-sizing to an 8x10.

Photo Journalism

Looking Up

Photo by Daisy Barrette

This is a photo I took at the OFSAA girl's basketball tournament at the Royal Military College (RMC) gym. I used a Nikon D5000 and a high-end zoom lens. I stood behind the basketball net to get better shots of the players' faces than from the sidelines. I like the 'slice of life' captured in this photo. The TISS Pirates player has just attempted a three point shot, and she and the opposing Downsview player are both waiting to see if it goes in.

Phantom

Photo by Daisy Barrette

Holy Cross' theatrical production this school year was The Phantom of the Opera. Jessica Taylor and I took promotional shots of the lead actors Tyler Check and Jessica Bullet, playing the Phantom and Christine, after school one day. This photo was featured in the Kingston Whig Standard on the cover of the Arts & Entertainment section for that week.

The Park

Photo by Daisy Barrette

This is a photo of a statue of Sir John A. MacDonald in downtown Kingston. At the time this statue was surrounded by a bed of brilliant red flowers, and I wanted to incorporate them into the picture. However, with a strait on shot, it was hard to get everything in and still have a clear focus for the photo. I tried a different angle (I had to lay down, actually) which fit everything in. I chose to focus on the flower, because if left out of focus in the foreground, I felt it would be only a distraction and not the splash of colour I wanted. The statue, however, remained interesting and still took up more of the frame, even out of focus and in the background. Overall, I'm pleased with the end result of the composition.

Conceptual Photography

Consume

Photo by Daisy Barrette

This photo symbolizes the expectations and stresses placed on teenagers in a consumer culture. I used a mirror and a ring to represent the pressure to be beautiful and fashionable. The fork is tied in with this, a reference to eating disorders common to teenagers. Money is a direct representation of the craving to consume, the idea that permeates western culture that to be complete, we must buy. The cross necklace symbolizes religion; teenagers go through a lot of changes in their ideas about everything, including God and religion, and how to integrate faith into daily life. The pens represent the pressures of school and university, and are the objects pointing most directly to my layer of symbolism, the calendar. I arranged everything on the calendar (representing the idea that time is running out and growing up) to point towards February 14th, Valentine's Day. This symbolizes the most stressful thing in teenagers' lives, relationships, both with family and friends (often strained) and with a boyfriend or girlfriend. Teens often feel left out if they are single on Valentine's Day, which only adds to their other worries.

Worry

Photo by Daisy Barrette

This photo is part of a series of conceptual compositions I did recently on the theme of 'teen stress' for a photography contest. As a teenager, school stresses me out, and one of the easiest ways to symbolize school is through books. I arranged two stacks of books and placed myself between them, using the self-timer function on my camera. I chose books that had fitting titles, including a dictionary and a thesaurus, a compilation of the works of Shakespeare, a 'For Dummies' book, and several self-help/ stress relief books. I placed pens and pencils in the foreground, as well as an unlit candle stub (a slight reference to the 'burning the midnight oil' saying). I'm reading 'How to Stop Worrying and Start Living' because its title was most closely reminiscent of my theme of worry and stress. If I, as a teenage student, felt worried and overworked, I'd probably add such a book to my reading list.

The Doom Song

Photo by Daisy Barrette

This photo was an experiment for me. I was taking pictures of a friend playing her piano, but it was too dark to get a good exposure without a flash. The pop-up flash on my Canon Rebel XS is, frankly, terrible. I opened my aperture as wide as it could go, set the ISO to 1600, but even with the shutter speed at 1/100 (usually I prefer 1/125) it was still far too dark. The only thing left was to decrease the shutter speed and take a long exposure. I balanced the camera on the edge of the piano to keep the background crisp. I took several photos, all between five and twelve seconds in length (I had to use my bulb setting). The one featured here was nine seconds, and, as my friend was playing the whole time, her hands are motion blurred. Instead of looking like a mistake, however, I found it looked ghostlike and interesting, and even more so when I adjusted the contrast and made the conversion to black and white in Photoshop. This experience was a great eye-opener for me in regards to exposure time; shorter is definitely not always better. I couldn't have gotten this great effect with a fast shutter speed.

Nature Photography

Three

Photo by Daisy Barrette

I love the lighting in this trillium photo. I found a small field of them in a clearing in the woods (some are visible in the background) but decided to focus on this particular bloom. The sun was shining through a gap in the tree canopy, and it made for a very calm composition.

Fallen

Photo by Daisy Barrette

I take a lot of pictures of trees. I tried to make this one seem different with the angle and the crop; the feature is the bark and trunk of the tree, rather than the silhouette or leaves. The angle shows how far away the leaves are, and keeps the focus on the trunk. I also increased the saturation in post production to make the colours more noticeable. 

Dee

Photo by Daisy Barrette

This is possibly my favourite of my own photos. I took it at Lemoine Point Conservation Area on a walk with my dad last year. He noticed that there were seeds on the ground in one particular area; people had been feeding the birds. Almost as soon as he held out his hand, a bird flew down and landed on it. I was lucky enough to snap a few pictures, this being the best. I love bird's position in the general composition. I had set my aperture to its lowest setting to let the maximum amount of light in, which afforded an added bonus of blurring the background sufficiently to ensure the chickadee stayed the main focus. I used a shutter speed of 1/125 of a second, which froze the action nicely.