For my project, “The Sign of The Cancer” I tried to incorporate pieces of significant facts about my birthdate which are important to me. Such as Jacques Cousteau who died on the day of my birth, and who was also French naval officer, explorer, conservationist, filmmaker, innovator, scientist, photographer, author and researcher who studied the sea and all forms of life in water. Jacques Cousteau has been an admired figure through out my entire life especially due to my love for marine biology. Another factor, is a question as to why is his name so similar to mine?Another point of my project is my birth horoscope sign, the sign of the crab, the cancer. Although I do understand that you might see this as a coincidence but I see this as a sign. Through out my life, many “coincidences” have occurred and there is no explanation as to why, but they just do. Just as this “coincidence” occurred, it just did. And that is why I chose these two main points as the theme of my project.

I began my process of this project with a photograph of a crab, which I stenciled than painted with white acrylic paint. After doing so, I photographed the painting than input it on to photoshop. For my next step, I chose to photograph images of a beach in my hometown of Miami, FL. To push the concept of Jacques Cousteau’s death and my birth, I chose to begin shooting the photographs with a higher exposure of light and transition to darker less exposed images. I also pushed that with saturation and hue in photoshop. After completing the photographs and inputting them into photoshop, I overlayed the images with the painting of the crab that I did earlier. As for the repetition of crabs, there is no exact meaning behind the crabs repetition aside from an aesthetic that pleased my eye. From the comments in class, I definitely believe I could have pushed it a bit more with arrangement but chose not to.

2 Works of Inspiration:

-Jacques Cousteau’s studies

-News Paper articles from Long Island Post and New York times regarding horoscopes about June 25th, 1997