I used more than three images for this animation but they all revolved around these three terms: darkness, change, and shadows. I started with the image of a path half in shadows and half in light. I took this picture for our first video assignment but it really reminded me of a balance leaning towards the darkness.

The swan that I originally took a picture of was black and I found that very intriguing. We normally think of swans as white, pure creatures but the black one with a red beak was just as pure, even if it wasn’t white in color. I decided to use that as a representation of change and darkness because it has been changed but I believe that, even in change, the essence of everything remains. The black swan had changed physically but it was still graceful as it glided across a pond in the Bronx Zoo.

Halfway through, there is a horizontal image of a shadow of a person (me!) and I had that picture to show, aside from the actual shadows, of what was. This was another representation of change but rather than the actual change, I wanted to focus on what was left after the change. I also changed the colors of the original light and dark path to black and white to show the “what was.”

Lastly, I decided rather than having too many moving images, I wanted to make an animation for the color experience. I changed the hue and saturation of the different images and overlapped them to show the change. Gradually, the images become less and less recognizable. They become more like blurs of color intermixing until it’s impossible to tell what is what at the end.

This is how my middle image looked like. There’s the shadow and the park and the black-and-white color shows the change and what was. Thinking about it, the shadow seems like a person looking back at their memories.