I wanted gender ambiguous luggage on this one, as again I felt the need to keep the audience wider. My original idea was for a 50s60s style suitcase or trunk, covered in airline stickers and luggage tags, but the ones I found in my image search didn’t work – they were too busy, had cluttered backgrounds or weren’t easily framed. I chose this image of a suitcase, in a neutral and quite plain natural setting, and decided it gave me a clean canvas. I put my slogan on the case, using embossing and some shadow. I wasn’t impressed with the result.
Tilt shift gave me a chance to make the message the focal point of the card. Any bombshell announcement throws everything else around us out of focus, after all. I didn’t want to vignette, because that is too soft, romantic or restricting – I wanted the environment to be present but irrelevant, seen through narrowed and possibly teary eyes. (wow I sound so cold and bitter! I’m really not!)
Once again, the emotion I’m trying to capture came to mind and I imagined the colour draining from the recipient’s face. Here was another metaphor. I switched to monochrome. Would the famous photograph of a sailor kissing a woman in Times Square on VJ day be as intimate in colour? Do we need colour across an image to represent emotion when the message is in the composition and the subject? Is it a distraction?
I wanted the only colour to be the personal comment from the sender of the card, so went for a vibrant pink, to contrast with the monochrome palette. In hindsight its placement is a bit pedestrian and dull. But he was, so that’s why she left him‌
Resources Used – Suitcase https://www.piqsels.com/en/public-domain-photo-falkm