“DC in Parallax” is a series of six images I created during my fall semester of 2022 when I lived in Washington, D.C. While riding the metro and walking through the neighborhoods of DC, I knew I needed to have my camera with me. I enjoy the spontaneity of street photography while stumbling across lime green walls and crowds of strangers. We often ignore people passing by us, but photographing their candid moments preserves the fleeting moments in life by showing us the beauty in the mundane.
I have worked to suspend these moments in time, not only through photography, but by transforming them into digital pieces so viewers may be immersed in stereoscopic visuals and layered audio. With experience in photography and videography, I wanted to create art pieces that challenged me and combined these media. Most of this process is done in post-production editing, and big challenges stem from crafting organic backgrounds and recreating motion. The subtle movements from the subject, the camera pans, and the addition of sound design all come together to create a digital picture somewhere between two dimensions and three dimensions. Although I didn’t film with a video camera, I am able to recreate visual effects similar to the way our eyes perceive three dimensions; this is called motion parallax.
Using Adobe Photoshop, I cut out the subject from the image and filled in the missing background, creating two layers. I import these layers into Adobe After Effects to place them in a third dimension where I can move them in X, Y, and Z planes. To create depth, I separate the layers by pushing the background position away from the viewer on the Z plane. I then add a virtual camera to the composition that allows me to zoom and pan through the image at various angles.
Creating these motion parallax pieces is my way of bringing back to life the frozen motion and flattening constrictions of photography. “DC in Parallax” allows viewers to be drawn inside of an image and experience a digital recreation of what I saw during my time in DC.
