May's Wall

This project was the fourth Photoshop project I worked on. In my English class, we were assigned our Independent Reading Project (or IRP) for the quarter. An IRP is where a student does a project on a book of their choice they read. For my IRP, I chose to read The Secret Life of Bees. For my project, I chose to re-create three different important objects in the book in Photoshop.

Warning - Spoilers For The Secret Life of Bees Ahead!

This wall was the first object I chose to re-create in Photoshop. There is a character in The Secret life of Bees named May. May can get easily overwhelmed from sad or negative things that happen. For example, if there is a sad story on the news or if someone brings up a sad moment from their past, May can get quite emotional. So when she does get extremely emotional from certain events, she goes out into the forest to this wall. May can write down what’s bothering her on a slip of paper, and then stuff that piece of paper in between the rocks. This helps her let go of things that cause her pain.

I used three different photos to create this. The first one is the forest background, and the second is the rock wall. The third is the tiny slips of paper in between some of the rocks, which you might not be able to see. I promise they're there! I took the picture of the paper myself, and then I edited the image so it just was the slip of paper. I also edited the rock wall so it was shorter, and in doing that I got rid of the background. In order to make the rock wall appear as if there was part of the forest ground in front of it, I had to edit many copies of the forest background and put them in front of the wall. I also added a few shadows on the rock wall to really make it look realistic.

Image Credits:
Forest - http://algy3289.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Forest-of-Dean.jpg
Rock wall - http://www.vbfsusteacherbarb.com/uploads/6/6/5/5/6655143/58571_orig.jpg
Slips of paper - Photos taken by me

Thanks for checking out my post! :)