Initial thoughts and mini task

Thinking about the letter 'G' I would think of fun activities like gaming and gambling. I think I am drawn towards gambling because I can base clothign and fashion designs on symbols and items that are involved in it.

For the mini task I am going to get some cards and place/hold them in specific ways that resemble gambling or form a good composition.

Edits

I first opened my chosen image in Photoshop.

I then used the horizontal type tool and rasterized a capital 'G' layer so that I could change the the size and shape of it. I had to use the clone stamp tool in order to make the black of the letter cover a larger area. This was so that I could fit everything I wanted inside the black.

I then used the quick select on the letter and inversed the selection, I clicked on the image layer and filled the selected area with black. Hide the original 'G' layer and you are left with the image in the shape of the 'G'. I then cropped it down so that there wasn't an uneven black background.

I adjusted the levels using an adjustment layer however I didn't like how dark the the cards were so I made another adjustment layer and made them brighter. This layer only focuses on the white of the cards. I made another adjustment layer for the hue and saturation to make the red of the back of the cards and the orange of the light stand out.

 I finally made a high pass layer to define the edges in the image. Unexpectedly it also sharpened the letters edge but made it look a lot more defined and a lot better.

Final image

Using a small aperture has worked quite effectively however I think I should have pushed it as low as it would have gone because I left it on f/4.5. This is so that the focus of the image would be focused on the cards even more than it already is. The image is mostly made up of warm tones. I feel that this makes the red on the back of the cards stand out. This was caused by the type of lighting that was in the restaurant I was in; the lighting was a normal bulb. However I feel that this has been used well because it makes the top of the image have something to look at; it makes it interesting. The shape of the G has split the lightest part of the image into 2 and takes a chunk from the side. I think this takes a lot of the focus away from the hand and draws it to the Joker card because it is fully in the frame of the G.