Learning Scanography to Make Sea Stars Appear Underwater
This project helped me learn how to create images using something called Scanography. Scanography is when you arrange items (in my case, Sea Stars, Sea shells and twine) on a scanner and scan the image into your computer. I wanted to create something with more depth so I used some Sea Stars my husband had given me as a gift to create an underwater image. To make the Sea Stars appear to be floating underwater, I used the set I had connected to other items using twine. With the twine weaving in and out of the Sea Stars, I was able to give the illusion of weightlessness underwater. After my first scan, I realized it still didn’t look as realistic as I wanted it to. I then had the idea to place some of the Sea Stars further away from the scanner to make them appear more blurry. As you know, when items are underwater, they do tend to become blurrier the further away we get from them. This made the Sea Stars look a lot more realistic! The final item I needed to really sell the fact that they were underwater was to get a kind of dark blue background. I used my husband’s blue fleece jacket to cover all the items in my Sea Stars image. After that, it was just a matter of basic editing and colorizing. I love this because anyone can do it! It doesn’t have to look underwater if you don’t want it too but it sure created a realistic scene for my Sea Stars.
Original Images for Underwater Sea Stars
Interested in seeing more Scanography? Check out some of Peter Krohn’s work here!